Busy busy busy!

Hello people! It's been a busy week here! Specifically, it's been a busy week with clay, I'm glad to say!

My week kicked off with clay class on Monday evening! I don't really need the classes now that I have my own kiln, but I go to accompany my lovely niece Sophie. Sophie is 16 now, so she qualifies for the adult learning course, but she has Autism and so she needs a carer to be with her. And I get to catch up with some of the other students who have re-enrolled!

Sophie is a wonderful artist. She can sketch an outline for a drawing in minutes! She particularly likes to draw Pokemon, but she draws other things too, mainly in that Anime style. What amazes me most is that she draws everything on a graphics tablet! I tried using one of those things recently and I couldn't even sign my own name without considerable practice! There are so many of her pieces that I love, (and I don't have all of them) but here is one that she drew for her Mum recently:


Anyway, she seemed to enjoy the clay class and is looking forward to this Monday coming. I shall have to remember to photograph some of her clay work!

Back to my own studio, I tried to get as many pieces finished in my white clay as possible before getting out my brown/black clay, because it stains everything! I could still do with making lots of little pieces for the Arts and Crafts fair coming up in December, but I wanted to get my main pieces for my two main shows out of the way first. After a very busy week I am nearly finished! Phew!

Some of the last white pieces I made were some Jane Austen coasters. You wouldn't believe how much I struggled to make a few simple tiles! Although I manage to keep them flat during drying, they keep shrinking out of shape! If you look carefully in this photo you can see:


In the end I scrapped the ones I made at first and made some more, but this time I let the clay shrink a little before cutting them out! It seeems to have worked.

Here is one of the black/brown pieces I have made this week:


I only noticed after taking the photo that the news paper that is wrapped around the tube has a picture of someone in an army uniform! Kind of ironic! Anyway, the areas I plan to glaze are painted in white slip. I have made quite a few pieces similar to this bird one...


... but they are all standing on end while they dry! So they're not really in the best position for photographing! (If I lay them down while they are soft they will collapse under their weight)

And that's this week! I have a couple of pieces to finish today, and then I need to make one more animal (maybe a Meerkat, since someone asked me about that recently) and then I should have enough for my two main shows! Yippee! After these three shows I have a whole six months until my next show! So I predict lots of animal sculptures! :D