Tuesday 8 July 2008

Tuesday



Still making and force drying, a dicey game if ever there was one. I know pretty much how far I can push this clay when giving it a little encouragement with a gas burner.



I couldn't sleep last night because of thinking about how I was going to decorate the harvest jugs today. In the end I got up, took all the relevant books from the bookshelf, studied them hard and worked out my version.

Before I start to decorate, I like to loosen-up by drawing on a piece of board, sponged over with thin slip.





















My decoration is generally fairly uncomplicated, but I felt that the original harvest jugs were always quite fancy, so mine needed to be too. Well, that's about as fancy as I get. I think they'll work OK, time will tell, but at present, I'm pleased with them.

5 comments:

Alan from Argyll Pottery said...

These are I think what the late great Mick Casson would have described as some very "Whoopy" Jugs, Fantastic!

klineola said...

Those are great designs. Thanks for showing the slip practice board!

Matt Grimmitt said...

Whoopy indeed, spot on Mr F, very nice.

Paul Jessop said...

What a nice picture you paint, This blog thing is excellent at giving an insite into the creative mind. not being able to sleep because of thinking about decorating a pot is something most people can't even begin to understand. But it is such an exciting time when you get to the workshop in the morning. and you have done a cracking job with the decoration. Propper Job !!!

doug Fitch said...

Ha, do you mean the crazy mind Paul? I think it demonstrates that stress is stress whatever you do! :)You're right really, it's not a bad thing to be keeping me awake.

Thanks all for your words, I'm getting a bit braver with my deco. It always puts the fear of God into me when I have a surface to decorate and it blows me away when I see what you guys and a certain guy-ess in Scotland can do with a surface. I'm naturally a messy person, so that's the way I choose to work, slap it about a bit. Let's see what happens to them in the kiln - brown?!