Colour!

We were chatting in the studio last night about the different ways we record progress. Some of us blog, some of us write old style (with pens), some draw (with pens, pencils,  felt tips, marker pens, paint... collage....), some draw with styluses, some keep the most incredible sketchbook journals which are works of art in themselves - beautifully sketched and painted! Katie's sketchbook is a complete delight - swatches of fabric... feathers, sketch vignettes carefully cut out from 'sketchbook -1 (minus 1)' 😉 and pasted in... photos of  many varieties of birds with detailed studies of their lovely markings - well observed, highly organised... well interpreted...  Just lovely to look through.

As anyone knows, I tend to be quite verbose so I prefer written accounts (with photos) generally.  My hand-written journal is already 123 pages long! I have been trying (as previously mentioned) to do some sketching though too. I'm definitely getting much better at it. I just need to develop a style of collecting together info so as to link my writings, photos and occasional sketches into a narrative that gives some sense of my aims! I'm going to need to do this for the book and the poster very soon! 

I've been AWOL on this blog since 13th October (which is actually The Witch's birthday (or would be if the Witch wasn't dead) and the day before mine. How can that be right? Just shows that astrology is load of rubbish.) so need to have a bit of a catch-up...

First of all, let's talk about colour since Autumn is the right season for that... 

On 3rd November, Wendy and I had a really good glazing session where she introduced me to the use of lustres and we experimented with different techniques for applying engobes. From this session, I produced a diverse set of tests using the spray booth for pretty much everything except the silicon carbide application, which can't go through a spray nozzle because it's too gritty.  Wendy advised that it is always best to spray engobes because they show up brush and dip marks. By the end of the session I had a good range of pieces:

• Engobes and lustres sprayed at an angle so as to catch some areas of the work and leave other areas untouched.
• Oxides and/or engobes and/or lustres applied strongly and then wiped back so as to highlight apertures and cavities.
• Colours applied in gradients - light to dark, dark to light...
• Dry brushed colours.
• Two engobes overlapping and graduated.
• Silicon carbide in parian slip.
• All/any of the above with clear glazes over the top - earthenware or stoneware.

Exciting!

I returned on 10th November with eager anticipation only to hear Mike saying he hoped I'd be pleased with the "happy accident" that had affected my work... My heart sank straight away! Kiln malfunction on the lustre firing! Instead of firing at 700 degrees centigrade, the kiln had been sitting at 1300 degrees for 3 solid days ! Most of my HBM lustre tests were dusty shadows sitting on the kiln shelf - gone gone gone! One piece (the so-called happy accident) was a parian work which had slumped into a soft and twisted organic form - smooth silk to the touch. Worth revisiting, yes, for sure (and I will), but not what I wanted on this occasion.  I find it hard to deal with the randomness of the firings.  I need more control - a kiln of my own ideally!

Anyway, that was just one of the firings. The engobe firing was a big success. In particular one piece really stood out for me:

I am so pleased with this colour combination and the changing tones across the soft angles of the work. That fluorescent green totally hits the spot for me. It's nothing (nothing!!) like anything I was looking for. But now that it's found me, I'm hooked on it! It's provides a very mutable, expressive effect. In my mind, it even has a smell  that goes with it... hot gingerbread...  Yep.

Other tests with the engobes were good too... The copper oxide and white were a little chalky so I re-fired to stoneware temp which smoothed the engobe and dispersed the copper into the slip a little more...

This was before the re-fire - copper ox rubbed back so as to leave only in the apertures and white engobe on top

Varying gradients of blue engobe - copper in the engobe  makes this runnier where application is thicker

Supposed to be red but is more of a maroon colour... It's okay but nothing to get excited about

Gold lustre - need to re-fire with a much stronger application as it is too thin - areas where it is thicker are showing promise

So. As for the happy accident...

I can see why folk like it.  It feels lovely too!
(It's just a bit annoying though as it was a test of a (very different) defined form with silver lustre applied)

Ho hum.

So my thoughts now are: that engobe is not high-firing enough for my needs BUT that I can spray pure slips in the same way...  I have plenty of experience of using pure clay slips on top of bisque.It's just a case of getting the right thicknesses for the particular stain/body.  I need to find out what colour of stain was added to make that amazing green! I will try, also, to develop some sunset, dusk and dawn colours...   reds, yellows fading to and from peachy shades... perhaps even that maroon shade is appropriate in combo with other colours for last light.  Midnight blue and white moonlight... Must have a peak into my Joe Cornish 'First Light' book for some inspiration on this.

These colours, along with shimmery, shiny metals, feel very appropriate for my work as they fit in with the general atmosphere that I want the work to create.  I want it to speak of the particular kind of light that matches a particular time of day or a particular season... 

So, happily I can conclude here that, for the first time in a long time, I feel excited about 'glazing'... this is definitely good progress! (Many thanks once again Wendy!)