Twelfth Day, Glazes and Marker Pens

Ceramics is funny... you really do paint and glaze with a mixture of experience and hope. You might know that, in the past, a certain combination of colors will give you a certain result, but change one factor and the whole tone and color value of the combination might change too. Of course, that doesn't ever mean that brown plus tan plus black equals purple... but it might equal a warmer or cooler brown, it might equal a darker or lighter brown. The colors don't interact the way you expect, some are dominant and some fade away.

When you put glaze over the top of everything, you cover all of your hard work up with a coating of ground glass, flux, and food coloring. And you cross your fingers as you put the piece into the kiln, hoping that the result will be something like what you expect.

Kristina and I were still experimenting with the clear glazes during the grey Owynn phase of Pour Horse, and looking for the gloss or satin glazes that gave us the best (and most repeatable) look for our pieces. So we grabbed this grey Owynn and hit him with three different satin glazes, divided by a thin line of unglazed area. We then wrote on each area, to remind ourselves of what each glaze was. It's interesting to see the warmer or cooler tones underneath each glaze. He also has funky eyes, I don't remember what we were testing, but whatever it was, it didn't look so good.

This test Owynn, complete with dust, marker pen writing, and funky eyes, goes to today's winner... Elli Heritage!

(Craig and I are going out of town tomorrow, for the weekend, so the last three posts will be written tonight and automatically posted. The prizes that don't ship today or tomorrow will ship when I get home on Monday.)