LucyBarfootPottery
I chucked some flowers in the honeycomb / seedpod pot I made, and voila - a vase!
Wise Face for Nigel
A 69th birthday present for my Dad, a wise head, taking inspiration from Easter Island statues and Imhotep. when you put your hand on his head, it’s like receiving wisdom of luck. Shame he looks like he’s crying though, but thus is the unpredictable nature of glazing and kiln firing!
Pots with Faces
Hi blog, long time no blog. Here I am! Around Christmas time I got very much into making pots with faces at my pottery class. A great excuse to get on the wheel for the majority of the 12-weeks of the class, with a few sessions of nose-making in-between.
3D, Pottery & Ceramics, Process
Pinch Pots
This blog might well be turning into my pottery log.... A new term of my pottery class has started and I had my first go at the humble pinch pot. A very quick and crude method of vestibule-making. A couple in this batch have fingermarks, which I think looked pretty good, I would like to try the same with a simple white and understated glaze.
I'm trying to get a good knowledge of glazes under my belt - I'm diligently making note of all the varieties of glazings I'm trying out. I have yet to find a combination which I love. I'll continue with lots of complex scribbled notes in my sketchbooks until I find whatever it is I'm looking for.
I jumped on the wheel this week and made three quite well-centred pots. Not bad for not having been on that wheel for a good 5 months. Here are my pinch pots... I made holes in the bottom using my favourite tool, that's so they they can become mini flower pots.
LucyBarfootPottery
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And finally, this wouldn't be a pottery post without a mention of the teeth. I'm making a few every week, enjoying the three-step process, with my pottery course once a week, each stage takes a week to complete, and I have many teeth on the go at once:
1) Sculpt tooth shape > leave to dry
2) Smooth tooth with wet sponge and fire > tooth gets fired in kiln
3) glaze the fired tooth > tooth gets re-fired
4) One complete tooth!
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We have a project to complete this term - 'Cornucopia: the Horn of Plenty'. This involves writing Haikus and creating a 'fantastical form for fabulous foods' for the celebratory feast to mark Potstop's 20th anniversary.
We'll be inscribing the haiku on the form, and it will contain one of our favourite foods. I'm making a wide-open jaw, complete with teeth, holding fizzy sherbet-y sweets and a few gobstoppers. It's going to be reminiscent of that bit in Beetlejuice when the bowls come to life.
Beetlejuice bowl
BUT less scary. This reminds me of wonderful Harry Belafonte. Remember the song in that scene - 'Banana Boat Song (Day O)'? It's a cracker. So I'll ending this with his other mega-famous one - Jump in the Line. Bye!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk3sLHZzZRI&w=560&h=315]
We found a Poppy Field
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Every year, when it's June, the hunt for a poppy field was on. I used to make artwork with poppiesand needed to collect hundreds of petals each year to keep the artwork/collection up. Now i'm officially over poppy artwork, but i still love the flower. So no more hunting for poppy fields, but if I happen upon on, it's a great experience and photo opportunity.I have lots of people emailing me to ask where I find the poppy fields, so here is a link to the map of where I found this one - right behind Failand Village Hall in Bristol.
A new love of Pottery
I have found a new love, and it’s pottery. Have competed a couple of short courses in it, at Potstop Bristol and plan to continue. I now find pottery inspiration everywhere, from shapes and curves to my crinkle-cut kitchen knife which I’m going to use to make patterns in the clay.
And one day, I’ll have a kiln at home, the whole shebang – it’s a new goal of mine. Here’s a couple of my makings.
Crazy honeycomb vase (I think), cactus object/pot and the beginnings of the honeycomb vase. Must take more pics at Pottery
What I’ll miss, what I’ll not miss
2013 was nice! In homage to a cheesy ‘End of 2013/beginning of 2014, I thought I would share this. Inspired by this: Nora Ephron: What I’ll miss, what I won’t miss. “In an extract from her latest book published in the Guardian earlier this year, writer and film-maker Nora Ephron, who has died, listed some of the things she liked and disliked about life …” So I thought I would write mine, non-exhaustive, and what sprung to mind just now.
