2019 ceramics workshop - one month in!

Last December I did some sketches of tree and stone imagery that I thought would be nice glaze-painted on tiles. When the ceramics workshop resumed in the new year, I was ready to do four small glaze paintings on ceramic tiles.

 When I was doing the "liminal" sketches of stones on the shore, I made the forms and colouring more complex than the more basic stick images.

With this in mind, I decided to paint the tree tiles first. Even here, I overlapped a few glazes anyway (reds & oranges, blues & greens) to see what would happen.

I was pleased enough with the results. I always lean towards Fauvism when I think of trees and colour at least one of them red.

Glaze painting is always a pleasant surprise as it is impossible to know how the pre-fired glazes will react with each other when fired. There is a certain amount of looseness when painting with glaze on a tile, but its exact colouring can never really be pinpointed.

The trees tiles were put away when I was painting the stones and I decided, in keeping with the sketches, to make the forms more complex. I did take pictures of the tiles before they were fired, but deleted them by mistake. I took especial care over the sand areas, as I did not want them to appear too solid. I glazed first with a bright orange and then, after the orange glaze had dried, took a smaller brush and dotted a bright yellow glaze overtop.

I am very pleased with the colouring and randomness of the glazes.

Christmas Craft Fair

The xmas craft fair at Signal Arts Centre is in full swing! This year I submitted a lot of the pottery I have been making over the past year on Thursday afternoons in the ceramics workshop. In this photo six of my glaze-painted tiles, two of my draped slab "galaxy" platters, two raku vessels and a number of my handbuilt bowls are visible. The step display that the tiles are on was designed and made by my husband, James Hayes, and some of his terracotta landscape vessels are also visible on the steps.

One of my floral wrap vases can be seen on this table, at the centre of the photo. Some of my husband's versatile mini platters (can be used for small amounts of sauces, hors d'oeuvres, chopsticks, used tea bags, oven-side utensil rests, etc) are on the left.

The craft fair is set up as a shop and there is a lovely smell of hand-made soaps on entering the gallery. Display cabinets have all been freshly painted. In this cabinet I can spot a few of my pieces: a floral vase and small ginger jar on the top shelf, a glaze-painted tile and handbuilt bowl on the lower shelf.

Several more of my floral wrap vases can be seen on another set of shelves. There is a huge variety of handcrafts in the fair, all reasonably priced. The annual Christmas Craft Fair at Signal Arts Centre, Bray, continues right up till xmas eve!

New work // old work

 A few weeks ago a huge, beautiful bouquet of yellow tulips arrived at the door - a cheery post-xmas gift from my husband's uncle in the US.

Anyone who has known me for any length of time knows that yellow tulips are my all-time favourite flower. I have recently been looking through some old sketchbooks for inspiration from my various flower sketches. This crayon and graphite sketch depicts a bouquet in front of one of my abstracted yellow tulip paintings. The sketch is from 1982.

Another sketch from 1982 of the same bouquet in front of another abstracted yellow tulip painting. I remember perfectly well that the dining nook in my apartment in 1982 (in Scarborough, Canada) had three wall spaces, each of which had a large abstracted yellow tulip painting on it! The vase that the tulips are set in is also my work, a ceramic slab wrap-around vase.

It was either in 1981 or 1982 that I began drawing and painting flowers with a vengeance. This particular pastel and graphite sketch is of a bouquet that a friend gave me after my wisdom teeth were removed. One of the four teeth was impacted, so I was laid up for at least a week.

This is a crayon and graphite sketch of a close-up of a really vibrant red tulip from that same period (more than 30 years ago!). The great thing about having all these flower drawings is that they provide references for the glaze paintings I have begun on ceramic tiles. The recent bouquet of tulips arrived in a gorgeous, simple white glazed ceramic vase. I am planning to do a glaze painting on that in the near future.

Hand-painted ceramic tiles

Towards the end of last year I came across a box of white ceramic tiles, leftover from tiling the bath/shower area a few years ago. There were 30-40 square tiles in the box, and I wondered if I could make use of them in my weekly ceramics workshop.

First a test tile had to be made so that I could see how the available glazes reacted with the pre-glazed tiles. I was pleased with the result and thought I could proceed with the idea of doing paintings and/or
drawings on the available tiles.

A chart corresponding to the glazes used on the tile test is a necessary and invaluable tool! The available glazes are numbered mostly with Roman numerals, and I left out glazes that I definitely would not be using for this project (e.g., white and clear glazes).

I dug out some of my sketchbooks that had floral drawings and focused on images that I wanted to reproduce on the tiles and re-sketched them to the tile size. I also made a small chart so that the watercolour pencils I was using corresponded with the glaze test tile.

I used this sketch as a model for the finished tile that is the first image above.

I decided to do five testers to see how painting the glazes on tiles would work. It was a meticulous task, as the glazes are being painted on a glossy, smooth pre-glazed tile.

This is an image of four of the completed tiles in the kiln before firing. The fifth tile is on another shelf.

These are the same four tiles, still in the kiln, after the firing. I am pleased with the results and now can confidently do more of these paintings with the other tiles in the box!