2018 Progress Report: November-Part 3

During this week in November, I worked on one drawing and did molding paste work on two other pieces. Fiber paste work was also done during the week. It was getting to the point where the show was right around the corner and despite how fast work was getting work done, I always felt like there simply wasn't enough time. No matter how much I had achieved, there was always a lot more left to do. There were also things that would go wrong at the worst possible time such as having a glue gun break and finding out I made a huge mistake with one of the projects.

That's all I have for right now. Hopefully, I'll have Part 4 out soon. Feel free to ask questions and leave comments. Also, share this post with anyone who might be interested. If you want to support me and my projects, you can donate to my Patreon or buy buttons from my Etsy store.

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11/18/18: The name label is in place.

11/18/18: I started doing the canvas work.

11/19/18: The canvas work is complete.

11/19/18: The gesso work is complete.

11/20/18: The Molding Paste work is complete.

11/20/18: Molding paste work is complete.

11/21/18: My self-portrait drawing is mostly done at this point. I really messed up on one of the eyes but I didn't bother fixing it since I knew that eye was going to be covered up later on. You can probably guess which eye is messed up.

11/21/18: I started doing the fiber paste work on the bottom half of the the sides. 

11/21/18: I started doing the fiber paste work on the bottom half of the sides. It was a little tricky with this one.

11/23/18: Fiber paste work on the top half of the sides and inner parts. This took longer than I had anticipated.

11/23/18: The drawing is pretty much complete.

11/23/18: The drawing is now integrated with the ceramic part, though I am about to find out that I made a huge mistake on the back. I hinted at this mistake in past posts and I will explain it more in the next post.

2018 Progress Report: November-Part 2

During this week in November, I focused my attention on two projects. I was working on the drawing for one while I was working on the back for the other. My projects were quickly coming along though was still a lot of work left to be done. By the time the next week would arrive, I would continue working on the two projects below in addition to a third project.

That's all I have for right now. Hopefully, I'll have Part 3 out soon. Feel free to ask questions and leave comments. Also, share this post with anyone who might be interested. If you want to support me and my projects, you can donate to my Patreon or buy buttons from my Etsy store.

https://www.patreon.com/Jon_Erich

https://www.etsy.com/shop/Jonerich

11/14/18: At the time of this picture, this drawing was close to being finished. Even though I started it several weeks earlier, when I finally got around to putting some serious work into it, it didn't take long to finish.

11/14/18: I finally have a laminated label down and have started the canvas work. 

11/14/18: The canvas work has been completed.

11/15/18: The gesso work has been completed.

11/15/18: The drawing is all but completed. Additional darkened areas were added in order to surround the ceramic piece that will be placed on top of the drawing.

11/15/18: The ceramic piece has been glued down.

2018 Progress Report: November Part-1

Since the start of November, I had been transitioning from working on ceramics to working on drawings. This is simply the next step in the process of getting these projects done. Normally, I would like to have the drawings done before anything else but that just didn't happen. By the time the end of November comes, another transition will take place from drawing to acrylic mediums and paint.

That's all I have for right now. Hopefully, I'll have Part 2 out soon. Feel free to ask questions and leave comments. Also, share this post with anyone who might be interested. If you want to support me and my projects, you can donate to my Patreon or buy buttons from my Etsy store.

https://www.patreon.com/Jon_Erich

https://www.etsy.com/shop/Jonerich

11/5/18: This is the last ceramic piece that needs to be worked on.

11/5/18: I'm trying to apply a few different glazes in order to get a variety of results. 

11/6/18: The firing was a success. These pieces are looking pretty good.

11/6/18: I still have a long ways to go with this drawing though it is starting to look presentable.

11/7/18: I think the drawing was pretty much finished at this point. It just needs a coat of gloss fixative which will happen later.

11/8/18: Gloss fixative had been applied, though I wish I hadn't done that since the fixative wraps the drawing and makes it harder to glue down on foam board. I did it mostly out of curiosity and that was a mistake.

11/8/18: It's starting to come together, finally.

2018 Progress Report: October-Part 5

The last week of October saw a change in my weekly work schedule. Around this time, wet clay work had stopped and would not be continued for the remainder of the year. I got back into drawing. Glazing work continued while I also made preparations for a Halloween photo shoot. During November, I would end up shifting away from firing clay and focus more on drawing and other mixed media work.

That's all I have for right now. Feel free to ask questions and leave comments. Also, share this post with anyone who might be interested. If you want to support me and my projects, you can donate to my Patreon or buy buttons from my Etsy store.

https://www.patreon.com/Jon_Erich
https://www.etsy.com/shop/Jonerich

10/30/18: I'm making sure all the pieces fit after the bisque firing.

10/30/18: This is basically the same as the first picture but from a different angle.

10/30/18: Here's yet another angle of the previous two pictures. With this particular project, the pieces can only stick on if they're glued on. Also, there's one piece missing. That's because it had to be fired separately due to the kiln being too full.

10/30/18: There was a lot of glazing that had to be done this week.

10/31/18: During the early morning of Halloween, I finished carving my turnips that I would use for a photoshoot later in the day.

10/31/18: I was working on this drawing. The proportions are still messed up, though I at least got an idea of what the general composition would be like. I should have been more careful when starting this drawing for reasons that I'll explain in a future post.

10/31/18: I started on yet another drawing. This is bed on a digital photo project I did back in 2006 called Jon-Erich's Eyes.

