2016 Progress Report: August

August was a strange month. The beginning of August was a very productive time for me. Then the summer ceramic course ended and the following weeks were not productive at all. I guess you could say I was resting. Then when the semester started up again at the end of August, I was busy again. Needless to say, not a whole lot got done, but it was beginning of things to come.

8/2/16: The firing is complete and foil has come off. These looked very ugly prior to the polishing work. A good way to tell wether I succeeded with these saggar firings is to pour water on them. That gives me a good indication of what they'll look like after applying the polish.

8/2/16: Later in the day, the polishing work is complete and these pieces are looking much better.

8/4/16: These are the bottoms of the ceramic dishes I was working on back in July. This set is named after a piece I did back in 2015 called Tension. Although these pieces don't look anything like that piece, both projects used the same glazes.

8/31/16: After taking a break for several weeks, this is finally done. One thing that I try to do when adding felt is to hide it. Technically, you're not supposed to see it when the piece is standing up, but from certain angles, you can still tell it's there. I hide it by lightly applying black acrylic paint around the edges of the felt.

8/31/16: This is done too. This was one of the easier ones to do.

8/31/16: I believe this was almost done at the time this picture taken. I think the only thing that was left to do was to add polymer medium. Whenever I end up using acrylic paints anywhere on a ceramic piece, I always use that afterwards to give the paint a shine so it looks like it was part of the piece rather than being just paint on a piece.

8/31/16: Applying the label was not easy but the work with the felt was easy. It's because this piece had a simple circular shape on the bottom.

2016 Progress Report: July

By this point, I had been in the summer ceramics class for about a month. Since the work that I was doing was strictly for stuff that I'm putting up for sale, these pieces had less of an experimental aspect to them which meant that the work was minimal and could be done more quickly. That part wasn't the problem. The restrictive schedule of the summer class was a problem. Time itself was the hardest part of all this. Nonetheless, I was never that far behind schedule.

7/5/16: The glazing is done for the newest pieces. If these turn out alright, they will go on sale in the fall.

7/12/16: There was limited room in the kiln for all the pieces, so only the small ones were fired. The first three were based on glazes that I had used towards the end of the spring whereas the other three used combinations of four glazes that I used late last year.

7/12/16: These are in the process of drying. The coils I used to make these were thicker than what I used on the saggar piece that these pieces are based on. This was because it allowed me to build them more quickly. Despite my attempts to trim some of the excess clay, these are still thick pieces and they're taking longer to dry than I wanted them to.

7/19/16: Finally, they're all fired. I now have to get around to labeling these and adding felt as well as any necessary acrylic paint. Since each series is based on a combination of glazes that I had used for other projects, each series will be named after the first project to use the selected glaze combinations.

7/26/16: The bisque firing is done.

7/28/16: When doing saggar work, I apply the chemical known as ferric chloride. Since saggar work is not glazed, the ferric chloride helps give the pieces their unique colors. Even though these pieces are part of the same series, for experimental purposes, each of them use different coats of the ferric chloride. From left to right, each piece uses on, two, and three coats. Although I did not mark each piece as to know which one is one, they have a enough of a physical difference for me to know which is which.

7/28/16: I had wanted to get a picture of this since I don't think I ever got this kind of picture before. I almost forgot about it which is why one of the pieces is wrapped up already. On all three of these, I tried to keep the decorations as minimal is as possible. Also, I wanted all three to be as similar as possible so I could get a better judgement of the experiment. On each of them, I used one strand of copper wire, one strand of horse hair, and a little bit of sugar, which is applied by spraying water on the piece. A minimal amount of tape was used to keep the hair and wire in place as much as possible.

7/28/16: These are ready to go but since they were fired late, I would have to wait until the folloing week to know how they turned out. I should mention that the texture of the foil will have an effect of these pieces as much as the copper wire, horse hair, and sugar.

2016 Progress Report: June

First of all, I want to apologize for not having this up much sooner. I had to take my computer in for repair back in July and not having a computer to use for a week held me up a little bit. The July update will hopefully be coming in a few days. Anyway, June was mostly a quiet month. I was doing a lot of leftover work from May. Embarrassingly enough, some of that work still needs to get done. The most interesting this about June is that I started the next generation of work that I plan to have up for sale later this year. Expect to see a lot more on that in the July update.

6/7/16: I am almost finished with this. It just needs felt. This is probably going to be the only ceramic piece I make that will have no felt around the name label. This is because of the unique location of the name label. I don't want to felt to be visible.

6/7/16: One issue that I'm always trying to get around is keeping the molding paste and paint far enough away from the name label. I did okay here but I feel like it could be better.

6/7/16: This was one of the easiest labels to work with because of the small size. Not much molding paste was needed so it didn't take long to dry.

6/7/16: Even though this label was difficult to work with, the moling paste wrk wasn't as bad and the painting was even easier. Spacing between the lettering and molding paste was still an issue though.

