Eric Metcalfe has been experimenting with drawing on bisque forms. The ceramic pencils don’t work on a bone dry plate, they just grind a groove instead of leaving a line so I bisqued a couple of his favourite rimmed plates. And yes, the drawing doesn’t burn off and is enhanced and preserved by the coat of clear glaze.
There are lots of colours available, so if you, Raiders, would like to draw instead of paint, I have black pencils here but other colours, you’ll need to buy your own.. I already have a couple of requested bisqued platters ready.
Eric also painted one of his usual bold graphic plates, making full use of the white ground.
Pierre Coupey was happy to join a Raid for a second time and now has two large round plates to take home. He kept his palate to black and white with a little yellow, and like Philippe, used wax resist and also tape for resisting. I think the plates being grey when he works on them lead to more white appearing after the bisque than he expected. Nevertheless the effect is bold and the yellow shows up in the B one.
Renée Van Halm has been out here a couple of times on her own, bringing out leather hard sculptures (safer to transport) and applying underglazes once here. The glaze firing, without glaze, makes the colours strong without being shiny. These two little guys worked out well.
And me, I’ve concentrated on making, spraying with slips and bisque firing my pieces for the soda firing this month. More about that in another blog – but it WAS exciting! Here are just two of my normal little earthenware jugbirds who arrived just in time for Easter.
