Ceramics

my latest piece (not the best pics, but I haven't got round to proper shots yet. These are the "fresh out of the kiln in the studio in case anything happens to it on the way home" shots.

wow. quite a menagerie there!

Nice!

Cool. Is there a wire core througout, or just in the critters? Or just in the snake's mouth?

Thank you. Just in the snake's mouth.

Can't remember what metal it is, but it's pretty expensive because it needs to withstand two firings.

Wonderful. Nice job.

very whimsical vase. I think I'd like one of those!

monster;359411 wrote:

Thank you. Just in the snake's mouth.

Can't remember what metal it is, but it's pretty expensive because it needs to withstand two firings.

Probable Nichrome wire.

I love the elephant nose.

thanks all :)

I actually made it several years ago, but have taken years to glaze it. That's the harder part for me, commiting color to my forms. Glaze can be so unpredictable. It took so long, I couldn't remember what I'd use on the first parts, so it was a very pleasant surprise when it came out.

Have I ever shown any of my other pieces here?

couple of bits.....no pieces

that's what I thought.....

The giraffes are my favorite part. Is that 2 or three different colors that you used? I assume you put some on, let it dry, then put on another color for them. Details on the glazing would be intresting to me, if they aren't artist secrets :)


Post more, post more!!

Actually, the giraffes are one glaze. It just breaks like that -it's a liquid texture glaze. I think it was Antique Brown. The yellow/brown inside is also just one glaze. If the giraffes aren't antique brown, then the inside is... :lol:

I've been working on this for years and I didn't bother writing them down!

Cool! Thanks for the info.

@monster: Those are some very intricate, imaginative pieces, for the medium of ceramics. Very cool.

My grandmother on my father's side was an self-taught painter and also fired ceramics, which I have some pieces of, displayed prominently on my personal altar at home. She was a big influence on me, encouraging me to be unique and creative, to be myself. I was a weird kid, but she understood me (when it seemed like nobody else did). I have a fondness for ceramics, because it reminds me of her. As does flower-pressing.

Thank you for sharing your work.

LabRat;360058 wrote:

Post more, post more!!

:redface: :)

Oooh. I like that one a lot.

thanks. We call that one the flaming dooberry.

I'm also a fan of the flaming dooberry. It's pretty cool looking.

That's very exciting! <--- (actual proper use of exclamation mark)

You can never have enough exclamation marks!!!

If you actually spoke to me, you would know that I end all my talkie sentences in them too.

Ooooh, I like that one too!! How tall is it?

About 18" I think.

Outstanding. How much for the red flamelike piece, please?

Oh sorry, splode -missed that before. It is not for sale, sorry.

here's the new sundial I made to replace the one that got broken (my second ever piece), and a sushi dish for a houswarming present for a friend. Some work in progress to follow for those interested.

Love the sundial, that'll brighten up any garden/yard.

damn, lost the post on the process of handbuiding. Too late to redo

Tomorrow, dudes....

I *love* the sundial. Have you considered making them to sell in a little boutique or someplace? I would bet they would be wildly popular.

Thanks!

I believe they might sell at the right price, but sadly I think the labor involved would mean ther righ price would be a loss to me.

It costs me $12/hour for studio time and materials, it takes me about 1 hour to prepare the form, about 3 hours to refine it, 2 to carve it, 1 to make the ladybugs and about 6 hours to glaze.You cannot tell from these pics, but the gnomon has the longitude and latitude carved in, as well as the quotes "time waits for gnomon" and "time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana".

So that's over $150 just to recoup costs...

So I would need to charge $300ish for such a piece -whiich would only give me an income of about $10/hour..... would you like fries with your sundial?

Monster,
Was just browsing through and saw the sundial. That is super cool.

thanks :)

here's the dalek I made Beest for christmas. The head comes off so he can store ...erm...things inside.... it's a stuff holder.

and a bowl, inside (boring) and then upside down.

also, I realise I never posted the finished pieces of that work in progress , I'll try and find that in a mo....

OK, here we go, work in progress continued....
two more at the building stage, then bisque fired, next to my "test tile" to help me decide which glazes to choose.

Then glazed and awaiting the glaze fire...

and here are the finished products....

the were gifts for teacher appreciation day, and we asked the children each to bring in one flower from their garden to make a bouquet for their teacher :)

beautiful!

Verry Cool Monnie !!!

Those were awesome Monster. All that talent! <

love the dalek! How did you make the gripper/plunger thingies?

thanks you all :)

electronic components, mostly, Pie.... oh, and a silver candle holder :lol:

You've got great artistic talent, Monster! I love all your ceramic pieces. :D

I am in love with the Dalek. How do you keep beest from bouncing it across the table saying "Exterminate, exterminate ... you are the Doc-tor!" over and over.

