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.