Tuesday, July 28, 2009

pottery, pears, and perseverance ....

i had a pottery class last night that was perfect .... it is a very small class and two of my favorite girlfriends are in it .... we all started taking pottery together years ago when we got tired of seeing each other ONLY on playdates with our kids .... so now pottery class is like a permanent playdate with them .....

so .... my teacher, carol, showed me a new technique .... monoprinting ..... you use underglaze to do a reverse painting on plaster .. then use slip to cover it up .... then when it dries JUST enough but not too much, you peel the slip off of the plaster and it takes the glaze with it ... the glaze is then more embedded in the clay than the traditional paint on top of bisque ware ..... so .. that's the mumbo jumbo facts of it .... 

but here's my truth for the day .... 
i am not a good direction follower ... 
well .... 
i'm a horrible direction follower ... 
well .... 
what directions? 
i am so willynillylooseygoosey that i heard a basic , oh, paint on plaster .. and off i trotted .... 

the glaze painting is supposed to be in reverse and THIN.... like you're painting on glass ... the furthest foreground first  .... and the farthest back blue sky background last ... the opposite of what most painters are used to .....but i can handle that ... and had a notion of flowers and swirls and background .... and off is set to do that ... with GIANT globs of underglaze .... that never, ever, ever in a zillion years are going to dry ..... especially now that the slip has sealed it in ... so i left it last night with my teacher ... who might today try to peel it from the plaster .. dry or not .... or who might have already pitched it in the trash .... 

the good news is that it was an absolutely joyful class for me ... i was trying something new, experimenting, excited about the prospects .... and now i'm very excited to actually plan out a reverse painting and to try again on the whole thing next week .... i think it's a perseverance thing.... i'm happy to keep trying, success or not .... 

i learned something else last night ... besides how NOT to do reverse plaster glazed mono prints .... i learned that i really am more creative in the evening ... more open to possibilities ... more relaxed ... for the last many years i have been taking morning classes .. that have many more people .... and between that A.D.D. thing and not being a morning person, the large morning classes aren't as rewarding to me ....i'm distracted by the people and the chatter ... and really, i'm just not into the swing of things .... i'm a slow starter, i suppose ....

not sure what i can do with that information .... cause during the school year, it is much better for me to take my classes while the kids are at school .. and our evenings are full up with those pesky extracurriculars (darn that notion of having well rounded kids) ... so, i'll probably move back to a.m. classes .... so it goes .... maybe i'll just to have to try harder in the morning ... work against my natural tendencies .... we'll see, huh ... 

and in my title i said pears too .... but no ... i brought home some lovely pottery pears last night but now i have to start my day ... without downloading the pear pics ... so ... we'll just leave that for another day .... in the meanwhile, you think about perseverence and turquoise pears .... 

and now i'm really out of time to wake my kids up for basketball camp... dogwalking, breakfast, what not ..... so you are lucky enough to get this as an edit free blog....oops ... sorry about that .... and i wrote it in the morning .. doesn't bode well for it's readability or spelling!!
happy day to you ....

2 comments:

artmom said...

not being a morning person has to be in the genes! But I am not generally a night person either!
never tried reverse painting....I think I will not even think about it as it confuses me!

cath c said...

looks good to me! but then again, i overdosed on b vitamins and am as dizzy as coming off the tilt-o-whirl.

but i love the idea that you found your best creative time. i think we get out of sync with that as moms very easily.