I will miss:
Silly/crap jokes
people with bouncy walks
Waking up in the middle of the night really thirsty, and drinking a big glass of water (I love this so much)
I won’t miss:
The feeling of being grumpy / grumpy people / moaners / moaning for no reason
Papercuts and knocked knees on the corner of the bed
The feeling when you forget something important
Wow mine’s crap compared to hers. Go and read Nora’s! Now!
My Handwritten Fonts
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Brill tool, Ifontmaker, for the Ipad. So simple and easy, and £4.99 at the Appstore. I really recommend it. I'm pretty happy with the fonts I made. Get Ifontmaker here.Here's the first two. They are in the public domain, so you're free to use them for personal or commercial use. Click on them to be transferred to the page where you can get the free download of them.After I made those two, I thought I could have a bit more fun than just trying to make another font, which would probably turn out to be very similar to those two I'd already made, so I thought I could make a font of my monsters... Soon to feature on a Barfoot and Duggan duvet cover for children. This one's called 'Jumbo'.One more! This one's called 'BingBing' and it's a bit of a hairy one... only did the caps for this one, it took a crazy amount of time.I bloody love fonts. Here's some great resources, which I use regularly for my design work:
80 beautiful typefaces for professional design: a great blog post, lotsa simple, professional fonts here.
Typetester is a tool for comparing that the font looks like on-screen.
Another tool for helping you choose the best font is WordmarkIt.
You Work for Them make the best fonts ever.
'Sincerely Peachy' has good taste in fonts. Here's her top 20.
And a couple of cool things:
This is great - a font made out of eggs.
'Wild and Crazy' font uses cartoon sound effects as the font.
Wedding Decor - balloons and paper sculptures
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I'm delighted to have been asked to assist with a wedding of two great friends, looking after the decor side of things. It's a great project for me, and we're at the stage of deciding on all the different elements of decorations needed, moving into testing some things.I'm going to be giving this Crepe and Watercolour flower tutorial a bash. How great would huge, huge paper flowers look, suspended up high, along with some of these giant balloons I found over atJust found from my 'balloon research' how it's simple to make two toned balloons.And if you were ever interested in how balloons are made, like I am. There you go!The above is another installation, this time made with what looks like loadsa different shaped and sizes balloons. The artist is Piraja Maharaja and the blogger is Lauren Ann Lane. It's brill and has sparked off lots of ideas for balloon decor at this wedding.What did we do before Pinterest ay? It's been so useful to collaborate with people over that in really defining what kind of decor is wanted at this wedding, testing our ideas and tutorials, pinning different colour palettes and texture inspiration. You can follow me on pinterest if you like. My favourite board is the 'Things I Could Be Doing Instead of Sitting Here' board. Never fails to inspire me to get off my bum and MAKE.Did you know that my sister is a wedding photographer? She lives all the way in New Zealand but is looking for weddings to photograph here in England. She's such a pro at it, so is her man - they're a husband and wife photo team. And finally, here's a blog I wrote two years back about another wedding I helped coordinate the decor for. This was for a lovely family who I used to nanny for.