6/7/16: This was one of the better labels.

6/7/16: This still needs to be cleaned up some more. Since my labels are laminated now, getting paint on them isn't much of an issue.

6/7/16: Laminating labels has another advantage. I'm able to make text really small because when I eventually apply polymer gloss to give the label and molding paste a little more shine, it will not cause small lettering to fade away.

6/7/16: I'm glad this worked out. This piece almost fell apart becausme of the label placement.

6/7/16: Creating the name label for this one was tricky because of the shape of the piece and how much space I had to work with.

6/21/16: Here are some new decorative pieces that I started that I plan to sell later in the year.

6/28/16: These pieces are based on the saggar piece I made last year titled Self-Realization. That piece was very popular at my show back in May, so I decided to make a series of pices based on it to sell.

2016 Progress Report: May

May was kind of a weird month. The very beginning of the month was beyond stressful. I had to have everything ready for my show and I was running into delays at every turn. I ended up getting everything done just as the reception for the show was starting. Sadly, there aren't any pictures of the show in this post. I hope to discuss my show more in a future post. Anyway, after the show, everything slowed down. The urgency to get work down and the amount of work the needed to get down slowed. Then after that, there was nothing. I took a break for almost the rest of the month. Despite spending half of the month working and half of the month resting, I still managed to get a lot of pictures.

5/1/16: By this point, this is almost finished. There is still some painting work left to be done.

5/3/16: The front side is almost finished. I made the mistake of using open acrylics. I used them because I thought it would be easier for the paint to find it's way into the pores of the textured surface. Unfortunately, this also meant that the surface would take a long time to dry. My progres was delayed by half a day.

5/3/16: About 14 hours after agonizing over the paint that wouldn't dry, we're finally finished here with the polymer gloss work done. The felt around the hooks and on the bump that will touch the wall has been glued on. Usually, the end of a project for me is when hooks and wires are in place. Eternal Light took a little over 2 months to complete.

5/3/16: Like Eternal Light, Mary's Dilemma is also finished. The final paint work, polymer gloss work, felt, and hanging wire is all in place.

5/9/16: This finally got fired. I actually like the saggar pieces I did this year better than the ones I did last year. This still needs polishing at this point.

5/9/16: This one turned out to be my favorite saggar piece. My experiment with the skiiny saggar pieces was a success.

5/9/16: This one is nice too. Unfortunately, the end broke off because it got stuck in the foil that I removed after the firing. I came up with a solution for that later on.

5/10/16: I'm liking how this turned out so far. It was definitely one of the more challenging ceramic pieces I worked on this year.

5/10/16: This was also a somewhat challenging piece to work on. I had to make sure it could stand up without falling over.

5/10/16: While this piece was a little challenging, it was created rather quickly. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. I like it but at the same time, I feel it looks a little too much like the work I was doing back in 2013.

5/10/16: This is ready for a raku firing.

5/10/16: This is also ready for a raku firing.

5/10/16: This is the final piece that is ready for the raku firing.

5/10/16: The first raku firings of the year are complete. This turned out almost perfect.

5/10/16: This turned out to be one of my favortie pieces so far this year.

5/10/16: The glazing turned out better than I thought it would but I still have mixed feelings about this piece.

5/11/16: Three sets based on three glaze combinations I used on projects both this year and last year. Expect these little dish pieces to go on sale later this year.

5/11/16: The glazes look alright. Now I want to see what this glaze combination will look like on some of those dish pieces that I made.

5/11/16: The glazing on this on turned out okay just like the others.

5/11/16: Again, just okay glazes.

5/18/16: I'm starting work on the labeling proces for Forces of Nature. It's a little tricky this time around because of the location of the label. I'm not sure if I'm going to do that again.

5/18/16: The label for The Zen Tree was one of the easier labels to work with.

5/18/16: The Climb also had a somewhat easy label.

5/18/16: This was actually a pain in the ass to deal with I might have done the measurements wrong or something like that.

5/18/16: The Light Molding Paste work begins. This is somewhat tricky because I want it to be presentable but at the same time, I want to keep the molding past out of view if Someone were to look at Forces of Nature while it is standing up. That wouldn't make a lot of sense to some people but it does to me. I know it is there. I want it to be neat. But I don't want you to see it in a show.

5/18/16: The molding paste work on here was easy because there wasn't much to do.

5/18/16: Lost In Confusion's molding paste work was a little more difficult just like placing the label was. I had to enough of it away from the lettering which was a little difficult because of the position of the label.

5/31/16: I took a little break from working on this stuff. I'm back at it. The label for To The Sky fit well enough.

5/31/16: Another small label. Not too hard to work with.

5/31/15: A small label that was alittle difficult to work with. There wasn't a lot of room for it.

5/31/16: I prefer the labels with the simpler titles. They're always easier to work with.

5/31/16: I slightly messed up with the measurements for this label. I think it'll be just fine though.