Ex Ceramica

Migrated from exceramica-old. Currently posting through my backlog of things I've made the past few years until I catch up. Most of my work is either small and delicate or big and weird, with not a lot of middle ground. Some wheel thrown and some handbuilt too!

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Finished vase! Glazed with a semi-opaque white, and some drips of oribe in the trees. The rest of the color comes from oxide washes! I really like the dreamy, wintery look.

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Playing around a little with different directions to push the carvings. I'm liking the simple landscape, but I do think I'm inherently a little limited in this format in terms of line weights, shading, etc. compared to a drawing or painting, so I think keeping it a bit abstract is helpful.

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And the final fired jars! The glaze on the right is maybe too much of a runner to use on vertical carved faces, because it starts to collect and flow through the channels, creating some dangerously large drips. But it sure does look nice on the lid!

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Two more jars ready for glaze firing! Even with a solid understanding of glaze chemistry, it's still always amazing to me to see the difference in color between the dry glaze and the final fired piece!

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Here's how the jar from the other week turned out! The glaze ended up quite thick on top, and almost completely filled in the grooves on the lid. I love how you can still see the pattern in the glaze, even though it doesn't look carved anymore. I may have to try doing that intentionally with a plate or shallow bowl!

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Another carved mug! This has definitely become my favorite glaze for showing off the carving.

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Completely obsessed with carving various thrown forms right now...

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This is how one of the carved mugs turned out! I really like the more subtle color variation of the shino breaking just the smallest amount over the texture. I know pinholing is generally not a desirable feature, but I think it's really aesthetically interesting in this case!

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I tend to avoid mugs because I don't really like pulling handles, but I really like how the carving fits with the forms! Need to keep practicing

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Finished vases! I'm really happy with how the glaze breaks over the carvings. Definitely something I'm going to need to start playing around with a lot more.

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More experiments in different bottle forms, and new carved patterns. I'm not fully convinced on all of them yet, but I really like the simple shape and flowy pattern on the far left one! It's similar to some of the star patterns I've done before, but less structured.

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Finished cat sculpture! I was so worried the glaze wasn't going to turn out, but this is I think as good as I could have hoped for! I think it's going to be a while before I use this much glaze on a sculptural piece again.

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I've been getting back into throwing after several months of sculpture. These are some of my initial experiments with new forms, and bringing the carving techniques I used for the luminaries last year to more functional, stoneware pieces! Excited to see how they look with a nice, breaking glaze.

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Making progress on the cat sculpture - glazed and ready for firing! After several glaze tests, I'm really hoping it'll turn out as expected - black breaking brown across most of the piece. Too thin, and the glaze is predominantly brown instead of black, too thick and it starts to pinhole.

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Figure sculpture after week 2! Ready to dry and fire. I think the fingers are still slightly sausage-like, but at this scale they're just very difficult to refine.

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First time sculpting a full figure from life! This was the progress after 1 week - a lot of the forms roughed in, but very little detail anywhere. Quarter scale is nice in that it doesn't require much in the way of armature, but it is really fiddly!

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Carved jar experimenting with colored porcelain. There are some things I really don't like about this piece. I think the carving is a little messy, and the lid is slightly too thin and narrow. That said I do like how the glaze came out - it's a little more green than the clay body, so it creates some color variation where it pools, which I think makes it a little more interesting than if it were just solid blue.