Ceramics 2

The "clay notebooks" we marked and painted with slip last week were fired during the week. I used white, red, and black slip. This morning's task was to add underglaze colours, and glazes, on the one that would be fired at earthenware temperature, and oxides and glazes on the one that would be fired at stoneware temperature. The range of colours, rather earthy - impossible to try them all. I used just grey. In the background, some luscious bright colours - off limits! - to tempt us to carry on with ceramics next term (we have to choose just two options).

The stoneware plaque on the left has some unglazed areas - I kinda ran out of time and had to slop it on - well it's all an experiment! The white crust hides nickel oxide, iron oxide, and ilmenite (coarse). The earthenware plaque on the right has some wax crayon to act as resist - the colour will burn away. And a shiny clear glaze will appear...

In the afternoon, mass and volume - starting by shaping a block of clay into a sphere. Or, as many approximations of a sphere as there were blocks of clay -

Following a sequence of directions, we added lines, then gouged out areas - can't remember if there was an instruction to add marks, but they seemed essential -Next week we'll be cutting this up into five pieces (why five?) and making something new with those, and taking out more volumes...