Or is it just me that would do that rather a lot?

No, that's exactly what I'd do too Wolf. I currently have Nick Briggs' dulcet tones echoing around my head...."Exterminate!" "Exterminate!" "Maximum Extermination!"

Monnie you are ridiculously, annoyingly, most troublingly talented. You remind me of my brother. He's another of these can-make-anything-with-his-hands-and-random-bits-of-stuff type peoples. Oh and those pencils. What a smashing idea.

Cutest teacher gift EVAR!!

:o thanks

We all play with the dalek. We just don't bounce it :D

Here's my latest in progres.. I call it catfish. here it is just finished and ready for the kiln...

here's some recent finished stuff

a roast dish, matching lidded serving bowl and gravy boat.

Oh and to finish, a little something Hebe, my daughter (just turned 11), made pretty much unassisted. :)


<<<proud mama

very cool - you have quite the talent there

really killer stuff monnie! cool! I love the blue!

thank yous :)

Very impressive stuff monsta. Dau has your keen eye for detail.

yes, she does...Unlike Marylin who hasn't a keen eye at all -hebe forgot the pupils! We're going with permanent marker. it's her visual aid for a project about MM.

thanks for your nice words, is nice to be good at something other than numbers and spreadsheets and being bossy!

I love your pottery, monster. The roast dish and matching pieces are just awesome!

Excellent work. Thank you for showing it.

Oh that's a very fine roasting dish Monnie. Really is.

why, thanks. :) I will learn if the catfish teapot survived the glaze fire tomorrow.... my instructor was all :eyebrow:

Mine are nowhere near as good as Monster's.. Nothing like them in any way.

In my defence, it doesn't help that there is a 5-6 week delay between making something, glazing, then getting the finished article. You're starting two or three new items bfore seeing your original end results, therefore I have not been able to learn from anything I have made (until now)

What I have made is certainly rough & ready. But one of the items at least, I adore. The second I am pleased with and the third is pretty much okay-dokey. Sadly, these are in the order that I made them.

Never mind, I have one more session in August, then I have been promised five more when the class re-forms in September. Then, I intend to learn :) Being fair, this class is more about socialising than learning - it's Occupational Therapy, not Pottery 101. In fact it's nowhere near being called "ceramics" - this was just the nearest thread I could find.

So without further ado, I present to you...
Picture 1: My bowl. I love it. It's uneven and poorly glazed but it is the first thing I ever made and I am made up. I can't stop touching it. Primative as it is, it's all mine.

Picture 2: My cat-themed candle holder. Those are little cat-heads (like the Whiskas symbol) cut into it. Again, it's chunky and uneven. But I can see myself using it for years to come.

Pictures 3 & 4: My tealight holder.
I'm unhappiest with this because of the glaze. It was painted on - I mean, I painted it on - because that was the only way to get it pink. I wish I'd gone for a different glaze, because it's not come out as well. I like the shadow it throws (as intended) but it would have been lovely in a pale green/ grey or blue.

I won't insist on pink for anything else!

It should also have been larger and tidier, but as I said above, I made this without having seen a fired piece. I'll be more careful in future.

Those are great, SG! my beginning stuff was way worse than that, I tell you! yes, many studios have a painfully and needlessly slow turnaround time ans ironically, now that I'm a little more experienced, I don't care how long it takes for stuff to come back, but I understand that in other studios, my experience would give me priority firing :rolleyes:

for future referance, if you can, use the offcuts of your pieces to create "test tiles" and glaze them with what you plan to use for the main piece, and see if you like the result before glazing the main piece.

i paint all my glaze on, btw.

Oooh, i never did post the finished catfish. But anyway, i am so happy with my latest, cellar-inspired piece!!!! Happy Happy Happy.

Remember this IOTD Abrus?

I printed it off and kept it in my locker for a year and a half, and now....

on my lawn and then on my wall. the "eyes" are hollow complete "eggs" and are not connected to the main pod so wobble if touched :D

so pleased, can't believe it worked. I started it in June

That is so awesome.

I was wondering if you were going to hang it, or put it on a flat surface. I think hanging looks best, besides you have a dearth of empty flat surfaces. :haha:

I have plenty of empty flat surfaces... they're just all vertical ones! We have no pictures up, this is only the second of my pieces we've actually gotten around to hanging (two of Hebe's are up too). but we are learning the lesson,-do it straightaway or it never gets done :lol:

I love that piece Mon! You are a talented ceramic artist! =)

Monster that's .... that's just .... monstah!!!!!!!!!!!!

That is really cool. It looks like an angry Maori Tiki-face, or maybe a butterfly on steroids.
Monster, you are really clever.

