how-to

Photo-Doodle:
What can you find in these tree branches?

Here in Austria there’s a game kids play when they have no toys at hand:
“Ich sehe was, was du nicht siehst (was ihr nicht seht) und das ist..”
Which means:” I see, I see, what you can’t see, and that is…”
Right then, one of the kids complete the sentence with a color of an object near them that the other players don’t know about. They all start naming objects until one of them guesses, and then it’s the winner’s time to make others guess.

I want to play a game with you, but instead of saying a color, I will give you a picture. Let’s see what we all come up with.

I took the picture above on an autumn night two days ago. You can see the moon coming out at the bottom left of the tree trunk (click on it for a bigger image).

Ceramic illustrations and color

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After taking my ceramic illustrations out of the kiln after their first firing (The process of my ceramic illustrations), I’m always eager to get hands on with the color part of the ceramic process.

For this group of small pieces of art I first washed them in a dark brown oxide which I then rubbed off so that the etched lines would remain dark and the rest of the ceramic canvas would stay light enough to add color.

Afterwards I painted the ceramic illustrations with underglazes. The process now is very much like a painter would produce his paintings, only that I use colors that will have to burn in order to see the final results.

I then finish some of the art pieces with a matt or glossy transparent glaze and fire them for a second time. Some other ceramic illustrations are fired for the second time without glazing. These last ones are painted afterwards with different colored glazes and are fired again for the third time.

It is real fun to mix and experiment with colors- oxides, underglazes, glazes, slips- without really accurately predicting what will actually come out of these ceramic illustrations; you can only predict after you’ve experimented an tested enough to know. Dark blue and green glazes are rose colored before firing, turquoise is grey and effect-colors are nothing compared to their looks after being fired.

There’s always this great feeling of expectation at the moment of opening the kiln which I share with the rest of the family.

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The process of my ceramic illustrations

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I’ve combined my two passions –illustration and ceramics. These “paintings” are directly burnt onto their ceramic frames and will be ready to hang with a nail on the wall. Each one of these ceramic illustrations is hand-drawn and unique.

I just opened the kiln to take a peek at them; they’re still so hot I can’t get them out yet.
They make me smile when I see them; I hope they do the same for you once they’re ready.

Making these illustrations on clay is time-consuming, but I love it. Some ceramists call this etching, I always say I’m carving (even though I know it’s wrong), but regardless of which terms to use this is how it goes:

First I build my clay “canvas”
I wait a while until the clay dries a bit and gets leather hard
Then I draw -etch – my motive with a sharp instrument (like in the picture above), generally I use wooden picks
After this I have to wait until it dries really well before I make the first firing.

This is what I have until now. The next step in order to finish my ceramic illustrations is the coloring and glazing before I burn them again in the kiln.

Stay tuned for the finished objects!
(2009-11-2, you can find them here: “Ceramic Illustrations and color”)