2018 Progress Report: October-Part 4

During the 4th week of October, I focused entirely on getting firings and wet clay work done, though I wish had gotten some more drawing done that week. I worked on three projects that had varying degrees of progress, at least in the studio. Although I don't have pictures of it in progress, I also spent the later half of October doing photography work outdoors to prepare for some digital projects, which was probably part of the reason I didn't any drawing work during the week.

That's all I have for right now. I'm trying to catch up on my posts and hopefully part 5 will be posted soon. Feel free to ask questions and leave comments. Also, share this post with anyone who might be interested. If you want to support me and my projects, you can donate to my Patreon or buy buttons from my Etsy store.

https://www.patreon.com/Jon_Erich

https://www.etsy.com/shop/Jonerich

10/22/18: This piece finally got fired. Because of its size (at least 25" on its wide side), it took a while before there was enough room in the kiln to have this fired.

10/22/18: I finished glazing this piece. I'm trying to do an experiment with putting splotches of glazes down to see if it makes a big difference.

10/23/18: More P13 raku firings were done. the firings look pretty good, I think.

10/23/18: The raku firing for this piece got done. I learned a great deal from firing this piece. Even though I'm using a lot of the same glaze combinations on these pieces, I sometimes get metallic yellow on parts of a ceramic piece and I was never sure why. This piece may have answered that question. We had to put this piece in a separate trash can and the side that stuck out at the top turned yellow. We suspected that it was the rising smoke that caused the yellowing effect, which looks interesting.

10/23/18: I'm continuing work on this. It is surprisingly complex. There are a lot of pieces here.

10/24/18: In total, there are 20 small clay pieces that will eventually need to be glued onto the canvas.

2018 Progress Report: October-Part 3

During this week in October, I continued doing wet clay work and firings. I also finally got around to working on drawings again. While there weren't that many pictures taken during this week, a lot of progress was still made. To be honest though, it was around this time that I started falling behind schedule since the drawings were originally supposed to have been worked on earlier in October. Over the next few weeks, we'll see this weird pattern of projects jumping ahead of schedule only to immediately fall way behind schedule. This is the nature of mixed media work, where there are many components to a project instead of just drawing or sculpting.

That's all I have for right now. I'm trying to catch up on my posts and hopefully part 4 will be posted soon. Feel free to ask questions and leave comments. Also, share this post with anyone who might be interested. If you want to support me and my projects, you can donate to my Patreon or buy buttons from my Etsy store.

https://www.patreon.com/Jon_Erich

https://www.etsy.com/shop/Jonerich

10/15/18: The bisque firings are finished. I even fired the smaller broken pieces, though I think one of them would end up going missing later.

10/15/18: The glazing has been done.

10/15/18: What is interesting about the pieces for the P13 project is that even though they use the same combination of glazes, the glazes are applied differently with each set that I make and because of the volatile nature of raku firings, each set will look different then the last. When I eventually attach all these piece to the P13 project, I'll have to work with various acrylic mediums to give each piece a sense of continuity.

10/16/18: While I normally like to leave each piece on the canvas until they dry, that didn't work with this one. The clay pieces kept falling off.

10/17/18: I finally started making progress with this drawing. This eye will eventually go on to be my best eye drawing yet.

10/17/18: I finally resumed work on this project. As of the time of this picture being taken, I got most of the proportions down. Ironically, even though this was the first project I started in 2018, it would be the last projector 2018 that I would finish.

2018 Progress Report: October-Part 2

The second week of October was much like the first week. A variety of work was being done in a very short period of time. I managed to get ahold of one ceramic piece that was bisque fired and made sure it could still fit on the canvas I designed for it. I glazed more pieces, did more wet work and gessoed a few canvases The next week would involve the continued cycle of building, firing, glazing and firing again in addition to some progress made with the drawings.

That's all I have for right now. Feel free to ask questions and leave comments. Also, share this post with anyone who might be interested. If you want to support me and my projects, you can donate to my Patreon or buy buttons from my Etsy store.

https://www.patreon.com/Jon_Erich
https://www.etsy.com/shop/Jonerich

10/8/18: This was another ceramic piece for P13 that was bisque fired. I'll continue to do this with each piece to make sure they fit.

10/8/18: Glaze work for the P13 parts are done. 

10/9/18: More P13 parts are being made. Keeping the clay in large pieces has its challenges such as making sure the clay doesn't fall apart, but I wanted to make the pieces that way so they would require less fiber paste to conceal the gaps between the pieces. The corner pieces has to be somewhat small since it would have been too challenging to create single pieces that wrap around corners while making sure nothing falls apart and that it doesn't shrink too much after the pieces have been fired.

10/9/18: Here's another angle of P13. This looks so simple yet it has been anything but that. Not only do I have to design these pieces, but I still have to take them off when they're not completely dry so I can put a number on the inside of them in order to identify each one and then reattach it to the canvas until it dries. That is also why you see marker lines and numbers all over the canvas.

10/9/18:Here's a unique center piece. I don't have to identify this one through numbers since it is completely different from everything else.

10/10/18: I finally complete the canvas work on the sides of P14.

10/10/18: P14 from another angle. 

10/10/18: I glued down some chicken wire. I would eventually regret the placement of these pieces for reasons which will be explained in a future post.

10/10/18: More chicken wire work has been done. Looking back at it now, I wish I had made the hump at the bottom wider in order to balance the better on the wall.

10/11/18: Gesso work is done on the front.

10/11/18: Gesso work is done on the back.

10/11/18: Gesso work is done on the front.

10/11/18: Gesso work is done on the back.