Studio Daze

Dave and I went off to the studio this afternoon. As I mentioned before, my dodgy shoulder and neck have left me unable to hand-build, so I bought some bisque wear, four salad plates and two pasta bowls to paint. I have underglazes at the studio, and I used those to start a series of plates.

I looked through some books and images I have to find some inspiration and then sketched out the plates. 

I only had time to start painting the first one, which I had to leave in this half-finished state.

This is a straight up copy, pretty much, of a work called "Muerto Mouse" by an artist named Jorge Gutierrez. It was one of the works, I believe, inspired by attempt by Disney in 2013 to trademark the phrases "Day of the Dead" and "Dia De Los Muertos" in anticipation of the release of its movie "Coco." (They wanted to protect the merchandising efforts for the movie, but after a public backlash and facing being labeled as cultural appropriators, Disney withdrew the request.)

I got the base layer on this plate and started to paint a few of the details, which took some time as I had to keep stopping to pet Buzzy, who comes over and nudges my painting arm under my elbows whenever he wants some pets from me (which was often because Dave was busy trimming some pieces on the wheel and wasn't interacting with Buzz).

The other plates only have pencil sketches on them so far. (The pencil burns out in the firing.) These images, here sketched in pencil on bisque, are inspired by drawings from the Pixar movie "The Book of Life," (which was directed by Jorge Gutierrez, which I didn't know until just now when I looked it up--and produced by Guillermo del Toro, one of my favorite filmmakers). If you haven't seen "The Book of Life," it is a superior movie to "Coco."

They're hard to see, I know, but these are slightly darker:

I did those while Dave trimmed the pieces he threw on Monday, the butter bells that were requested by our buddy. And that was my afternoon at the studio.

Funnily enough, about a month ago, I was shopping for fabric in a local quilt shop and I came across some amazing fabric of images of Mexican wrestlers and chunky burritos and taco trucks and I loved it so much that I bought a couple of yards of it. And just now, on a hunch, I looked it up and it turns out that it was designed by--yes, you guessed it--Jorge Gutierrez. (You can see the fabric line here as long as the link holds out.)