Odds n' Ends

You've probably noticed that I haven't been showing much pottery here lately. I admittedly haven't been throwing much due to other happenings keeping me busy, but I'll get back to the wheel in earnest at some point. In the meantime,  I've been making a point of glazing some pieces that I've been neglecting for some time, and finally getting myself caught up on finishing projects. Let's take a look:

Naturally there were plenty of unfinished dinosaur pieces, which constituted the majority of my pieces. Some of these works were specific requests for friends, but most of them were made for the sake of practice.

Rather than just dip them all in floating blue, I've been experimenting with other color combinations. Some were dipped in floating blue and black, while others were glazes with Miranda blue.

For other dinosaur pieces, I started adding the abstract lines I used in my Iberville shale pieces, which I think looks quite well with the fossil pieces. Both are inspired by natural history, after all, and is probably something I'll explore more deeply in future pieces.

I also had some unfinished teabowls. I used a light green for this one, which allowed the textures I had drawn in earlier to shine through. I really enjoyed the teabowl project I did last year, so I might make some more of them this year in order to continue exploring the abstract side of my pottery.

This little green cup was going to be covered in iris painted in underglaze, but I must have gotten bored. I should have put more time into this, but it's glazed now. I don't know if I'll ever use it, but perhaps somebody out there would like it.

Perhaps the most overlooked project though, was this chip dish. It's a hand-built piece that I made nearly three years ago. I had painted it with a blue underglaze and carved out the designs with a small gouge tool, a technique known as sgraffito. I had made it as far as the first firing, but for some reason I never bothered to follow through with the clear glaze that would have been it food ready. After putting it off though, I finally mixed the glaze and dipped it, a process that took all of five minutes. Better late than never I suppose. I ended up giving it to my sister, who loves to entertain and will get more use out of it than I ever would.

So while I may not be throwing many new pieces at the moment, I have been finishing plenty of projects. And if that's not productive, I don't know what is.