A new project

Something I have to make for the convention, I ended up doing my usual thing:

I could have spend $20 and just bought one...

Instead, I'm making it.

Here's the initial stage of just one component.

 This is porcelain slip. Essentially, it's a jug of super watered-down porcelain. You have to stir it like crazy since all the sediment settles at the bottom, then you pour some into a separate jar/cup/etc, add liquid glycerine to make it malleable (otherwise it crumbles when it dries), and pour it onto bats to dry. I mixed enough to fill one (I think it's about 1/4" thick), and had a little leftover.

 Can you see how reflective shiny it is?

 When the slip turns matte on the surface (it dries from the outsides in), you can cut it with a knife, or in my case, I used maple leaf cookie-cutters. The smallest sized one is about 1.25" wide, the next size up about 1.5", the largest size is about 6" wide.

Note that I laid them down so most of them aren't flat...

And here they are after they dried enough that I could start punching holes in them, but not dry enough that they would crack/break. It's a very fine line between dry enough, and too dry.

Going to fire them tomorrow and see how they turn out. I expect they'll shrink in size by about 25%

Itching fingers

I'm currently banned from using my computer/typing, but also from any activity involving my dominant arm, especially precision-related movements like drawing/painting, but with the convention coming up in May, I've been itching to paint... something...

I mean, isn't it sad that I'm the vice-chair of the board and I'm not going to have anything to display?

Like I'm 'pretending' I can paint... name only... a facade.

Well, I've been in Chilliwack for a couple days helping out with convention-related stuff, and while taking a break, I flipped through the latest edition of Porcelain Flash, and here are some of the images that make me want to say, "Phooey!" to my physiotherapist and pick up a paintbrush, especially the first two by Australian artist Ingrid Lee. Aren't they gorgeously dream-like?

Crows - a near Hitchcockian story

No one outside of the Vancouver area probable knows about this, but there is an unusually large flock (or murder) of crows in Burnaby that is somewhere in the 6,000 count.

A quick Google search will supply videos, and heaps of articles about this odd phenomenon that has been tracked since the 1970's.

It's something I've always known about, but never actually seen it until a couple weeks ago I drove a friend of mine to an early morning job interview in that area of Burnaby.

Coincidentally enough, a ton of them were roosting on the building, in the surrounding trees, the trees across the street, and on the power lines. As I waited for the interview to be over, I wandered around the parking lot and tried to snap a few pictures with my phone, which really doesn't do the experience justice...

I am very fond of crows and ravens, but even this was a little unsettling. Seriously, click the photos so you can see all the birds in the background...

Eagle food

On Vancouver Island, because of poor fishing off the coast, it was common knowledge not to walk your dog off-leash at the beach, or in dog parks, without keeping a close eye up above since the bald eagles weren't getting enough wild prey...

On the Bear Mountain golf course, bald eagles would attack deer and kill them... seriously...

In Vancouver, it doesn't seem like that's as much of a problem, but a couple weeks ago at Jericho, I was walking with Eva and saw an eagle swooping down straight towards us. Automatically I pulled Eva's leash and stepped in front of her, and the eagle immediately turned and landed in a tree not even 20 feet to my left...

Guess it's a good thing my experience on Vancouver Island made me more aware or my little beagle could have turned into a snack for this guy:

Piggy banks stage 7: more gold, and enamel

So, my first friend had given birth to the baby girl, and the second was due any day when I finally made it back to my painting mentor's house the second week of November. I had 2 days before she left town for a month, and I had to re-do the gold work... and normally you want to do two coats of gold, but I was pretty sure I was going to run out of time.

So, with my wrecked right arm, I discarded the pen I had used, opened a fresh bottle of Liquid Bright Gold, and got to work. This brand of Liquid Bright went on red instead of yellow (another brand goes on green), which, unfortunately, was pretty hard to use on top of a red micron pen... Again, if it's too lightly applied, it doesn't turn out gold.

Fortunately, the end result was pretty good. I managed to get all the gold on in one day, and in the late afternoon, fired them. In the morning, I mixed up white enamel, (using it for the first time ever!!!) applied it, and managed to fire them before I had to leave in the afternoon.

They were actually still hot... had to use oven mitts to get them out of the kiln and then wrap them up in my spare clothes so they didn't cool down too quickly.

Other than the gold turning out not as dark as I wanted (especially on the Chinese characters), I'm pretty pleased with the way they turned out.

Here's the end result of the Lotus Pig:

 In this lighting you can just see the enamel catching the light differently... there is a dot on every bubble, on the seeds (on top), and in the centres of the lotuses on the sides.

Now here's the final Sleepy Pig which, coincidentally, ended up being a boy, and his name begins with 'T' so that was a total happy coincidence:

 You can't see them very well, but the characters in the middle of each 'T' shape are the "four blessings" (si fu 四福) are happiness (xi 喜), prosperity (lu 禄), longevity (shou 寿), and good luck (good fortune) (fu 福).

Because the parents of this baby are Christian, the characters at the bottom are:

Blessed:

And the ones on the top are:

Faith: 

Happiness: 

Joy: 

Peace: