Sunday, October 2, 2011

Tea Mechanica, the Glazing

I had a hard time with all this.
No.3, I already had an idea of what I was going to do, but since I had already used the glazes in a previous piece I was hesitant to used them again.
The thing is, the piece just called for it:



What I saw was something art decoish and I wanted an antiqued look, not the primary colors I usually use.
I needed the metallic glazes.
This time I went and got an antiqued brass glaze, which is discontinued by the way for it contains lead, and used that for the spout and the leg attachments and the lid.
I used the antique silver for the rest.
The thing is, these glazes fire two cones hotter than the rest of the glazes, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
The first firing:



I liked it.
Now I had to do the treads, which was done in flat black.
Two cones cooler so I fired it a second time, but what I didn't anticipate was that the metallics would change.
Second firing:



I lost all the gloss of the antique silver, which turned a dry mat black.
The brass also lost some lustre, but that was okay cause it ended up looking distressed, and I liked that.
I contemplated refiring, but decided to just go with it as I'd heard that the brass glaze did not like to be fired with other glazes.
Now the other thingy.
The plan was to do what is called a dazzle camouflage pattern using either an analogous or complimentary color scheme.
After thinking about, I thought it too bold and I chickened out.
It also would have been a major pain to do and I just didn't have the time.
So I looked at more basic color themes and discarded all of them.
I just couldn't see this in basic colors so I went with the tried and true: black and nasty.
With some red highlights.
To break up the black don't you know.
The hardest part was doing the wheels as I had to do both interior and exteriors:



Not only did I have to do the black, but the red also:



I played with doing something different with the springy part, but decided using one of the metallic glazes would detract and not add to the piece.
So instead I used flat black on the springy thing like the tires.
I think it turned out okay:



I added some white gold lustre to the portholes on the lid but unfortunately forgot to take pictures.
Critique?
I like the art deco thingy, but I wish I had done it a bit larger.
I may make another and make some subtle changes.
It's sort of missing something, I'm not sure what.
I feel the same way about the springy one.
Sort of like I should have added something but I'm not sure what else I could have done without over doing it.
Something about both compositions feel lacking, or unbalanced, but I'm not sure why.
Not goofy enough or something.
I mean they were going someplace, but didn't quite get there.
Where they were going I'm dunno and that's the problem.
I like animating these teapot forms, but I need to think them through a bit more.
Maybe something will come to me.

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