The first step is a wash of iron oxide.
You can see the two pieces that have iron oxide on them in the upper right. (Each of those pieces, with the exception of the large nucleus, is unattached.) I love iron oxide on red clay. It is one of my favorite parts of working with clay. I will never be done with it.
After all the pieces are washed with iron oxide, I can move on to step two.
Step two is the application of the glaze.
This, by the way, is a totally different cell from the first photo. In this piece, all the bits are attached already. You're looking at many different glazes (copper blue, charcoal satin, creamy matte, orchid satin, pewter, white crawl, blue crawl, purple matte, copper jade, black, rhubarb), some of them mixed with silicon carbide to make them bubble and crater, and a couple of stains (metallic black and matte black) besides the iron oxide. I'm a long way from finished with the glazing step, but I stalled on it and put the piece aside for now.
The third and final step is firing the piece. This, again a totally different cell from the other two, is the first to be fired. It was my least favorite cell, so I used it as a test tile of sorts.
Most of the bits inside are unattached--except for the colorful pieces in the nucleus, which are fused in with glaze.
Sorry, the picture is not very coherent. I had dumped out all the inside pieces to show them to someone and didn't have time to arrange them before taking any pictures.
Anyway, here's the outside:
I'm not convinced by the finished piece, but that's a good thing. Someone asked today about whether I liked it or not, and I have to say that I don't. I like parts of it, but I'm not sure which parts yet. I think I'm on a good learning curve, but I suspect I'll have to make about 100 more before I feel I have gotten something I can understand.
3 comments:
Your Cells are so interesting though. So much to look at and touch and move around. I really like them! If I had the space for something like that I'd probably want one. (I don't have space at the moment though :-( )
They look great with glaze on the pieces.
I'm looking forward to see how all of these turn out.
Hi Helen! Thanks. They're pretty fun to play with, and, yes, they are pretty big. You've given me the idea to make little ones...not quite pocket sized, but maybe basketball sized--? Have to try that next!
I'm glad I came and looked! What marvelous work that is! I have never seen anything like it. And thanks for the step by step demonstration on the finishing.
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