This week I put the decals on all my plates. There are a total of 9 plates. I put illustrations of flowers on each one and my logo on the bottom. We also loaded up a cone 018 to fire these babies along with Carly’s China paint pieces. Excited to see how they come out!
This week I pumped out the final three pugs before wet ware cut off. I finished unipug, ladypug, and pugalope. Now I need to let them dry out so I can get them bisque fired.Once they are out of the bisque, I will start developing patterns for their bodies for me to sew.
This week I created two pugs. These pugs will be pugasus and pugasaurus. I plan on making five pugs total: ladypug, pugalope, unipug, pugasaurus, and pugasus. I made all the legs for each dog, 20. And all the tails, 5. I also made the wings for pugasus and the spikes for pugasaurus.
Let’s begin with the good news… So my decals for my plates came in the mail this week and they are beautiful! The only thing that I didn’t expect is the words on each flower is smaller than anticipated, but I still love it.
The bad news is.. I’m an idiot. Ha! I made the mistake of pouring my press mold mix over my bisque ware… And it are all my pug pieces. All the moisture from the mix absorbed into the bisque ware and created a super strong adhesive and the pieces are lost forever… (Sorry, I didn’t take a picture.. I was very frustrated at the time and threw it all out before taking a picture.)
So back to the drawing board. Next week I will begin working on creating all the different pugs individually rather than creating a mold. It will be a slower process but I don’t trust molds quite yet..
This week my plates and my bowl came out of the kiln. I love the look of the clear glaze on my clay today for my plates because you can see the speckles in the clay. I was also surprised to see that the cone 10 mystery glaze came out looking the same as the test tile. It is beautiful! The pattern reminds me of a Van Gogh painting.My pug pieces are going through the bisque now and once they are out I can begin my press mold.
This week I finished making all the parts of a pugasus. I made a tail and wings that will be glued in place on the fabric. Once they have set up a little bit, I will clean up the fur texture on each piece.
I also finally got around to glazing my plates from the previous project. I put a layer of clear cone 6 glaze on them. These will eventually get the transfer decal of my plant illustrations. I also glazed an extra bowl I had sitting around. I decided to try out one of our mystery glazes, which consists of a bunch of test glazes mixed together. This bowl is cone 10.
This week we continued working on our final project. I completed the legs and added the fur texture to the sculptural pieces. Now I just need to create the tail and wings so I can get them bisqued and move on to creating molds.
Also this week, Lindsay Oesteritter came by IUS for a workshop. She demoed throwing on the wheel, adding rims, and pulling handles. It was nice to get her perspective on how to balance life with art making.
This week we got our triaxials blends out of the kiln. Once again, not what I was expecting, but I think there are a few nice colors that came out.
I also have made progress on my final project for the semester, which is the pug dolls. I am working on creating a mask that I will try to create a mold from so that I can make multiples quickly. As a reminder, I will be creating pug doll characters such as pugasus, lady pug, and pugasaurus.
This week we have been hard at work making glaze blends. We got some of our line blends out of the kiln. I was a little disappointed in mine just because it did not turn out the way I was expecting, but there are a few of the lighter ones that I enjoy.
We also began our triaxials. I finished mine and it is ready to be fired. Super excited to see the results.
This week we began working on our glaze tests. We put together some fusion tests to observe how different materials react in the kiln. Then we also made lots of stand up test tiles that we are using for line blends and a triaxial blend.
I decided to make a line blend of John’s Satin 2 RIO with an increasing increment of red iron oxide.
Felicia Hill 