Saturday 7 March 2009

Saturday

Bliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimey I'm tired.

I had to go to work today, but spent most of the day putting it off. Yesterday was such a hard day. We were digging all day and the jiggering my hands took from pick axe hitting against rock, plus last night's bass playing up at Nic's, made kneading clay an achy, painful process this afternoon.



Nevertheless, it was a constructive afternoon's work that ran on into the evening, I haven't been home long. There were lots of handles to put on and jugs to decorate.....



...and bits of clay to stick on to big tankards.



The drawing on these harvest jugs is the fanciest I've done in wet slip.





When they're fired, the type of lines should look something like the ones on this big jar from my last firing.



Because the drawing is scribed through very wet slip, the stylus pushes the slip aside as the mark is created, resulting in an outline to the line that captures the spontaneous movement of the mark making. Ha, try saying that fast, don't know if any of that made sense - I know what I mean. Anyway, it's one of those things you get one shot at, so it's challenging and I have to be in the right frame of mind in order to get it right, but today it felt like it went well.



And finally, here's another picture of my new trench - I'm proud of my new trench. You can see by the water that's in it, what a problem I've had with drainage. The trench has also proved to be a really useful hole to fill with loads of old work that I'm sick of the sight of - I've enjoyed smashing all that up.

Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

6 comments:

Unknown said...

I love the trench; a perfect spot for smashed pots. When we first put in our garden I wanted to put a deep trench all the way around it to fill with shards to keep the gophers out. But we never did that. And we have a BIG gopher problem...

Unknown said...

Oh, and the harvest jug drawing is wonderful!

Ron said...

Sarah says your trench looks like a moat.

Jude said...

Yes, don't concentrate too much or else you loose the spontanaity(god, it's too early for spelling..)
Love the trench!

Paul Jessop said...

It is a Moat, when it's full of broken pots it will have crocks in it as well.

Gary's third pottery blog said...

mmm, great pots Doug...