Month: January 2018

I am quite please with the glaze firing I’ve done today I mainly use royal blue  texture autumn and purple. The first mug with dripping marks inside is my favourite one, royal blue was mainly used to paint Chinese blue and white pattern on Bei Jing tea cups. Instead of using  detailed figurative pattern I loosely paint it all over the cup and drip some inside. In my opinion its kind of abstract and expressionist  which is full of the modern taste as well as combine the colour element of blue and white painting form my previous research. The second test works quite well but i don’t like it’s yellowish colour because it doesn’t brings any tea dust feeling. Some green bits peer through the muddy yellow seems a bit playful. Next time I would like to lay more colour        and mix them together. I am really superised with the last purple one. I boldly mix all types of glaze together creating kind of creepy feeling. However I might  not put this effect in my final piece but it reminds me of the colourful back- ground in my sketchbook.

I took out some of the testing pieces out of the kiln today and I really appreciate with their colour and the amazing effect of glaze mixture. I apply three quote to each of the pots evenly at the begging the dry brush was socked in to glaze pot and apply glaze on cups evenly. However after I leave the brush for a few minutes it starts to dry out and become harder so I have to keep adding water through the glazing process. As a result the glaze become watery and it won’t stay firmly on cups’ surface. Next time i would finish the glaze process in one go just incase there are too much water mix into it.

I kept working on my final piece due to I’m not that satisfy with the works I made yesterday. None of them have  the open rim like the  tea cups used in Bei Jing tea house. I attempt to recreate another circular cup and then work on it but there are too much water goes into the porcelain while I roll it into a ball form.As a result I wasn’t be able to centre it on the wheel. This experience taught me a lesson that I must keep my hands in clean and dry condition when working with porcelain. After that  I quickly create a basic cup shape  and then I placed two fingers on the top and underneath of the rim, unfortunately I put too much strength on the rim it lost support from the cup starting to fall apart.So I tried another time with thicker cup side instead of focusing too much on the rim I gentlelly move both fingers from the cup side to the rim in even strength at the main while I kept on building the cup side upward.

I start working with porcelain aiming to test out the best way applying some of the  making skills to my design drawing towards the final pieces. At the beginning I’m not confident enough to work straight on the turning wheel, so coiled was my first choice to begin with. This method doesn’t required much time for me to get familiar with this soft material. Based on my design drawing a  150mm coiled cup was built. I’m not pleased with its bumpy surface so wooden scraper used to smooth its down. Honestly it wasn’t that easy within the working porcelain starts to dry out. During the scraping the cup wasn’t even any more. Perhaps using the turning wheel adjust its form can be a method to solve the issue. However it wasn’t  a good idea because my cup was too high to fit my hands inside moreover the thin surface was really easy broken. As a result it wasn’t as successful as I expect so I made  another test piece using the wheel. In comparison with the previous one the second test is much better cos it had a steady basement and I build it up with  the turing wheel it has a even edge.

To conclude, I’m quite pleased with the works I’ve done even though they are not good enough to be my final piece I am much more in control with the turning wheel.