Hair and Roses

We spent a little time at the studio today so that Dave could glaze and I could work a bit on my two-headed sculpture. I put the hair and roses on last time--and remind me to do this one head at a time next time I make a two-headed sculpture, as I couldn't really attach anything between the heads. I wanted the overall shape to be heart-like, which is why I made V-neck on the clothes and tried to keep a relative balance at the top with the shape and volume of the hair and roses.

I kind of love the way they're looking at each other, like they're sharing a joke.

Anyway, she has (shes have? they have?) been sitting under plastic for a week, so when I pulled the wrapping off, the hair and roses were covered in little spots of white mold. It happens.You can almost see them in the picture below. They're like a white haze over the rose petals.
 
I took a blowtorch to the piece and burned most of it off, but the blowtorch also started to dry the thin pieces of clay out a bit, so I added back in some moisture using underglazes. Once I started on the roses, I kept going, testing out some colors.

It doesn't really work so well to paint on clay this wet. The underglaze starts to bring up the iron oxide in the clay and tint everything reddish brown, but I didn't care. I'll put another layer--several layers actually--before it goes into the kiln for the first time.  The skull side will be mostly white, of course, though I'm going to add some mendhi- or Kirituhi-like designs to her face in a different shade of white. The non-skull side is tan right now, but she'll get shadows and highlights and makeup to add some life to her face. I'm debating whether or not to change the roses and lip color to red and to darken the hair to black or nearly so. The sweater is going to be a pale green and the shirt beneath it probably a very pale pink.


When I was finished for the day, I covered her up loosely so that the moisture can equalize over the entire piece over the next 24-hours, then I worked a bit on other things.  I'll do more work tomorrow since I'll be spending most of the day at the studio; We're going to try to fire the kiln again to bisque temperature. (There didn't seem to be anything wrong with the kiln itself even though we got an error message last time we tried to fire it. All the relays seem to be working as they're supposed to and all the elements are intact and seem to be working fine. So we'll try again. Maybe it was just the ghost in the machine registering some complaint.)

Aside from that, the day has been fairly ordinary. We had lunch at Panera before going to the studio, then Dave made a Starbucks run in the afternoon when our energy started to drag. We chatted with Judi and pet Crunch for awhile. Dave sorted out some bowls that will go for sale next weekend. We made a Target run for various supplies and then came home to have dinner (leftover vegetarian meatballs in marinara sauce, steamed broccoli, and salad). La Roombita just finished her rounds and Dave just finished doing the dishes and is now practicing his clarinet.