Jay Z's 'Picasso Baby: A Performance Art Film' + Abramović
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Here is something new from Mr. Carter.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMG2oNqBy-YAnd some notes I made whilst I was watching it. This is the first thing in quite a while which links back to my fine art degree and provoked a reaction. I'm not for or against this piece of work from Jay Z, but that's usual of my mediator demeanour in life: never quite taking an opinion (I try to see that as an asset!) So here's what came to me:Marina Abramović - hugely respected performance artist. Recently lots of hype from her 'The Artist is Present' performance piece in 2010 at MOMA. 736 hours, each sitting 30 minutes long of sitting opposite someone, (any spectator). Huge time and emotion investment. Imagine staring into so many different people's faces for that long, that often.Jay Z's newest music video, shot in one day, nicking the performance piece from Abramović, but being friendly with her - she appears a few times in the video, mostly head-butting Jay Z and staring into his eyes, adding some weight to the interactions - everyone else seems to be showing off.I wonder if Jay Z paid to use Abramovićs' creative idea?Everyone looks so excited at the end, that's nice. Like the end of a really good gig where everyone's wanting to go and carry the party on, like it finished too early. 'people' include the general public as well as Jim Jaramusch, Judd Apatow, Jemima Kirke and Alan Cumming. Which is great. Everyone, come along - just like Abramović did for her performance piece.It's out of the box for rappers, which is great. I like that. But it's sneaking into the box of performance art, and making it another consumable, you-tube-able, quick-fix of art. No space to be bored, bang bang bang. "I'm a celebrity!" The excitement of seeing a rapper compared to the stillness of an artist staring into someones eyes for 30 minutes and seeing what happens.Jay Z's video shoot looks like a lot of fun, I wish I was there. He's got this crazy cult following, that triangle shape he makes with his hands, which his crowd copies and shows him. Bet he loves that.That's it really. Just some thoughts. I don't know if I like it or not. Do you?
Shambala Voodoo Luck
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Shambala is soon and Duggan and I are going to be performing very strange voodoo rituals and giving away voodoo fortunes.Talking in tongues, wearing leather capes with glitter, multi-coloured, terrifying, silly, costumes.Today I made the fortunes. Inside each tiny jar is a tiny fortune, some glitter and powdered paint.Pour out the contents, blow a puff of colourful, glittery cloud, find out your fortune.It's going to be fun.Here are some of the fortunes:
You are an able man.
You are a beautiful woman.
Do or do not. There is no try.
You’ll never be any good at gardening.
He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.
The fortune you seek is in a different fortune.
Your days shall be long and your dreams fulfilled.
The nightlife is for you.
Barfoot and Duggan, Silly, Text
More 'Shit Joke Book' Illustrations
Getting some of these illustrations done, rather fun today in the sunshine. I'm illustrating some of the words in the jokes, usually the punchline. Things like 'Breasts, bum fruit, his poo was on holiday, it is dead, eek, free and kiss a potato really hard.' All are shit jokes made up by kids. All the words I am making using nicely sharpened pencils, coloured graphite and viscous watercolour paint.
Q. What do you call a snail with no shell?
A. It is dead.
breasts
bum fruit
holiday poo
dead
Eek
free
kiss potato
Angie GIF
Angie
Here's the wonderful Angela Chick in GIF format. She's great and makes nice things.
Drawing whilst listening
I have always have been a big fan of drawing whilst listening. Some of my favourite things to draw have been born out of attending my old University lectures, pen and paper in hand. Notice how I am not calling this 'doodling'. That word, to me, is a bit lacklustre. It can be defined as:
Scribble absentmindedly.
Engage in idle activity; dawdle: "they could plan another attack while we're just doodling around".
I like to think my drawing has more of a purpose, an outpouring of something, a visual description of someone I am interested in, etc.Sitting with pen in hand can make me listen better, and also can help me from becoming bored. It's also one of my favourite things: productive. If I'm sat down, watching something, or someone - I feel much more at ease and able to relax if I'm keeping myself busy with something creative... of course I don't do this all the time as there is a need to just sit and be sometimes, but I do notice myself enjoying it more if I'm creatively stimulated in some way.This does come with a risk of becoming distracted by the drawing - paying it too much attention. Although that's not really a problem in my eyes. I welcome that, especially as I am trying to put more value and importance on drawing.This week I am volunteering as a Host Delegate at the International Conference on Culture Health and Wellbeing in Bristol, an Arts and Health South-West event. I am spending the beginning of this week ushering people around, telling speakers when they have one minute left of their talks, ticking people off lists, handing things out, being a friendly face, being a bit of a Bristol tour-guide and most interestingly, sitting in on lots of talks on a variety of subjects based around Health and Wellbeing, by lots of interesting speakers.And I have been drawing.Day 1.