Hey, could you do a foam-rubber face mask version of it as a halloween costume?

i could... but apparently orders are already in for a roman centurion, a dogfighter (airforce style) and a gypsy fortune teller

Monnie that's magical, I love it.
Seeing as you're taking Halloween orders, can you make something for Diz too? I'll take him out begging, sorry trick or treating... I'm thinking an FSM? Sopmething to express his inner spirituality.

I made a mug today.
I acknowledge I am never going to set the pottery world on fire, unless it's a kiln accident. But I made it for Mum, even though she has tiny mugfuls of herbal tea and it ended up... well, big.

But on the bottom I scratched FC 17/09/09. For Fuck Cancer, natch.
Even if it just ends up storing pens I know she'll keep it.

I had to re-read that last sentence because the first time I read:

Sundae Girl;595407 wrote:

Even if it just ends up strong penis I know she'll keep it.

When Mum had her first sip of cocktail in Harvey Nicks she came over all moany.
I said, "MUM! I think I just saw your sex face!" She's the Friends fan, not me, so it was calculated to make her snort with laughter.

But she one-upped me nicely, saying, "I don't think your Dad remembers what that looks like it's been so long! Oh sorry, too much information?"

So on balance, I think she'd prefer the mug :)

A mom who says TMI? That is great! :)

It takes a while for things to get fired and then glazed and then fired again...
So this was what I was playing with before I even knew Mum was host to teh cancer.

Okay, I took photos in lamplight. But it's hardly high-grade ceramics.
The lip of the bowl has a leaf design. It might not come out as well in the pic. It's raised, and IMO quite cool (it was my pottery teacher's suggestion.)

She said, "You seem to have a talent when choosing your glazes!" It's called dumb luck, but I've loved both bowls I've made. Fingers crossed for the next 3 pieces - Mum's mug and two tiny primative-style cats (where primative means no real talent.)

Second pic is of course to show how tiny the dish really is.

I do love it and can't stop touching it. I can totally see why this is offered as occupational therapy.

Wow. That's cool looking. I like the mottled pattern, or whatever you would call it.

Way cool SG.

Yeah, very nice SG... looks like a high fire glaze?

Great work SG. Nice texture and colors.

Monster, I'd love to see a picture of the finished 'catfish'. I have a few teapots, but I don't buy many whimsical ones, mainly because many of them use lead glazes and are not 'food safe'. I don't know why they would make even a very stylized version of a functional item if it can't be used for the function it was designed for?

I'm guessing you plan to actually use your teapot. It looks great.

Why would she put her beer in a teapot?

No, I think it's art... damn good art. :thumb:

ok, I'll go take one in a mo

[looks at her watch]

oh poop. ok wait...

It's really hard to photo the glaze well, especially at night, but the paler bits of the body are gold sparkly, but powder-sized fragments, not like kids' glitter

well here's my latest collection of red/orange leaf bowls and tiles. The lighting on the pic is crappy , but basically, they're all based on huge maple leaf imprints. some are finished to be smooth-edged, some are deliberately torn. I will try and take some pics of individual pieces when I've decided which I like best, but frankly, I'm very happy with them all :D I'm also distressed becaue I learned last night that these glazes are discontinued and the studio is on the last bottle of the red one.

.

Someone else must be making red glaze, or are you concerned about matching what you've already finished?

You can get red, but not that runs like this. The components that make it do that also make it not foodsafe and all manufacturers are changing to all foodsafe. Most have done already, this is the last stand...

monster, those are beautiful. I recently bought some ceramic items from the student art show at the college. There was some nice stuff but I don't think most of it rivaled your work.

Wow, monster. I love your ceramic pieces. Sad they are discontinuing the red. :( Would you be interested in a handbag/ceramic trade?

Sure! I like black. And (non-chinese) dragons. Does that make me racist?

it's not just the red.... it's about 50% of the glazes our studio uses -all the good ones. those pieces actually have two colors on them -both to be discontinued.

You like European dragons, right?

case;608746 wrote:

You like European dragons, right?

Spiky ones with thin pointy heads and big wings..... and no pink, yellow or orange.... :lol:

Not sure I can find dragons in those colors, anyway. But I will keep that in mind.

hehe

I have a love/hate relationship with bags... but I love your work

It's been in my head for a while, But i'm amazed that only two sessions of 1-2 hours and it's committed to the kiln.... fingers crossed....


.

That hideous, I love it. :thumbsup::thumbsup:
Good luck with the cookin'.

So now you let it dry, and then you glaze it, right? And then you fire it?

What colors are you going to do?

I love it, Monnie!

glatt;629784 wrote:

So now you let it dry, and then you glaze it, right? And then you fire it?

What colors are you going to do?

No it's fired before glazing (the bisque fire) then you glaze it and it gets fired again (the glaze fire).

I have no idea on colors yet. that's the really hard part. sometimes it takes me years to get round to glazing a piece because I can't decide what to do with it -like the very first piece in this thread.

