Just keep on throwing

I've admittedly been doing a lot more throwing than printmaking during the last year or so, and especially within the last few months. I started off the year strong in terms of prints, but the wheel kept calling me back. With such a great clay studio on hand, and only an average intaglio press in the classroom next door, it's not a hard decision to make. Wherever you are, you have to take advantage of the equipment and facilities you have, so during my time off I tend to find at the wheel rather than at the printing press. 

Here are some more new clay pieces: 

Lately I've been trying out different glazing techniques, since my throwing is decent enough now to throw some fairly balanced pieces. I'm still not overly attached to them though, so I have the freedom to experiment on them. If something doesn't work, I'll just throw a new one and try a different approach.

You've seen this glaze before. It's celadon over some concept painting, but in my previous batch I'd used it on ocher clay, giving the color a more tan appearance. This time I used it on white clay, resulting in a more characteristically green appearance. 

This cup was dipped in two glazes: variegated blue and freckles. The olive triangle you see in the middle is the area where the two glazes overlapped during the dipping process. I've used this combination before, but I like the pairing and it tends to be reliable, so it's good to use when I want consistent results.

This bowl was an experiment. The white stripes you see are the raw clay itself, no glazing. Before dipping the bowl in the black glaze, I painted lines with wax resist across the surface. Essentially I wanted to see whether they could sufficiently resist the glaze, which would be good to know for future patterns and so forth. Long story short, they did, and given the next project I have in mind, I was especially pleased with the result.

There's more to the story behind this bowl and what inspired it, but I'll save that for another post.