Final Week!

I can't believe it's the final week of my entire degree. I still have so much to do! I have about 7 pieces in the bisque kiln, due out on Monday, and another 8 or so waiting for final surface decoration and re-firing.

I feel I have finally developed a style, and found that I can repeat the same texture on a different piece now without worrying too much about which tool I used and trying to remember how I did it.

Forms and molds

 So I made a boat shaped plaster mold. It is about 20 inches in length.














Once the clay had been pressed in and allowed to dry enough to keep its shape, I refined it and carved texture into it.

 Closer view of the pre-fired piece. After bisque firing, I added cobalt oxide and sprayed engobes in 2 different colours, from different angles, so that you get a varying effect when you look at the piece from different angles. A bit like the sun reflecting off the ripples on the beach, or shadows creating a differing effect.

This was another large bowl I made, in fact it was the first large piece, being about 24 inches in diameter. This was also sprayed with engobe from different angles to create that 2-tone effect.

Next step

After the tiles, I tried out a range of different textures, but at this stage I had no idea about form and was mostly just making bowl shaped small things. I knew I wanted to go bigger, but wasn't sure how!

The beginning of 3rd year

  




These are some textured tiles sprayed with engobe, I really liked this effect and it inspired me to have a go myself and make some test tiles, adding different textures, and then using engobes which I hadn't used before.

Gearing up..

My original idea for my final degree work was to make a range of pieces which would represent the essence of the place I come from and live, Formby.

Formby is on the coast and is known for its sandy beach, backed by sand dunes and pinewoods, and has a rare red squirrel population which makes it quite a unique area to live in.

I am lucky to be living within a few minutes walk of this wealth of natural beauty and have always enjoyed making the most of the fresh air, and seeing the effect of the changing seasons on the landscape.

As a child, I remember long summer days spent running up and down sand dunes, climbing the knarled, twisted pine trees, getting scratched on marram grass, picking blackberries and if you were very lucky, getting a squirrel to take a nut from your hand!

In Winter, the frost would make beautiful patterns on the sand, and on the rare occasion that there was a real freeze (rare as we have a microclimate which means Formby sees little snow, even when the rest of the country is covered) we went ice-skating on the frozen lake. Probably unwise of our teachers at the time!