Painting with glass!

Today was my second day of a three day class at Bullseye Glass in Portland. I am having SO MUCH fun, and learning a lot!

We've been practicing drawing with powder, frit, stinger and even got to pull some of our own stringer using a vitrograph kiln. We made 7 tiles on Friday, using different techniques and forms of glass for each. Today we did a 20 minute black powder drawing and a second piece that we had about an hour to work on. I can't wait to see what comes out of the kiln tomorrow! And again on Monday!

Pictures to post soon!

Seeing spots

It's been a week for polka dots here. I saw some examples of techniques using pebbles to add some depth to flat glass and decided to play around with that. I like these pieces best I think:

After slump fusing:

These ones are similar, but I added more colors of dots and a lot more dots. So much that the pattern on the round bowl appears like a honeycomb instead of individual dots:

And I tried out a new texture mold. Had a bit of a disaster in the kiln but this will clean up nicely I think. It is probably going to become a plate/platter:

Now off to my other blog!  Ciao!

Adding a little color

I have had some fun this last few days since the challenge ended -- I'm adding color to some of the pieces I saved and fired. I have slumped one small dish (from my generic flower piece). Here it is in the kiln with a couple of small square bowls I am also slumping:

I've also added a couple of layers of color and a frit border to my iris piece. Here it is prior to tack fusing the new colors:

 And here it is after fusing, getting ready to go into the kiln for a nice slump:

There is something about this design that feels really old fashioned to me. It reminds me of my grandma and my auntie for some reason. Probably because I loved all of their little ceramic and porcelain goodies when I was small. I'm slumping this one on a really cute square dish mold that has a bit of ruffle around the edge.

I can hardly wait to see how it turns out!!

Fini

All finished with the 30 day powder drawing challenge -- *sigh*. I'll miss the camaraderie (boy that word looks weird!) and the discipline of having an "assignment" each day. Back to making my own assignments, I guess...

Today I am working on cutting out concentric circles for a bowl I want to make. I am realizing I've become rather rusty at math -- calculated out the width I wanted for my rim, but failed to take into consideration that with diameter I had to double what I wanted on the circle cutter in order to get the right width. I was going for 1.5" and ended up with a very hard to break out .75" rim. Using the only piece of glass I had in the color I wanted :o(

I'll be back at that soon, but in the meantime I want to share a little collage of all of the pieces I made using powder on glass this past month:

 Yes, gentle reader, one of the sets of trees is in there sideways. I think they got chopped down ;o)

Not there yet

Oh goodness, I tried to get this to look like me -- I have finally put it aside for the night. I know the face is not shaped quite right. I'm having a terrible time getting the mouth right. Matt says it looks more like a grimace than a smile. I have managed to improve it a little (and adjusted the eyes and smile lines) but am definitely not there yet.

I don't even think that this is my doppelganger :o(

I may work on it some more tomorrow. If nothing else, it is a great exercise and I am learning a lot!

Selfie: woman, interrupted

Our final challenge is here, and boy is it tough (on several levels): create a self portrait, must include your face.

We have two days to do this, and have been encouraged to post process pictures. I didn't have much time for this today, but did manage to get started. Here is, uh, me -- woman interrupted ;o)

Obviously, I still have a lot of work to do!

Wierd Al

I spent several hours today trying to get my picture of Albert Einstein to look less like Weird Al and more like genius Albert.

This is Al on Weds. morning:

With mixed results. I began by trying to figure out how to do his ear, and that was both difficult and confusing. Then I realized that because I had his head angled differently than it was in the picture I was using for reference, I needed to add his second ear. That one was a bit easier, since it wasn't in shadow quite as much as the first.

Then I tried to fix up his eyes, proceeding to mess them up and then get them back about where I had them to start with. I tried to add some shading. Uh, not looking too good! At that point I decided to leave well enough (and Albert's eyes) alone.

Next I tackled his mouth. I am still not happy with what I achieved, but I had a tough time figuring out how to portray his mouth under all of that mustache!

His dimple was next -- I redid this about 8 times before I decided it was "fine". Actually, it was kicking my butt so I kinda gave up.

Lastly I sketched in his suit jacket, and tried to get that hounds-tooth pattern. Ha ha!  Again: sift powder, move it around, scrape it off, sift more powder, move it around, scrape it off, sift more powder... (I think you get this picture!).

I finally decided it was time to call it done, Al and I have now parted ways: he is back in the powder jar, I am on my way to make some dinner.