Progression

So here's how it came to be.
First of all, I did a lot of thinking.
I found that a lot of thinking didn't do me any good.
Sometimes it's just good to go ahead and plunge(favorite word) into it and see what happens.
So with the first bowl I did, I just used one color:



The idea was to used a different color on each bowl partly so that each one would be different, and partly to conserve the glazes.
I sort figured out this wasn't really going to work as soon as I started it, but at least I started it.
Then I decided to border the color, to make it pop:



Adding the black border separates the color and it helps the eyeball to sort it all out.
This is where I decided to go all in to the Mondrian thing.
I was sort of hesitant for taping off all the lines is a major pain, but you sort of have to in order to get it right.
It keeps the color separation tight and helps to prevent bleeding.
Of colors I mean.
In this example, I left the outside white:



After thinking about it, I'm going to do the outsides in black for more contrast.
There is also one more variation I'm working on that I think will be cool.
We'll see in a couple of days.
There's also an abstraction of this I'm thinking of that may or may not work out.
Sometimes things come in stages, a progression of thoughts and ideas, until you finally figure it out.
For the Mondrian thing, I was actually going to do tiles, but since I'm doing bowls well, I decided to do bowls.
Necessity is the mother of invention and all that.
So for the next couple of days, I'll be a taping and a glazing until my fingers are raw.
Burning the midnight oil.
Keeping my nose to the grindstone.
Working overtime.
Or something.

I Knew It!

Really I did.
In fact I even said so.
I just knew these mugs were going to be a pain to glaze.
My weapons of choice:



I like these sumie brushes for they seem to hold more glaze then regular painting brushes. The sponge is to wipe away mistakes.
I make a lot of them.
Mistakes, I mean.
The thing that makes these things so difficult and time consuming is the gears. It seems like I have to do each one individually before I can lay down the primary color:




This looks like fun but it isn't.
I have been thinking of laying the primary color over the whole thing, then doing the gears, but I'm not sure how the two glazes will interact.
Must do some glaze testing.
So anyways, after you lay the primary color around the gears, you're ready to cover the whole mug:



Then you do this like two more times.
Yes, two more applications for these glazes need a minimum of three coats.
I tend to work one glaze at a time, for instance last night I just did all the gears and some of the tire rims.
After three and half hours, this is what I had:



That's not a whole to show for three and half hours of work.
This morning it wasn't any better.
The tires.
Boy, I need to do something about the tires.
They just take too long to glaze:



See the glazes are pretty viscous so they don't exactly run into every nook and cranny. I sort have to put it there.
In every nook and cranny.
With a brush.
In every nook and cranny.
The thing is, since glaze is sort of a clay too, it will end up filling some of those nooks and crannies and I'll probably lose some definition and detail anyways:



Two and half hours today and I managed to finish two mugs.
Two.
Mugs.
I was going to wait until I glazed them all to fire them, but this is just ridiculous and I'm sort of anxious to see how they turn out so I'm firing off the two tonight.
The thing is, I'm thinking they will have some flaws and they'll need to be refired anyway.
I just know it.