Portrait with Swirls

Here’s a portrait with swirls made with the same rough pottery version of Shigaraki clay. It has a coarse powder of dried clay mixed into the soft clay, so it’s grainy, but won’t break carving tools after drying, as quartz sand would.

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Bust of the Madonna in Rough Shigaraki Pottery Clay

This is a new Blessed Virgin Mary bust I made, this time using a grainy type of Shigaraki pottery clay. It’s great for big, expressive, rough n’ ready sketches, so this time I want to see how much detail and smoothness it can take.

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From the Annals of Tasmanian Crime History

I took time off of shopkeeping at my online store (http://smillie.ocnk.net) to make something out of clay. A portrait with swirls from an old Australian police profile and mug shot. I may make a moon out of the round face, but not sure yet.

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Back from Kiln

I brought a lot of stuff back from the kiln on Wednesday, which will give me some inventory at my shop, smillie.ocnk.net. I’m spending most of my clay time shopkeeping, but once it’s up and running, adding new things will be a simple matter.

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Blessed Virgin Mary Bust

This is a porcelain Blessed Virgin Mary bust that gradually morphed into a study of how to make drapery folds. I learned a lot from it, and came one big, gratifying step closer to my still distant goal.

Adding Color

Before a second firing, I’m adding some very pale blue and yellow to these moons. I’m seeing how faint I can keep the color without rendering it invisible.

Kiln Day Sunday

I’ve spent a week tweaking, refining and adding detail to a lot of dry items this week in preparation for putting them in the kiln Sunday. For example, I added eyes to some sun-moon pairs.

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Distressed Clay

I have a few items I spent a lot of time on, and learned a lot from, but which never made it to the kiln for one reason or another. After I left them out in a recent typhoon, they’ve taken on some character. Maybe I’ll dry them off and cook them up as is. Kind of like “distressing” wood or jeans.

Zen, but in a Hurry

This is a porcelain tray that I may add  some deep blue or green glaze to when I kiln it. I tried to give it that zen look, but I was in too much of a hurry. A few more of these, and I’ll hopefully have a more refined frog-making technique.

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Porcelain Sun Face

The Sun half of this porcelain Sun & Moon pair is now done.