‘We Don’t Kill Easy’

Rash mold-making shortcuts left me with a gooey mess of uncured silicone. In utter despair, I tossed the mold, original stuck firmly inside, out in the yard. After a few rainy nights and warm days, I was going to throw it in the trash when, miraculously, the original popped out. I poured some Rockite into the tatterdemalion mold, and got THIS! With luck, this un-dead mold will now produce 60 or more copies just like this one, which proudly bears the title “SFb001”, destined to go down in Kenny Smillie history as The Sun Face That Didn’t Kill Easy.

Spray Paint

Some of my concrete castings definitely need color to distract from the marks left by my rookie mistakes in mold-making. I was cogitating about air brushes, air compressors and all that expense & hassle when I found this stuff called spray paint. It comes in a can. You press the button. The color comes out of the can. Let the proceedings begin!

Sunday Afternoon Moon Dump

Time for a Sunday afternoon Moon Dump. I just got this series of crescent moons back from the kiln. I used an angled-spray technique with the colored glass to try to create a shadow effect. I’m already thinking of how to refine the tech.

Crescent Moon with Shadow Glaze

My latest crescent moon has yellow pigment blown on from below, and blue molten glass blown on from above. I’m trying to create a shadow effect, which shows primise, though it needs tweaking yet.

Sun Face Again

Now that I’m trying to learn to make molds (which seems more time-consuming and involved than just knocking out a few more actual sculptures), I find myself spending more time on each original sculpture.

His Moonness

Just working the angles, playing with ways of trying capture moonness in clay.

 

Blessed Mary, Young Mom

This sculpture was the second bust of its kind to have no trouble at all in the kiln. So I’m going to keep on going with this technique: throw a big, thick pot and flip it over to form the head. Stuff with newspaper, add slabs of clay over the newspaper. No cutting or hollowing out is required.

Blessed Virgin Mary, Young Mom

Having dropped off my Teenage Blessed Virgin Mary at the kiln for bisque firing, I started worrying that I hadn’t dried it thoroughly enough, and that it might explode. So I made another. Here, I tried to capture the look of Mary perhaps at the young mom stage of life, a period when there’s so much historical blank space.

Teenage Blessed Virgin Mary

After studying the first few chapters of Luke again, I felt inspired to make a bust of the Blessed Virgin as she might have appeared during the Anunciation, or maybe Elizabeth’s Song. … I know– the eyes, the eyes. It’s the best I can do right now.

As a clay nerd, I’m extremely excited that my ingenious plan of throwing a very big,  thick pot on the potter’s wheel, then turning it upside down to form a shell for the hollow sculpture seems to have worked. If I can pull this off without big cracks as it dries, it will become unnecessary to sculpt out of solid clay, then laboriously cut the finished piece in half, scoop it all out and try to put it back together again.

Braven’s New Etsy Shop

I’ve just set up a new shop at Etsy (http://www.etsy.com/shop/SmillieCeramics). My initial strategy is to attract buyers with free shipping. We’ll see how it goes. Click over and check it out some time. Here’s one of the items I have up so far. Click the photo to go to the shop.https://www.etsy.com/listing/115780540/small-intooroutdoor-stoneware-pot-about