Getting my AP portfolio done. Actually had to call my mom to get her to excuse me from third period so I could have a decent chunk of time today to work on it, seeing as how I don't have photoshop at my house and I had to work after school. Anyways, I'm almost finished. I will be so glad to have all of this done, however, it is a LOT less stressful now that the showcase is over and I don't have to stress out about finding kilns to fire my stuff over weekends... Finally! I have some of my work photographed to put up here:

This is a post.

All pieces due on Monday. Awesome. I'm not done yet, but almost. ......kind of. I will for sure have everything done by the showcase. Maybe not Monday....I might need just an extra day..... Anywho. I'm going to be happy to have everything done. I also haven't written my statement yet. It's been a baaaaaad ceramics week. Here's a picture of a hand!

ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Hey all you art people! And miscellaneous other not-so-important readers........It is THURSDAY and I have two projects in the making.......out of four completed projects that need to be done by next week. The weekend should be fun! Filled with clay. My barnacle hand came out of the pit firing and I LOVE IT! The colors turned out great, a lot of reds. Also, a picture was taken of it in the pit and it is the most demonic looking picture ever, not to mention the AWESOMEST (not a word). For all of you who haven't seen it...well..here it is. I couldn't be more happy with it. Also, I re-fired another hand and that turned out great also. Lovin' the projects right now.

A list of projects, to keep me stressin:

1) ball hand thing
2) nail hand thing
3) twisted hand thing
4) claw talon hand thing (Clutch, as Amy named it)
5) barnacle hand thing
6) wrapped up hand thing
7) partial hand thing
8) wall hanging hand thing
9) long hand (work in progress)
10) other random undetermined not finished yet hand thing (work in progress)
11)
12)

awesome.

BLOG PROJECTS BLOG AHHH!

Alrighty. I've been working my butt off this last week trying to get as much done as humanly possible. One of my projects finally broke!!!! I wasn't all too broken up about it (pun?) because I was waiting for it to happen. Some of these projects have been.....delicate. Anyhow, so it was a project that was in three pieces, and only one piece broke, so I decided to take a day and replace it. It turned out well and is in the kiln. Then on top of that, I started and am now almost done with yet another project! It's this hand coming out of clay, I think it's turning out well (although..it sounds lame..). It needs a counterpart-hand, so bright and early tomorrow morning (9...9:30ish) you can find me in the ceramics room working on that. I will be in the ceramics room allllll day tomorrow trying to get as much done before the week is over. I hope to complete the hand(s) coming out of clay, do another project, and start another project besides that. Then I'll do a hand over the weekend at my house, and then next week I'll be all lined up to finish my portfolio with the completion of another hand and a half. Then firings. Then pictures. Then showcase. Ahhh, April stress....lovin it. For all you people who are as stressed out as I am, these pictures should help. Also, first person to buy me a hedgehog wins my eternal love.

Day Late

Alright everyone. So. Did you know that blog spelled backwards is NOT glob? My dad tried to tell me that it was. It's 'golb'. Anyways, the barnacle hand is on it's way to firing and I'm almost done with another hand. I was going to do a hand that was all disassembled and connected with wire, and I still might, but as I was making the thumb it rolled out of my hand and onto the floor! However, it landed perfectly in such a way on it's side that it kind of looked like a fossil of a thumb sticking out of the ground....or something. So I made some fingers to go along with it and now it looks like a hand reaching out through the table (or, when I get it finished, the wall). I was thinking that for my next project I would do something along the lines of my very first hand project, with the fingers reaching out of the ball, except do it with a thrown vase. I think it'd be interesting to create an illusion of a hand stuck in a vase but when you looked inside there was no real hand. The idea is still in the making.

In other news, I went to the OCAC free class thing for gold key winners. I did the woodworking/instruments class, and it was GREAT! I thoroughly enjoyed it. I told a few of you that I went and a few of you said that you were planning on going. Two things about this: you should have, it was a day well spent. However, I'm really glad you didn't, because seeing as how I was one of two kids in the class, I got to make a far more complex instrument than I would have if there would have been more people. I pretty much got to make whatever I wanted, which turned out to be this funky guitar type thing. It's got a super weird design to it, but it is functional. I had a great time, learned some cool things, and got a project out of it.

hand pictures!

Crap I forgot the picture. So here ya go, some cool pictures of hands (well..I think they're cool..)

