Glazing and Glazed Over

I returned from a wonderful vacation in Shanghai on Sunday, and went straight into work Monday, but every evening after dinner, I have been collapsing on the sofa, and then dragging myself to do a couple of hours of work before going to bed.

Today I was feeling tired, but really wanted to get back to the pottery.  I have quite a few items on the go, and only a couple of weeks to wrap things up, and potentially squeeze in a few more pieces.  So today I decided to do some glazing, and was busy the full 4 hour session.  I didn't even do much chatting, as everyone else was in the studio, and I was the only one in the kiln shed, glazing.

First I tackled the platters which I created with my new Styrofoam hump molds :

I wanted to experiment with different glazes for these, and see which results I like best.  Two of them, I dipped in Deep Blue and/or Amber Celadon, glazes which typically break and show off the textures well.  But for the remaining three, I wanted to highlight the textures even more, with inlaid glazes or stains.  For this one, I applied Deep Blue and Amber Celadon with a brush, and then scraped and wiped off the glaze to reveal the texture, before finishing the whole piece in a Clear glaze :

For these two, I applied stains, which I then wiped off to reveal the texture, before spraying them with Celadon :

I also fit in a piece which has been on the shelf a long time now, which was too plain and begging for some fun glaze treatment.  First I taped off a pattern :

Then I dipped the top in Deep Blue, and removed the tape to reveal the pattern :



And finally I sprayed it with Celadon.  I think that one could turn out to be pretty fun.

Back to my current pieces, I have a number of sculptural pieces, from the Little John clay :

I started working on the dragons.  The mask I highlighted with Bob Kingsmill stain, and started working on the eyes, and the eyes of the little hatchlings, while I was at it.  I had lost track of time, when our tech walked in and announced that there was 5 minutes left in the workshop.  So I didn't even have time to finish the eyes, I just loaded my pieces back onto the bisque shelves, and started cleaning up.  Here they are, with the greens of the eyes applied :

I'm hoping I can go in this weekend, and finish these up, so I can use the remaining couple of weeks to create a few more pieces.  If not, then I'll finish next Wednesday, and won't really have time to start anything new.  We'll see.