A Little Less Effort

Sunday I was still with Crunch, and I did the unthinkable to a dog: I slept until 7:00 a.m. That is usually the time when we leave the house. But, sluggish as I was from having stayed up until 2:00 the night before, we didn't get out of the house until almost 8:00.

I kept him out for a little extra time then, to make it up to him. We did the big park and then the small park. In the small park, Crunch stepped over a thorny branch that had blown down recently and it became horribly tangled in the long fur of his underbelly. I had to bend over and pull it out of his fur, which meant breaking it into bits and pulling it out that way, roughing up my own hands in the process.

After that, I paid more attention to where I let him wander. When we got back to the house, I stripped off my wet socks and jeans (the park had just been watered and I was soaked to mid-calf) and changed back into my pajamas. I put away Crunch's leash, gave him a treat, started to warm up my cold, half-drunk coffee and reached for my phone to make sure I had it nearby for when Dave texted. Long story short: My phone was gone.

I knew exactly where it was, so I shut Crunch in the house, grabbed my keys and Judi's phone, shoved my feet into my wet shoes and ran out the door in my pajamas. I went straight to the park and called my phone from Judi's phone. It rang from the pile of thorny branch bits in the wet grass where I had dropped it while bending over to untangle Crunch.

So that was my morning adventure.

Of course after that I decided to go back to bed. I was almost asleep when Dave texted. I got out of bed and into the shower, got dressed, and when Dave arrived we went out to Dion's for lunch. We each ordered a sub and drink and a salad to share and Dave also had a slice of pizza.

After lunch, we came back to the studio for awhile. I'd like to fire a kiln next weekend or the weekend after, so I worked with that in mind.

This demented looking little maiden has been through the bisque kiln, but I added some more color to some bare spots in the patchwork of her dress and she'll go through again before getting a wash of black to highlight the texture beneath the color. To her left is this duo:

I'd like to be done with this piece, so I've gone the next step with a sponged layer of clear glaze on the sweater and leaves and a thicker layer of clear glaze on the eyes (which is why they look so strange and milky here).

This dancing calavera is the simplest of the lot. Under the gray layer of the Gerstley borate wash is a dark red dress. The Gerstley should melt leaving a clear coat with some variability to the otherwise flat color. She was originally on a small platform that made her slightly taller, but that popped off in the last firing and I decided to just let her be short and oddly proportional rather than put any more effort into it.

This is the calaverita I was thinking of as a bride when I first made her, so her dress was originally all white. My original plan was to do a wash of gray and black to bring out the texture in her dress but leave her mostly white. But then for some reason, The Brain decided that wasn't good enough, so we went with the rainbow-hues and black stripes. She needs to go through a cone 3 firing, then I'll give her a wash with black to highlight some texture.

After I finished up with those things, I cast about for a new project to plan out. I looked through some books--I'd like to do a bust, Marie Antoinette as a calavera with the elaborate hair and makeup, but I didn't have the right fashion books to plan anything. I turned to my book of symbols and read through that. It reminded me that I've been meaning, for a couple of years now, to do a bear-skeleton-spider trio. I started looking in my animal anatomy books for any bear stuff, but there was very little. I put that aside and looked at pictures of spiders instead.

As always, The Brain balked at starting anything challenging, so I talked Dave into running an errand instead. We had taken advantage of having access to Judi and Paul's washing machine to do all our laundry including the bulky bedclothes, so we brought all that back home. We were also supposed to pick up Judi and Paul from the airport in a few hours, so we dropped one of our cars off at home so we wouldn't have to do it later. Then Dave picked up his clarinet and we headed back to feed and walk Crunch and wait for Judi and Paul to arrive.

While we waited, Dave practiced his clarinet and I made this:

She's about the size of my hand or an adolescent bird spider and she's just a maquette for a much larger spider. Her body is hollow and her legs are reinforced with nichrome ("high fire") wire to add some structural integrity. She's resting on a support right now to keep her relatively heavy body off the ground since her legs won't support her while they're green (and maybe not even once it's fired). I also built her on a bisqued plate mold so the whole thing can be put in the bisque kiln with a minimum of handling.

I can see a lot of places where I can improve on her. The eyes, for one, need to be recessed and the legs need to be more adequately jointed. But otherwise, I'm glad to have made a start.

What I didn't make a start on was studying for the exam I have on Thursday. I figure I'll do it tomorrow and Wednesday. After I grossly over-prepared for the last exam, I decided to dial it back and put in a little less effort this time.