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Day 2:
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A workshop on 'The Cancer Journey' and 'Dying Creatively' very interesting subjects, and I picked up a really interesting titbit: how we humans have so many ways of talking about death and dying, by getting it into conversation: 'drop dead gorgeous', 'dead easy', 'dead set', 'dead end', 'dying to meet him'. A way of making it a softer subject? So that when we have to deal with it, it's not something wholly new. We've been saying the words all along.Lots of words and sayings in todays drawings: 'Engaged in a collective endeavour' (I forgot the U!) 'Feeling is healing', a suggestion to say "can we talk about what it'll be like when you die" to the people around you, to prepare and engage with it. Another suggestion to 'talk about death in a funny way' - a coping strategy, and a good way to 'be' about it. The 'What Ever' is mine - no one said that! Onward to day 3!
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Day 3: Too busy running about to draw. Boo hoo!
Pictures Talking
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Here's something new! Sprung from a creative afternoon on the sofa with Angela Chick, and a donation of paints from a much-missed Grandpa, I made these.That last one there is my favourite, and I'd like to do this on a large scale. All the above were made using wall-paint as the speech bubble - to help get that stark edge, which I want more practice at. The orange text is with watercolour and the thinest brush ever. Slight issue with magazine paper going wrinkly with the paint, may try ironing the paper after painting. Now need to collect more B&W images of people at parties, having a nice time.
Can't find my keys
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Double rainbow all the way (Inspired by this incredible Youtube vid: double rainbow)
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Not sure if she is having a great time or not
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Elvis is really enjoying this
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The sexy Cara Delevingne is a pork pie fan. Can she have half of yours?
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She loves her bovril
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Maybe a barber shop quartet, maybe just agreeing with each other.
Telephone Drawings take 2
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This wonderful old telephone, previously drawn, used as a prop, kicked about in the studio, hidden away on a shelf.... thought it was time to get it out and draw it again, because that's always been a good starting point for me when I'm trying to get into the creativity zone or want to actually do some drawing (so very overlooked by me most of the time). So here's the phone, and the drawings which came out. One is a 5-minute blind drawing. 'Cos I like that
Top Notch paintings
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Yesterday, paints out (wall paint, powdered Indian paint, lacquer, pencils, pins to scrape with and graphic pens) to make one very small painting for a fundraiser for Bristol's Cruse Berevement Care, to take the form of an anonymous exhibition, each piece A5. More about that here. Liking the words 'Top Notch' and wanting to write them everywhere.
Melting down oil pastels and crayons
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This started as me making a 'creative tutorial' for the Light Box blog, but turns out that I didn't feel very excited nor energised about making a step-by-step tutorial and wanted more of a chance to experiment and have fun with it.So away I went, not worrying about an end-point, not worried about photographing every little step. There is this thing (all over Pinterest and craft blogs) where you can melt down old ends of oil pastels, combine with crayons to help solidify and bind, then cook for just 10 minutes in the oven at 100 degrees, and you can make a whole new crayon/oil pastels out of whichever colours you like.But I like what I made more then that - more of an object (plus it's crap to use as a crayon!) reminds me of using resin, makes me want to take this further and try to set objects within the melted down waxes. Could I float little objects in grey pastels, so it's barely visible, like smog? What about just using wax? Those are notes to self!I did take some pictures. The slicing of the oil pastels was a wonderful experience. An unusual texture - very satisfying.
Never
One word, simple really- I HAD to make SOMETHING and I couldn't find my motivation, my interest, my inspiration. So I imagined never having any of those three things, and realised that this is a monetary thing and it'll all whiz back to me, and it's ok! So I wrote the word 'NEVER' to remind me of this, and played around with some little page-tab things I found in a dollar shop in NZ. Taking inspiration from this quote, but exchanging ''dance" for "making shit"
We're fools whether we dance or not so we might as well dance (Japanese proverb)
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Three Small Pieces
Three small pieces, made from a commitment to "I will spend 20 minutes making something today". I didn't really enjoy it, it felt like more of a 'have-to' but I bloody did it! (And I don't like them much, apart from the one which secretly says 'Start'.)
slow down
squares
tart
My studio is now here at home and being surrounded by my things is spurring me on.