Blues and greens would look cool and maybe a splash of red in the eyes or something like that...

wait, now that I look at it again...yellow orange brownish in the snakes...use a dark brown for the crevices of the snakes...then use the blues and greens for the background. That's my idea :)

Thanks, but I'm one of those weirdos who likes to work it out for themselves ;)

Huh. That was my nickname growing up.

[COLOR=LemonChiffon]She looks better than I ever did, monnie.[/COLOR]

nice. mine was fat swot. I guess you went to school with a better class of bullies ;)

it's in the kiln......... (yup, took a week to dry)


:worried:

:fingerx:

Still haven't glazed Medusa, meanwhile here's what started out as (and still sort of is) an Udu drum which I finally glazed. I hate making glazing choices, it's so ...final :lol: But I'm very happy with this

.

Nice choice, it came out well.

Wow, monster! Excellent work.

If you can find out the glaze recipe for the red, you can do it yourself.
when I was in school we mixed all our glazes. Even though the mfgr discontinued it doesn't mean the raw materials are unavailable.

Really Gorgeous!

beautiful monster!

thanks, guys :)

Hey monster, loved your craft works. Good going!

thanks. I just started another crazy huge sculpture today. it went better than I could hope for so far, so there's sure to be disaster around the corner! :lol:

hmm. got some back posting to do. My latest work:

[ATTACH]37475[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH]37476[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH]37477[/ATTACH]

Pictures taken by my ceramics teacher.

COOLZ !!!

Those are beautiful! Wow!

The outside glaze reminds me of my collection of animals made out of malachite.

Gorgeous!

I love those! How big are they? Are they more ice cream bowl sized, or more large cereal bowl sized?

Bowls for Turtle Burgers?
(recipe site SFW)

Absolutely gorgeous Monster.
I love the vibrant colours.

Thanks all. Cereal bowl sized. One for each member of the family. Except they may be too nice to use.....

Oh, I thought they were perfect for turtle soup.

They are cool. Are some of them darker in color, cuz I really like the deeper hues in the first picture.

Nah, it's just the lighting

Beautiful and whimsical!

I might have made a different choice as far as the flippers were concerned. They look vulnerable to breakage.

I don't believe in too nice to use. Nothing lasts forever and I prefer to enjoy using lovely things than just looking at them, even at the risk of breakage.
YMMV


Sent by thought transference

Great! Have them mass produced in China and sell them for $12.95 a pop.

Too Cool 4 Skule

wolf;796848 wrote:

Beautiful and whimsical!

I might have made a different choice as far as the flippers were concerned. They look vulnerable to breakage.

What would you have done?

limey;796881 wrote:

I don't believe in too nice to use. Nothing lasts forever and I prefer to enjoy using lovely things than just looking at them, even at the risk of breakage.
YMMV


Sent by thought transference

Actually it's more that we fancy putting them on the wall as decoration and it's kind of a pain in the ass to use them then.

monster;796909 wrote:

What would you have done?

Bearing in mind that I am a user rather than a designer of such things, I might have pulled the flippers around to rejoin the bowl so they didn't have those fragile, pointy tips.

wolf;796956 wrote:

Bearing in mind that I am a user rather than a designer of such things, I might have pulled the flippers around to rejoin the bowl so they didn't have those fragile, pointy tips.

Hmm. That would work well for the handles of a tureen, I think....

Only if you're serving mock turtle soup.

Is that made of Ritz Crackers?

Now that Polo Girl's birthday is passed, I can share the Greek Tomb Fairy Door I made for her downtown Ann Arbor apartment

[ATTACH]59112[/ATTACH]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_Doors_of_Ann_Arbor

lighting's pretty poor, sorry, it's a pic from my phone. It's about 9" by 6" iirc

I hope no bad fairies move in. :3_eyes:

here's the "Enigma" planter for Beest for our 23rd Wedding Anniversary

(google 23 Enigma if necessary)

I like cacti. :thumbsup:

I like tipsy question marks.

Nice, I hope he likes it.

They have been married awhile with a slew of kids, he's certainly learned by now he will like it .

BigV;989970 wrote:

I like tipsy question marks.

Nice, I hope he likes it.

thanks, he does ...I made him do the planting -those ball things are spiky! :D (Anniversary was May 20th)

It ain't ashtrays or a vase, but it is clay so here is an incredible display of talent.

[YOUTUBE]L_vQW3xQEhc[/YOUTUBE]

Latest piece, ready to be fired, next to the artwork that inspired it. It's about 7" and has a long way to go yet..... but I like it so far :)

I like it

ooo that's neat

Right now it looks like grass eels. Cool design.

Thumb up.

Woulda been two thumbs, but y'know, snek.

:D