Week 8 - My painting lacks warmth!

Went to the pottery studio today to do some glazing.
I've put some 'old gold' underglaze on these to pick out the detail in the impressed patterns.
On top of that is sort of a greeny glaze which will mix with the 'old gold' and make a sort of dirty lime green colour (providing it works the same as my test tile!) There is also a bit of translucent white.









The glazes in their unfired state are often really different in colour to the way they turn out. The white is white, but the grey colour is a greeny torquoise!



On my montana painting - I decided that it was a bit to cold looking. I have used almost exclusively cool colours! So I am trying to work a bit of warm brown into the trees. Also that colour naturally sits back. Still a lot of work to do here! I think perhaps I need to go back to my bigger brushes to prevent me from trying to go too detailed. Hm not sure. Definitely more to do.

Week 7 - Forests and craggy mountains

Watching the Winter Olympics has me thinking about craggy mountains and fresh snow...

This week I focused on the Montana painting and worked on 2 different sections:

• Mapped out the light/dark areas of the band of trees - I am not 100% happy with how this looks, the colours are not quite right either, but at least everything is in the right place and I have a good base for the future. It is a complicated part of the picture, there is so much detail in that area and I already know I don't want to duplicate every leaf. At the moment, it is hard to know how detailed to be. I do not want that part of the painting to look like Bob Ross style 'happy trees'.
  
• Mountain in the background - EXTREMELY happy with this. I've been able to show shadows in the snow around those craggy peaks with the pale blue paint. This part of the painting really seems to be 3-dimensional. Unfortunately I am not sure that this comes across in the photos very well :( But trust me, it looks great!
  

It was truly a joy to paint today! I was sad when I had to stop.

Trees:






Mountains:

Week 6 - Fluffy clouds and Trees

Did a bit more painting this week - a second coat on the sky to make the colour more opaque and I also used a wet in wet technique to put in some clouds. The sky will remain quite simple as the mountains beneath it are so busy and textured. I also made a start on the tree section to get some darks and lights blocked in. So far so good...but the trees are going to be a challenge I think!





And at the pottery studio, I experimented with a new technique (well new to me, it dates back to the 1780's) called Mocha which was supposedly developed in the UK around stoke-on-trent. The name is supposedly derived from the word/town of Mecca, where a semi-precious agate stone was traded, which has a similar fern-like vein structure on its surface.

First make a mix of oxide (pottery's version of pure pigment) with an acid: we used vinegar.
Then apply watery slip to some leather-hard clay. Drop the oxide/acid mix into it using a brush or eye dropper and the fern like forms appear like magic! Thank you Gill for the tutorial!





Dragging a tool through the pattern to make a swirl


Other tests with different thicknesses of slip.


A fired mocha bowl with a thin transparent glaze - the pigment used was the same as our tests, a bright blue.



And a few of my pieces came out of the kiln form their first firing.
Test tiles:


3 larger tiles, (sorry the scale of these photos is messed up).
I will need to do some glazing tests next week and work out what sort of glazes I am going to do on them!

All of these have a sort of 'bi-sected' theme to them.

Week 5 - Oil painting is as much fun as I remember

Slightly frightened but feeling ready, it was time to start the Montana painting today. To my surprise, it went well!









So far so good -- it felt quite natural as I was roughly working from top to bottom. (It always makes sense to do that or you drag your hand through your wet paint.) Having my watercolour to refer to was a great help. But I had forgotten how much oil paint/medium and turp smell. I have left the window cracked a bit for ventilation!

And a visit to the pottery studio today as well:

One of my test tiles was out of the kiln - it looks fab (it is dipped in various combinations of things, hence the three stripes). The lighter green looks great, I will be ready to glaze a few tiles next week!



And I did a test tile with some of the dried up slip that I made - the white braid is white clay pressed into the croxton and there are also dark blue spots pressed into the tile. Dark brown slip brushed and squirted on top for a bit of surface texture. The letters are to go with my other set (which was a bit short on vowels)



And I dipped my braid pots from last week in white slip, the smaller one has a drip on the front. Some slip must have gotten caught in the braid - oh well, I might add more slip to these next week. The were too wet to handle any further today!



The bigger one looks great too!