Posts in Category: Throwback Thursday
Throw Back Thursday: “Windi” custom pet portrait
This is “Windi,” a companion piece to “Emmie,” who I introduced to you earlier, here.
Windi is another Papillon who lives with her ‘sister’ Emmie, so these two portraits were created and intended to be hung as a pair. The challenge here was to create two separate pieces that each expressed the personality of the specific dog (and they have Very different personalities!) while still visually fitting together well. I tried to keep the backgrounds similar in color while still allowing for variation to express Windi’s more exuberant personality.
Have you ever created multiple pieces of art that were intended to be displayed together? Diptychs, triptychs, or just companion pieces, like these two pet portraits? What do you like about creating related pieces? What do you find challenging?
Interested in getting a custom portrait made of your pet? Contact me by email or fill out the request form here for more information. I’d be delighted to help!
Throw Back Thursday: “Emmie” custom pet portrait
This is “Emmie” and it’s one of my earlier custom pet portraits. I actually know Emmie personally and she’s an absolute sweetheart. I do a fair number of dog portraits. They’re easier to get good photos of than cats, certainly. And I always work from photos with my pet portraits. For one, it’s difficult to get an animal to pose for any length of time! Also, it allows me to create portraits of animals I’ve never met, though I do like to be able to get a feel for the personality of the animal.
My style has changed slightly since I created “Emmie,” becoming even more realistic-looking, with finer detail. But even in these earlier pieces, capturing the personality of animal is just as important as rendering the physical likeness. Some pieces are more successful at that than others, and yes, I’ve had to completely start over on occasion when something just wasn’t working right. Fortunately, that’s not something that happens too often—there’s a lot that can be done to ‘rescue’ a piece before it gets to that point. In a collage, you can always add a layer on top of what is already there!
Have you noticed your style changing over time? Is it subtle or a dramatic difference?
Are you interested in getting a custom portrait made of your pet? Contact me by email or fill out the request form here for more information. I’d be delighted to help!
Throw Back Thursday: Wading Bird ceramic sculpture
This was one of my favorite pieces from back in college, titled “Wading Bird.” It was actually not intended to be a specific type of bird, more of a general water bird. I tended to work more with texture than color in my ceramic pieces and frequently used the raw, unglazed clay as a design element. In this piece, the ‘rock’ that the bird is sitting on is unglazed. I liked the contrast between the matte surface of the unglazed parts and the glossy, glazed surfaces.
I worked primarily in high-fired stoneware, which was fired to cone 10 (about 2400°F). An important part of the firing process was the two points where the air had to be restricted during firing to produce a reduction rather than oxidation environment, called ‘body reduction’ and ‘glaze reduction.’ Glaze reduction occurs near the end of the firing and affects the colors of certain glazes. Body reduction happens much earlier, and at a much lower temperature, than glaze reduction. If you miss either one of those stages, your pieces don’t turn out looking like you expected.
Most of the other students didn’t really care about body reduction, since their pieces were fully glazed. Mostly wheel-thrown vessels like mugs and bowls. If the body reduction was missed or the firing was uneven, well, it was only the bottom of the piece that was really affected. But for me, the color of the clay body was incredibly important!
We had several gas fired kilns at my university but only one of them consistently fired evenly throughout the kiln and could be relied on to give a nice, even body reduction. Of course, that was the largest kiln that was difficult to get enough pieces to fill completely. As a side note, a tightly-packed, evenly-loaded kiln is important to get an even firing. I tried to fire in that large kiln whenever possible. The beginning ceramics class was doing a firing? I’d be there, begging to try and squeeze my pieces in.
Often though, I had to fire in one of the smaller kilns. It was a decent kiln, don’t get me wrong, and much easier to load and fire than the large one, but it was brutally hard to get that thing to fire evenly. I have any number of pieces where the body reduction wasn’t good, resulting in some pretty ugly, patchy looking pieces. The clay I used turned a nice, rich brown when fired in a reducing environment but was a hideous putty gray in oxidation.
Wading Bird, however, was one of the pieces that turned out great! Did you have any techniques or equipment that are temperamental? Have you ever had any unexpected results? Where they bad or perhaps surprisingly good?
Throw Back Thursday: “Sailing the Stormy Seas of Dream” Ceramic Sculpture
I had a dream back when I was in college. It was one of those strange, somewhat creepy dreams that you can’t really make any sense afterward. But there was this one image that stayed with me, of a strange puffer fish. I really didn’t remember anything else about the dream. Just the fish and the creepy feeling.
So, like a good artist, I promptly took that image and worked it into my artwork! In this case, It took the form of a ceramic sculpture titled “Sailing the Stormy Seas of Dream.”
I used many tiny pieces of clay to form the spines and other details—that was a common construction method for my hand built ceramic pieces. I typically used and additive process where I worked with very wet clay and used numerous tiny pieces to build up the overall sculpture. It’s actually very similar to the way I make my torn paper collages, but more three-dimensional.
In ceramics, I took all the rules and threw them out the window. Leather hard clay? Slip and score? Nah! I worked with wet, sloppy clay and just worked the pieces together really well. Structural support was always a bit of a challenge, since the clay was so wet. I used a lot of crumpled newspaper inside the pieces for support, but even that had its challenges. If the paper gets too wet, it can’t support the weight of the wet clay.
The ‘rules’ also say you need air holes inside hollow or thick pieces. That’s another rule I learned to disregard. However, thorough drying of the piece prior to firing is critical. My bisque firings were long and slow, to make sure all the water was driven off before increasing the temperature above 200 °F. And you know what? I never had a piece explode!