Art Stuff

Alright...art stuff....let's see, what have I been up to lately? Well the barnacle hand is coming along nicely, although now I'm having doubts about whether or not I should actually put the barnacles on it or not. It is the most disturbing looking thing....a hand with big, golf-ball-sized warts all over it. It definitely looks diseased. If I throw the barnacles on, they'll just be around the edges of the warts, and they'll be tiiiiiiiiiiiny. Tiny for barnacles, at least. Uh, so not much more to report, I guess. I'm doing one of those free classes at OCAC for the scholastic gold key winners. Something about wood and instruments....should be fun. Is anyone else going to one?

bloggin

Hello everyone. So I got the wrapped hand done pretty quickly, and now it's gone to glazing and stuff. I'm thinking just underglazes and stains, nothing special. After that I couldn't think of anything to do for another hand...kind of ran out of inspiration and was discouraged after pushing through the last hand (even though it turned out well). So I took a little ball of clay and smushed it into a barnacle shape. Then I did it like....30 more times. I'm not sure what I'll do with the barnacles yet, but Julia thought I should make a hand with barnacles on it. I liked the idea, and for some reason barnacles on a hand reminds me of sickness or disease, so I'll incorperate that into my next project. I started on that today and will try and remember to post pictures once it comes along a little more. Also, for this hand I'm really trying to focus on form first, THEN distortion. I think that will make my projects a little more refined.

bloooooggg

Hello all other AP art blogger people. So let's see here...the glaze for the hand claw talon came out well, and the other hand I was working on with the twisted fingers is in the kiln. Because I had nothing to work on and was pretty undriven to do anything a couple classes ago, I started just making a general hand form, not really knowing where I was going to go with it. So it turns out, the hand I made was really horrible. I mean....I really hated it. I tried to fix it up a little bit...make the fingers longer, give more definition to the palm...but it just wasn't working. So I started to carve at it, just to take it in a different direction. I carved out most of it and got the idea to re-cover it up. It got a lot better, although I'm still working at it. Does anyone remember Alex's concentration pieces from last year, the apple and the pear? The ones that looked like mummified fruit? Well if not, here's a picture of the apple. The hand looks similar to it, how you can see the hollow inside, and how it looks like it's in wraps. Anyways, the fingers aren't coming together the way I had hoped...I'll probably do something different with them next class (maybe just take a few off all together?), but I really like the direction it's going so far. I'll let you all know how it turns out next week.

critique tomorrow!

There's a critique tomorrow and I actually have a piece done for it.......kind of. It's an old piece, so it doesn't count, but I got the glaze done for the hand-claw-talon. I was too impatient to make a test tile for the glaze, so I reaaaaally hope it turns out okay. We'll see how it goes. It came out disturbingly thick...which Ryland said was a good thing, but who knows. I put my other piece in the kiln sometime mid last week, but it didn't get fired in time. I'm thinkin my next hand will be something like this...except, you know, much much cooler. I really like the idea of making hand-bones with skin just kinda.....thrown on them. kind of decaying, but more just.....revealing? plastered onto the bones?

hellllooooo

So! Critique tomorrow! My piece isn't fired, but I'm happy with how it turned out. I'm really surprised the fingers haven't fallen off, or drooped and messed themselves up. For all of you who haven't seen it, it looks something like this, except all the fingers are intertwined

Hey guys! So I started working on that new piece. Like I said, like the claw hand, but smooth and flowy and all tangled up. If you guys have ideas or suggestions for my piece, or pieces I should do to incorperate into my concentration, I'd love to hear them. I've heard a few really great ideas already.

So, you all saw what I have been working on lately--- that claw-talon-hand sculpture. For my next concentration piece I was thinking about doing some sort of the same thing with the whole elongating the fingers in the hand, except I was going to make them super smooth and flowy. Sort of like if you've ever pulled a handle for a ceramic mug (which, I assume you all have). I've been slacking pretty hard on the details of my hands, though. They have a decent amount of detail, especially in the curves of the palms of the hands, and some of the knuckles, but I can do a lot more. With the next piece I'm going to spend some time really focusing on getting preportions right, giving extra definition to the way the skin stretches throughout the hand, and defining the knuckes better than I have been doing.
I was also pretty inspired by Collin's smoker hand, and I was thinking about doing one of my concentration pieces where you could see the bones in the hand (and probably some muscles, too!). Maybe something like where I have some skin stretched over the bones, enough to cover most of the hand but still have gaps where you can see in to the bones and stuff. The thought is still being mulled over, tell me what you guys think.

Projects!

So unfortunately I don't have a picture of it, but lately I've been working on this cool hand-claw-talon thing as my latest concentration piece. I really wanted to burnish it like Ryland's been doing with all of his pieces but I left it out and uncovered last thursday or friday before I left for the weekend...so it dried out. Which is alright, because it's basically finished anyways. But I want to find a dead bird for it to be holding. Does anyone have a dead bird laying around they want to donate? I think Ms. McBride might have one I could at least borrow for the pictures, so I'll ask her about that tomorrow. Also, does anyone have any good ideas for glazing it? I'm tired of just staining my projects...it feels boring and empty to me. But I also don't want to distract from the form of the piece.