Glaze Tests

Glaze tests complete. Been working on these for a while, I now have the most complex diagram in my sketchbook to show the slips, paint-on glazes and over glazes.

Keeping a pottery notebook and testing colour & texture

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Something I couldn't not do without at the pottery studio is my sketchbook - a record of glazes, processes, what works and what doesn't. I'm a big fan of keeping note and have got into the habit of making keys for colour and texture.This is a colour wheel I made. I noted which colour is which, so if i find a shade/overlap of slip and glaze I love, I know what it is. Without this, I find it hard to choose which slips and glazes to use - they are stored in tupperware boxes, and the colour is written on the box but the wet slips only show their colour once fired - it's like a lottery unless you have a key.Texture tests! I made this because I want to be adding more texture to things, and i want to be nimble about it, rather than having to wait to experiment with a texture - I did lots of texture experiments all at once, and laid out each texture tool next to the mark it made. I'll now print this pic out and wack it into my sketchbook.

Some Sketchbook Scans

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Still thinking about how great this weekend was, full-on-studio-time. So good to commit days and elongated hours to it, not just snatching some time here and there, or never going at all. I completed six frames, started and finished - ready to hang. That's never happened! On top of that I created a couple of collages, and wrote lots of notes in my sketchbook. Completely productive and fulfilling!Here's some of the scanned sketchbook pages: Don't know where this came from in my head, but I like it. Poo Bin / Camping. Using unwanted photographs and a nice thin pen. These two go hand in hand. You know when you're in multitasking flow, and you have things going on in different areas of the place you're working in, and things like this just appear out of you? No? I didn't either - that's why this weekend was so great!

Sketchbook Scans: More

And not just collaging!

I've been sticking down all the torn poppies which aren't good enough to add to the 'master collection' (which is getting huge, and I still don't know what to do with it!)

Also: drawing naked men, enjoying pictures of excited/angry men, using a triangle template, using rainbow pencils, drawing ugly faces and finally, sticking down pictures I find exciting; the ones which I skip past then have to turn back the pages to look at again.