Sunday, April 27, 2014

Silkscreening more than clay

I love these comfortable visors and have them in different colors.  But I got the notion to decorate them a bit using my silkscreens.  After removing the squiggly thingy it lies flat and is perfect for silkscreening.  Here's my first one using the silkscreen shown.


I  had used this silkscreen over another stencil on this page of my sample book.  I have ordered a bunch more visors and may just replicate this design on one also.  I love artwork and the idea of wearing it.  





Thursday, April 24, 2014

More silkscreen on clay

Here are a few more awaiting final glazing and firing.  These are all greenware (dried not fired), and silkscreened underglazes applied.  I will single fire soon.  Waiting for full kiln load.

Here is a pic of silkscreen used with paint in a journal I am keeping (now) as a reference to my screens:
He
re are some pictures of it used on three vases


The stuff you see spilling over the top is clear glaze that I applied to inside of vases.  I will coat the outside with clear glaze before firing.
Here is another vase, different kind of shape that I am experimenting with, also silkscreened with a pattern that I had silkscreened a sample of with black paint into my notebook reference.  


and, of course my stick figure "shelfies" I will fire them and add wire and either kites or balloons through the holes I have made in their hands






Using silkscreens on clay

Back to using my silkscreens on clay.  Made this vessel in low fire white clay.  It is drying, while I think about what I want to do with the surface.




Nothing like that "empty" canvas mind block, so many things I can do with it, hard to decide.  After this I cut the rim so it undulates and you can peek into inside from each side, then I used a stencil to paint blue underglaze circles randomly on outside and inside and decided to silkscreen two images I made into silkscreens.

I made a YouTube video you can see here:    I tried to embed it into this post, but blogger was not cooperating.  So click on the link on the word "here" and you should be able to see it.

Finished silkscreening here:






I will add clear glaze and fire it sometime soon, and hopefully be able to post a finished piece.  What you see as gray clay will be off white.  I like this form and will make a few more with some different decorating techniques.  The reason I like the form is that it can be used to hold items, or as a vase, it also can sit on narrow areas like fireplace mantel, etc  Plus I decorate all sides so it could be viewed from all sides as well.  Looking at this now, I wish I had made the bicycle girl in two directions, would have created some visual movement if the inside one was facing left.  Well may have to make another screen to do this.








Friday, April 18, 2014

Now for a square one

I had also made this foam cut:
did foam cut again cutting one foam sheet in half and adding it to the other with paper tape:
Produced this template
Slab rolled and impressed:
Another video with camera in one hand and working with the other:

Then slumped inside my adjustable square wooden mold from Bamboo Tools





Back to pottery and Foam Cuts

Back in February, I had cut a foam template with built in texture but got distracted making stencils and silkscreens.  Now I am back trying to use these fun tools.  Started with this design in Silhouette:
Then I put two pieces of my thin foam together with paper tape (won't stick to clay) on my 12"x12" mat and cut out the design.  Then applying packing tape to the foam before removing it from the mat, then removed whole double sheet before weeding, and applied packing tape to the other side, then weeded out design, with positive on one side with packing tape backing and negative on the other side:

I had seen a neat idea to give bowls a nice shape using foam wreath, but couldn't find any cheap enough, and then saw another idea using foam pip insulation to achieve same thing.  My DH picked some up at hardware store and I found that trying to bend it into smooth shape with no kinks was difficult.  So I stuffed the foam piece with plastic grocery bag until very firm, then cut and taped into circular shape.  Here is a pic of the foam shape. --still had a slight kink, but was fine
Then I slabbed out some clay and while slab was flat, I pressed the negative foam cut, (see top picture, one at top is negative onto the clay using my hands and a credit card.  You can see the process in this video (please mute speaker, I didn't realize there was so much annoying background noise:


Then cut around the scalloped edge and placed on top of the foam rings dropping on concrete floor to get them to slump  (made two in very short order).




  Here they are drying:





Sunday, April 13, 2014

Using my Cameo for stencils and silkscreens



Here is notebook etc. Shows painted samples of stencils and silkscreens.  I cut stencils from page protectors mostly made of thin polypropylene but use the Cameo SD software to trace images then fill with black  to include black lines. I then print onto transparency which is used to make a silk screen