The Bard is a Wolf

Should a wolf be cute?  Should a bard be cute?  I don't know, but I think this one is.

So here's yet another new piece of clay sculpture.  In other words, another new project to add to my ever-growing collection of the Unfinished!

But the good news is that I think I'll be happy with him.

Actually, I applied the glaze to three small pieces today and will fire them tonight.  So tomorrow I should have something finished to post.

Squirrel Shaman

There are a lot of unfinished projects in the form of greenware and bisque building up around here.  That's because the past three weeks have been difficult and sad.  My dear cat, Starbuck, who is only 6 years old, is dying of liver and pancreatic cancer.  Of course he is my number one priority, but I do take time to do some art and I always seem to choose working with clay.  My sister, who is an MFT, says that clay is the most comforting medium to work with and I guess I'd have to say that that's true.

A few days ago I made this little squirrel shaman.  His cloak is imprinted with leaves and sculpted leaves form the epaulettes and stand-up collar.  I've poked a few holes in the cloak for beading later.  And his left paw is curled so he can hold a staff.  He's just under 6" tall.  The time I spend working on him was a welcome respite from sorrow.

Moon and Stars Bear

 

I just finished sculpting this "moon and stars" bear.  The new thing I'm trying here is combining two different types of clay in the same piece.  The bear is made from Speckled Brown stoneware from clay-king.com while the moon and starts are made from a white stoneware.  The shrinkage rates are approximately the same and they fire at the same temperatures.  I don't think the difference in the shrinkage rates will be a problem on a piece this small (she's about 7" long) but we'll see.

 

This bear is hollow.  I began by sculpting the head from a solid piece (except for the ears and nose which are attached) and then I hollowed it out from the neck with a wire sculpting tool.  Next I made the body from a rolled out sheet of clay, leaving an opening at the rear.  I sculpted each of the legs from solid pieces then hollowed them out from the top and attached them to the body.  To finish the assembly, I covered the hole at the rear, added the tail, and poked holes on the upper insides of each of the legs and on the bottom of the body to allow for air expansion.  I then added more clay wherever I thought I needed it and fine-tuned the sculpting.

 

For texture, I covered the whole piece - except for the muzzle which I want to be relatively smooth - with slip and when it had dried slightly I tapped it all over with my fingertip to raise tiny peaks, like with frosting.  I'm not sure yet whether I'm going to texture the fur with individual strokes.   



A Minor Diversion

I liked the center top motif of my large bear mosaic so much that I thought I'd make a small wall piece with just that single theme.  So here it is, ready for drying.

I'd added two more stars as well as incised embellishment to the crown and "wings" of leaves at her sides.  She also has a little leaf platform to stand on.

One feature that I particularly like is the torn edge.  Surprisingly, clay is difficult to tear!

A Bear Mosaic

 

This photo is not too good, but perhaps you get the idea.  This will be a ceramic mosaic with a bear theme. In this picture, the greenware is drying.  Before I cut it apart, it was 12" wide and 20" tall .  Of course it will shrink, maybe about 12%.

 

I got the idea because I was thinking about how to make bigger pieces without either investing in a new kiln or taking the pieces out for firing.  One solution - at least for flat-ish wall pieces - seemed to be to construct bigger pieces out of smaller ones.  Hence, a mosaic or collage.  In further developments of this idea, it might be interesting to plan a piece so that the cuts formed a meaningful design in themselves.

 

The theme of this one is bears.  I especially liked adding the words with alphabet rubber stamps.  The top bear's label is "the priestess wears the starry crown."  The three bears in a row underneath the priestess are labeled "the bears go up the mountain to the ceremony."  The little bear at the lower left is "the dreamer dreams."  The bear in the middle at the right is "the hermit ponders."  And the big bear is "the elder keeps the key to all wisdom."

A Fairy Garden Update

 

 

I've done some more work on my fairy garden, so I thought an update would be in order.  Here in the original garden I added a few pieces.  In front of the house to the left is a little bird bath with a black bird in it.  To the right is a gazing ball.  The stand is ceramic while the ball itself is a marble.  But the more complicated piece that I made and added is in the far left, in the "shadow" of the violets - a gazebo.  This little piece is a rustic style.  It has six "posts" which are sculpted to look like branches.  The roof is glazed the same color as the house roof, and the "tiles" are the same style.  But to carry out the rustic style, I added a little leaf at the peak.

 

But, still, I hadn't had enough!  So I built another 14" x 24" box - the fairy garden extension.

The garden clearly needed a water feature, so here it is, still in progress.  I've sunk an oval pyrex baking dish for the pond and added some luscious mossy rocks that I found by the stream on my property.  The weird construction of flower pots will house the pump with the tube going up through the saucer with the water spilling over the edge. The terracotta pots were surprisingly easy to drill holes through with a masonry bit.  Then I found that I could enlarge the hole with a round wood rasp to just the size I needed for the water tube.  I placed tiny pebbles and larger rocks in the bottom of the "pond," and eventually the ground cover should come right to the edge and effectively cover the glass rim of the dish.

The terracotta pots are a bit unsightly, but I'm hoping to encourage moss to cover them - we'll see.

The little building is another of my stoneware creations.  It was originally intended to be an artist's studio.  The banner over the door says "MAGICK HAPPENS HERE."  I also made the tiny bench in front of the building.  There's a window box below the side window.  I was careful to put holes in the bottom of it for drainage and I'm hoping I can find a plant tiny enough to grow in it - perhaps baby tears.  By the way, to the left, directly below the violet leaf, is a little stoneware lantern on a copper wire "shepherd's hook" holder.

This project has been so fun and satisfying, and I expect the day to day maintenance to continue to be a joy.  I so enjoyed making the little houses that I made one for my sister and two to put in my Etsy shop once I finally get around to taking the photos.

A Druid Owl

 

The little Druid Owl that I sculpted a few weeks ago is now nearly finished.  I don't know if there were any female druids, but I think of her as a she - named Alana. 

 

As always in my (so far) brief glazing career, it was a challenge.  The hard part is imagining what the colors will become once they're fired and then keeping track of what you put where, especially since so many of the unfired colors are so similar to each other.  For example, the black and one of the buffs are both nearly the same color of red.  And, of course, a mix-up of those two colors would be a real problem!

 

I tried to detail the eyes with glaze but it didn't work out as well as I had hoped, so I painted over the glaze in the eyes with acrylic paint, and then added two coats of gloss acrylic varnish over the paint so that its finish would fit with the glaze on the rest of the piece.

 

I really like the glaze on the Celtic knot on her chest.  Although it's a low-fire glaze, it has the look of a sroneware glaze.  I'll have to find out what it is and update this post with that information.

 

I consider myself a pretty good painter, so when I approached the task of glazing I told myself that I would have to develop a different "painting" style for ceramics.  This piece represents a success for me, so I think I'm on my way.

 

When I began this post I was thinking that this owl was finished.  But then I remembered I had one more step in mind.  I think you'll find it surprising, so stay tuned!