So don’t be afraid to push the limits of your medium. By all means, first learn the rules. And then see what happens when you break them. It may not work. Sometimes you’ll fail spectacularly. But you will always learn something from the attempt.
Are there any art ‘rules’ you’ve broken? What was the result? What ‘rules’ do you find hinder your creative expression the most?
Throw Back Thursday: Manhattan
I took a sculpture class in college and was immediately hooked. It’s weird—I had never actually thought of sculpture as something that ‘regular’ artists do. Something that I could do. Of course, the drawback with sculpture is that the pieces tend to take up a lot of space. Drawings and paintings are Much easier to store! Sadly, it’s the lack of space—both for working and for storage—that I still find problematic and which limits the amount of sculptural work that I make. To get around this, I frequently create ‘paintings’ that are fairly three-dimensional and sculptural, but that’s a topic for a different day.
Today, I want to share with you one of the pieces that I created in my sculpture class. This is “Manhattan.” He’s based on an Egyptian vulture (mostly because I thought they looked pretty cool) and was inspired by a visit to New York City. I remember feeling like all the big tall buildings were constantly looking over me, waiting to attack. (Can you tell I’m not really a fan of big cities?) I apologize for the quality of the image–digital cameras weren’t very good back when this was taken. I’ll have to see if I can get a new photo at some point. Manhattan still lives in my mother’s garage!
Manhattan is a little over 4 feet tall and was my first foray into welding. I learned a lot making him! It gave me a whole different way of thinking about my work, with the structural elements and the decorative elements and how to combine them efficiently and effectively. Manhattan has a metal rod framework with thin gauge sheet steel pieces attached to the framework using wire. I initially tried to weld the sheet steel to the rod, but that’s Incredibly difficult to do with 24 gauge steel sheet. Beyond the scope of my welding abilities, at least. I used a torch to cut the ‘feathery’ shapes and was fascinated at how the heat of the torch produces different colors in the steel. A couple random things I learned while learning to weld: duct tape makes a great third hand. But it smells Terrible when it melts! And you can smell your leather glove burning before you feel the heat. Move your hand away quickly and you won’t get burned.
I’d love to try welding again sometime. What about you? Are there any mediums you’ve secretly always wanted to try? Or ones you’ve been afraid to try? Give it a go—you just might surprise yourself!
Throw Back Thursday: Origin
I took a lot of ceramics classes in college. It was a medium I particularly enjoyed, though I typically made hand-build pieces rather than wheel-thrown ones. I truly wish I had access to the facilities necessary to continue to work in ceramics, but those are few and far between, particularly since I prefer working with high-fired stoneware and gas-fired rather than electric kilns.
This piece is titled “Origin” and is one of the few wood-fired pieces I made. Wood-fired ceramics are typically not glazed before firing. Instead, the wood ash itself forms a glaze when it deposits on the piece during firing. Wood firing can be tricky and unpredictable, but the resulting look is quite unique. What I like about this piece is the contrast between the wood ash glaze on one side and the bare clay on the rest of the piece. I think it works well with the bowl’s highly textural surface and adds a lot to the earthy, organic feel I was trying to evoke. The piece reminds me of tree roots and growth and the resilience of nature.
Are there mediums you enjoy and but can’t currently work in? What new techniques would you like to try out?
Throw Back Thursday: Glass Christmas Pickle
There is a tradition where a pickle ornament is hung on the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve and the first person to find the pickle on Christmas morning gets a special gift. In most cases, it is claimed to be an old German tradition, but I can’t actually find any evidence that this is, in fact, true! Nobody seems to know the real origin of the tradition, but some claim it was made up in America in the 1880s by Woolworth’s company after they started selling German glass Christmas ornaments. Regardless of the true origin, it’s potentially a fun little ‘extra’for Christmas day.
A few years ago I took some glass blowing classes, since that was something I’d always wanted to try but had never had the opportunity.It was a fun and challenging experience, to be sure! The instructor of our class was really great and he never discouraged us from attempting something that might be beyond our current abilities. After all, how else are you supposed to improve? So I decided one night that I was going to try and make a pickle ornament. You have to first make a long-ish bubble, then use a mold to make a ridge pattern around the sides, which is surprisingly difficult to do since the glass cools off very quickly in the mold. Then you blow out the bubble more to thin it and make it larger and snip into the ridges at various points to make the bumpy surface of the pickle. Finally, the hanging loop is added and the piece is complete.
I admit, my pickle is not the greatest: it’s small and heavy and doesn’t have the best ‘pickle’ shape. I’m sure I could buy a much better looking pickle ornament in a store. But I made it myself after only a few weeks of classes. I’m proud of my ugly little pickle. And it looks great on the tree!
Throwback Thursday: Fox Torn Paper Collage
This is one of my first (if not The first) torn paper collage pieces. I’ve certainly learned a lot since I made it over twenty years ago! I also now use more archival materials, like higher quality paper and acid-free glue. Still, I’m actually kind of impressed that it’s held up so well over time. It spent most of its ‘life’ hanging in an office, near a window, so there’s quite a bit of fading from the light but it’s still recognizably a fox. At some point, I’ll have to do a post on storage and display conditions and how to prolong the lifespan of your artwork.
It’s interesting to look back at some of my early pieces and see how far I’ve come, how much I’ve grown, both personally and professionally. If you create artwork, do you ever go back and look at any of your early pieces? How do they compare to what you create now?