End of 3rd Quarter

      I finished glazing my bottles the other day! I'm pretty happy with how they turned out, although I kind of wish I had chosen a different color for the reddish one. I recently got back on the wheel to start my pitcher project. I'm thinking of building it in two parts, so I won't have as hard a time with the amounts of  clay. I've never thrown a piece in two parts, so this will be a learning experience. 

       The only piece I have hanging is my lantern. I've started glazing it, but I was having difficulties with the glaze. I'm glazing it with different variations of True Celadon. Each wall is a different color, depending on the animal it portrays. I had a hard time keeping the glaze on only the wall it belonged on when I was dipping them, so now I'm going to try brushing on the glazes. Today's goal is to finish glazing the lantern. 

      I really liked the lantern project! I guess I was feeling inspired or something when I started it... I usually get tired of hand building pretty quickly, but this time, I felt good about it the whole way through. 

March Update

I've done a lot of stuff over the past months! There was an accident with my violin teapot/ wall hanging piece. We are going to work on gluing it back together so that I can glaze it, hopefully soon. Right after I finished my tea pot, I started with my bottles. I remember finding the bottles pretty easy once I got back into the swing of the wheel. I originally planned to sgraffito more of them, but I was short on time since my violin took me so long. I've glazed only one of them completely. The other three still need to be glazed. I will probably try to do that today, after I finish my lantern.

Now, I have to finish my lantern. It will definitely go to the kiln today, I just have to clean it up and smooth it a little more on the inside. This lantern is my pride and joy... It forced me to go home and work on designs instead of just winging it when I got to class. Each of the five faces of the lantern has a carving of a vertebrate animal. I had an especially difficult time with the frog, but he ended up alright. Frog legs have the weirdest structure I have ever seen.

On a different note, my hand buit vase with the green sgraffito flower is going to be displayed at Cityspace today. I'm really glad I made it in time. Hopefully, I'll be able to go down town with it and stand by it for a little while during the art show.

Hand Built Teapot

            In this project, I rolled more slabs than I ever have before. I learned how to hollow out solid pieces with the trimming tool. At one point I forgot to place a support inside the violin's body, and that was almost catastrophic, so I learned to improvise and figure out a way to place little support beams in. I have orchestra every day before ceramics, so the music in my head inspired me to create a teapot based on the instrument I play. The principle of design most shown my work would probably be Unity. I'm hoping that when I put the pieces together, they'll look like they belong there. 
            As you can see, I'm not done with this project yet. I still have to attach the pieces and make a bridge and some sort of support for the teapot to stand on it's side. I have not glazed my two complementing vases either, but right now the viola is my priority.

Glazing

For this piece, I used the green velvet underglaze, and scratched away my design. I then applied some of the purple underglaze, and mixed my own variation of light purple to accent the flower petals. After doing this on the lip of the vase, I decided to mix a lighter green underglaze to accent the leaves, too. Once it came out of the kiln, I applied Transparent to make it smooth and shiny.

Sgraffito

           Sgraffito is a super cool glazing and designing technique, where the glaze is applied before firing the pot, and the design is later scratched off the suface of the pot. I really enjoyed this process, and I'm looking forward to using this technique again. It was pretty nerve-racking in the beginning, but I think that'll happen to me every time I have to carve the design onto the clay. If I could do anything differently, it might be to practice with all the different tools before I actually start on the piece. All in all, I'm really happy about how it turned out. 

 This Sgraffito wall art thing is awesome! 

I missed you too, Mrs. Gleeson!

      Ah, Mrs. Gleeson! I did so many things this summer! Everything is a little hard to believe, but I went to both Disney world and traveled around Europe. My cousins and my uncle and aunt came up from Argentina for two weeks and we all went to Disney. Since they're so little, dragged my parents on all the roller coasters with me. The kids would get tired quickly, too, so in the end, I was the only one that wanted to stay in the parks for longer, while everyone else was ready to go back to the hotel and to the pool. Okay and then the coolest part;  I freaking TOURED EUROPE with a MUSIC GROUP. Jeez, I'm stil not quite sure if that was all real. We mades stops in Austria, Germany, Italy, Croatia, and Slovenia. Everything over there is so old... yet beautiful. There's little colorful houses with red shingled roofs, the mountains are green everywhere,  and their water good enough to drink. Croatia really surprised us; we spent three days at a beach, swimming in the crystal waters of the Mediterranean Sea. 

      In short, my summer was spectacular. As for books, I read a couple of John Green books I hadn't read before, but I can't think of anything really awesome. If you haven't read The Book Thief, you definitely should. 

      I just really wan to get on the wheel and see what happens! And I promised my mom a pitcher at some point this year. 

• Title your blog post:  "I miss you too, Mrs. Gleeson!"
• Write about one thing that happened to you over the summer (good, bad, exciting).
• Any cool links I should know about?  Good books, movies, music?
• Do you have any ideas for a project that we can do?

Third Quarter Post

   
   This month, I've been working on my candle holder. It is important to take your work off of the wooden boards when the project starts drying out. The wood board takes in the moisture and might make your piece bone dry if you wait too long. With this project, I focused on Unity and Balance and Texture. From this project, I learned that it is much easier to come into a project with design ideas ready, than to try to invent things on the spot. Some stencils are easier to use than others, and the roller designs are difficult to keep straight.
      The roller wasn't as hard to use as I thought. I also learned that it is important to cut the clay AFTER using a large design on it so that the sizes are all the same. It is better to quadruple check in the beginning than have to make up for it in the end. I would have probably liked if I could have finished this project faster, but that is more of a personal problem. It would also be nice to have a mini-lesson on accents and how to use the expensive glazes.