adult education ceramics course
I have had a love of and interest in ceramics/pottery for a long time, going to exhibitions and fairs and following artists who I like.
I fell in love with making things from clay when I was in sixth from college, but I did not continue with it after starting my art degree and career in illustration. I spent many years making objects from papier mache, but I am now having some fun with clay at an adult education class and I am just seeing where it takes me.
A small pot with a simple sgraffito design of a hare - one of two hares.
A small pot with a simple sgraffito design of a hare - the other of the two hares.
bisque-fired berry drainer bowl before glazing.
An experimental pot for wet and dry Mishima.
An experimental pot for wet and dry Mishima.
bisque-fired sgraffito pots with black slip inlay
Shell we dance sgraffito ceramic pot
Just do anything bowl. Stuck for inspiration in the pottery lesson, I just did anything! Dolomite on the inside, transparent glaze on the inlay illustration on the outside.
A small bowl with dolomite inside, which is silky smooth, and Jackie's rutile on the outside and rim.
This pot was an experiment, using inlay and carving. I didn't really like the glossy transparent glaze on this, I think it looks too much like plastic.
Inside the bowl with crenellated towers. Quick drawn/scratched lines like pen and ink.
Leather hard stage of the Crenellated tower pot, I like the effect at this stage. Alas, it could not last.
Illustrated ceramic toothbrush pot using the Mishima/inlay method of carving sgraffito lines into leather hard clay, adding a layer of black slip and then scraping back to leave the black slip only in the lines. It is a bit like a printing technique.
Three views of the hare toothbrush pot.
Illustrated waterlily and frog ceramic pot. Using the technique of applying wax emulsion to a leather hard pot, scraping back areas of the wax and then painting black underglaze over which only sticks to the areas without wax.
A bowl I made on the wheel with copper blush glaze with a rutile glaze dripping down the inner and outer edge.
Lovely dripping effects with the rutile glaze over the copper blush.
Small thrown bowl. Rutile glaze over blue celadon glaze.
Bowl thrown on the wheel with midnight blue glaze and a rutile glaze dripping down, it looks like the sea to me.
Two tree hares glazed with a rutile glaze over regular stoneware glaze. These inspired me to see how they would work on bowls. I love this effect.
My two original 'Tree Hares', made intuitively and quite expressive of my mood after a bad day at work! I added a fun word play poem some time later.
I have made about 15 of these, mainly to experiment with glazes and also mainly for fun.
I have made a selection of ink wells, initially for my use but I have some for sale in my shop. I wanted small ink wells for when I do my inktober drawings. I used a techinque of putting black slip into scratched sgraffito lines which I then rubbed off.
Small ink pallettes for water colour or ink washes.
I call these 'Steam Punk Fish' as I added various parts with shrink fins and metallic embellishments.
Simple white stars with a tin white glaze.
I have strung these together to make strings of fairy lights.
This is Arthur. He is a 2 part sculpture of a friend's tortoise. The shell comes off.
Coasters, painted with underglaze on white slip, bisque-fired buff clay. The top picture is before firing: they were over-fired making a lot of the detail burn off.
Small bowl, one of the first two ceramic items made on the wheel. White tin glaze and blue celadon.
My first thrown bowl and a slab built mug with the texture of a circuit board from my old apple Mac.
A ceramic potato waffle.
A terracotta pot made quickly to experiment with texture and glaze.
This is the first thing I made, a coil pot. I put it on the wrong shelf for firing so a lot of the glazes I had applied are not as I had planned, but still resembles a hydro thermal vent which was what I was aiming for!