... pottery ....

i did not actually go into my pottery class today ... but i have some photos from the last class that i still haven't blogged .... so... here's what a pottery class looks like if you are me ...

i went to pottery and had four pieces on the fired shelf ... they had been bisque fired ... meaning all the moisture had been sucked out of them and they were hard, hard, hard .... baked ... cooked ...so ... i went to the glazing area and picked out my glaze ... mexican point green .. which is kinda turquoisey ... by turquoisey isn't as good a name as mexican point green .... so i stirred it .... to get all the glaze chemicals mixed up ....

you can see i left the giganto whisk in there after i stirred ...

i took one of the pieces and dunked it in ... i didn't want to glaze my hands so i just glazed it mostly and then let it dry ...

after it dried i dipped it the other way so that all of it was covered ...

this piece was too big to dunk in the glaze bucket, so i held it over the glaze bucket and oh so very carefully poured glaze over it ... i had to work on coverage as well as getting all the drips back into the bucket and not onto the floor ... tricky stuff, huh?

the next photo shows how i'm scrubbing some of the glaze off ... the clay i'm working with is called chocolate ... it is kinda milk chocolate when it is wet, and chocolate cocoa when it is bisqued, but when it is high fired with the glaze it is more dark chocolate ... so the clay bits that i reveal again highlight the texture i made and will show as a dark brown next to my turquoiseyness .... (spell check will just have to get over turquioseyness)

yup ... that's a car wash sponge i'm using to deglaze my texture ...

here's one that i think is going to be my favorite .... i got all fretful that i was taking away too much glaze and leaving too much brown ... but, if it's horrid, i can just do a second glazing ... not the end of the world ...

plus, i'm thinking i'm gonna really love the brown bits ....

so i glazed all four that i'd gotten back ....

and then i went back to work making some more ....

i have a big gift giving event coming up and would like to make a lot of these ... but i think i'm going to run out of time before i make enough... i have four ready to bisque, four bisquing, and four ready to glaze ... 12 total ....i need way more than that i think ... so then do i make them smaller to make them faster? or do i not give them all away at once and go ahead and make canvases to give away ...

tricky questions ....

stay tuned ....