Pottery geeking
Dec. 13th, 2007 12:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lenora_roseI've decided that part of the current appeal of the pottery and the reason I'm letting the writing sit fallow (which is far from the same as abandoning it, as the 4k words on the wrong project would indicate) is that it's fairly fast to tell if you have a viable piece, and feedback is faster. A thrown pot is either good or great or not; the decoration may make or break it, as will cracks or glazing, but you know in the first step, as you take it from the wheel, if the base is sound. Sometimes you can't tell if a novel has a solid foundation until two rewrites in, when you finally realise that the surface decoration nis all fine, but the foundation is screwed. This is also true of the figure work; I knew the mermaid was a sound shape about three hours after I started making her, when she had lumps for arms, no hint at all of facial features, and a braid instead of crests. I could still tell there was a base to work with. Ditto for the gryphon. never mind that the former got a breast reduction and an added belly and still has slightly incorrect arms, and the latter had almost an inch of material added to the forelegs and had to be frantically braced to keep him standing upright.
And as I worked on the refinements of the details, I got constant feedback; people indicating they weren't sure what the mermaid was (besides humanoid). Others going wow over the detail on the gryphon head, asking about the big holes in his back or the reason I left his whole chest unglazed. Halfway through adding the chest feathers I got two different people telling me it worked. People asking me about the bands of detail on the cups. Comments on the plates and labyrinths, serious and silly.
It takes ages to tell if a novel is working, and critiques take months to get back (everyone apologizes for talking lots of time, including those who surprise me with their speed.) Then it's re-fix, rinse, repeat.
But pottery does contain hazards that writing never did. In writing, one doesn't run out of supplies. One can run out of ideas or run into a bad idea, but it's not the same as being in the middle of a high, with great momentum and the knowledge the piece is working... and suddenly crashing to a halt because the next piece is *not there*.
I'm out of pine cone scales and I have a good quarter Nessie to go!
That may need some unpacking.
The figures I've been making have been part of a planned sequence; unicorn, mermaid, gryphon, Loch Ness Monster, Yeti. The first three are finished (The unicorn, alas, with a slightly different meaning to finished than the others, as the ear was broken again.) The yeti hasn't even been started, and won't be this term, and possibly not next either (I can make him on my own time). Nessie turned into a very sweepy asian-dragon-looking beastie.
Each of these was meant to use natural plant matter to finish off; the unicorn has berry eyes (Red now, as I have intact holly on hand and the black ones wrinkled) and a necklace of rose thorns and lavender florets. The mermaid now has a tail of melodramatic leaves, which I rather like even in their melodrama, but others thought was excessively different from her body. (And which can always be stripped off and swapped out if they get too dead. Nice thing about using renewable resources.) The gryphon has spruce cone scales for feathers, which are amazingly successful, and juniper-bough wings, which the class thought didn't work at all (Too unliteral) and I'm undecided about. Oh, and rose thorn claws, which I lurve. (photos will be forthcoming. They've been taken, just not posted.)
Nessie has scales made of pine cone scales, which far from looking too much like the spruce feathers, look nothing like and were working splendidly well... until I ran out.
More accurately, the pine cones have enough scales to finish the project, but after about the halfway point from the base, they get attached more firmly and come apart rather than coming off. I tried various means to cut them and ended up with some that were less mutilated and more useable. Not quite good enough.
And this type of pine cone was picked up in *Edmonton*. So far as I know, they do not grow in Manitoba. My only hope is that, as they are the kind frequently used in Christmas trees, (Albeit slightly de-prickled), that a craft store will have some of them -- real ones as opposed to plastic replicas. I was thinking about asking dad to dig in the snow, or my mother in law to see if they have them in BC, but the chances of it arriving before the school closes for the season is not good. And Colin remarked that overpriced craft stores are still probably cheaper than mailing for express delivery in this season.
So.... that's what I've been doing lately. How about you?
And as I worked on the refinements of the details, I got constant feedback; people indicating they weren't sure what the mermaid was (besides humanoid). Others going wow over the detail on the gryphon head, asking about the big holes in his back or the reason I left his whole chest unglazed. Halfway through adding the chest feathers I got two different people telling me it worked. People asking me about the bands of detail on the cups. Comments on the plates and labyrinths, serious and silly.
It takes ages to tell if a novel is working, and critiques take months to get back (everyone apologizes for talking lots of time, including those who surprise me with their speed.) Then it's re-fix, rinse, repeat.
But pottery does contain hazards that writing never did. In writing, one doesn't run out of supplies. One can run out of ideas or run into a bad idea, but it's not the same as being in the middle of a high, with great momentum and the knowledge the piece is working... and suddenly crashing to a halt because the next piece is *not there*.
I'm out of pine cone scales and I have a good quarter Nessie to go!
That may need some unpacking.
The figures I've been making have been part of a planned sequence; unicorn, mermaid, gryphon, Loch Ness Monster, Yeti. The first three are finished (The unicorn, alas, with a slightly different meaning to finished than the others, as the ear was broken again.) The yeti hasn't even been started, and won't be this term, and possibly not next either (I can make him on my own time). Nessie turned into a very sweepy asian-dragon-looking beastie.
Each of these was meant to use natural plant matter to finish off; the unicorn has berry eyes (Red now, as I have intact holly on hand and the black ones wrinkled) and a necklace of rose thorns and lavender florets. The mermaid now has a tail of melodramatic leaves, which I rather like even in their melodrama, but others thought was excessively different from her body. (And which can always be stripped off and swapped out if they get too dead. Nice thing about using renewable resources.) The gryphon has spruce cone scales for feathers, which are amazingly successful, and juniper-bough wings, which the class thought didn't work at all (Too unliteral) and I'm undecided about. Oh, and rose thorn claws, which I lurve. (photos will be forthcoming. They've been taken, just not posted.)
Nessie has scales made of pine cone scales, which far from looking too much like the spruce feathers, look nothing like and were working splendidly well... until I ran out.
More accurately, the pine cones have enough scales to finish the project, but after about the halfway point from the base, they get attached more firmly and come apart rather than coming off. I tried various means to cut them and ended up with some that were less mutilated and more useable. Not quite good enough.
And this type of pine cone was picked up in *Edmonton*. So far as I know, they do not grow in Manitoba. My only hope is that, as they are the kind frequently used in Christmas trees, (Albeit slightly de-prickled), that a craft store will have some of them -- real ones as opposed to plastic replicas. I was thinking about asking dad to dig in the snow, or my mother in law to see if they have them in BC, but the chances of it arriving before the school closes for the season is not good. And Colin remarked that overpriced craft stores are still probably cheaper than mailing for express delivery in this season.
So.... that's what I've been doing lately. How about you?
