Hi guys and welcome back to my channel, Blue Nose Trading. My name is Tori Solis, and today I am going to be cold finishing my sculptures for a series project on Darwin’s finches. This collection of work was created for my Fall 2022 ceramics class project themed “the art of science”. I worked on sculpting them from a white stoneware throughout the semester. They are hollow inside and have a textured indention on the bottom to adhere them to a perch at some point. Today we are going to be picking up the process from the point of finishing them from bisque. I'm going to be cold finishing these with acrylic paint and sealing them with a spray on matte finish.
All the birds have all be fired to cone 04 bisque, except one, which was fired to cone 6 glaze. It’s funny because I was actually planning to finish these out in glaze initially, but a bisque kiln at the school was accidentally fired to cone 6 glaze temperatures with one of my birds in it. In thinking about how I wanted to proceed, I decided that I would cold finish the pieces in acrylics. Acrylic paint is one of my practiced artistic mediums anyway, so it seemed like a good fit.
I remember when I was a very little girl, my aunt Wendy would bring me these bisque dragons and ornaments to paint with acrylics when she came to visit. It felt good to re-visit that process equipped with all of the acrylic on canvas experience I have gained since then.
Cold finishing ceramic is actually easier to do on a piece that has only been fired to bisque. The bisque is porous and thirsty for water. It takes the water out of the acrylic, which is a water-based paint, very quickly. Consequently, it dried quickly and was easy to work with. The one bird that was over fired to cone 6 was harder to paint. At cone 6, the pores of the clay are closed, so the paint was slick, took a lot longer to dry, and had a slightly glossier finish in the end.
The finish of the acrylic on these gave me a lot of control. Though I personally feel that with practice, I can have just as much control with underglaze or glaze application. I would say that finishing hot is likely to be my objective in most cases. It is also worth mentioning that there are some colors and finishes that you can get from an acrylic mediums that would not really be possible to obtain from ceramic materials, such as shimmer effects or the control of the level of gloss on the surface. Arguably, yes, you can dedicate your life to glaze chemistry and find those effects and surfaces, and I am totally here for that personally. But for everyone else, without that kind of time, if your piece is sculptural and won’t be exposed heavily to the elements, cold finishing on bisque ware with acrylics is an option to consider. It all depends on what your vision is for a desired aesthetic outcome, the function of a piece and where it is going to live.
I want to make a note here that if you are cold finishing acrylic onto bisque ware, it is not a food safe piece at all. Just don't do that. Like this needs to be for sculpture or for decorative things, not for things that you're going to try to put liquid in. It's not going to work. No. The answer is no. So moving forward, hehe.
These birds 14 are of the samples of Darwin’s finches, which was a group of passerine birds known for the diversity among their beaks in both form and function. The birds are all highly adapted to fill in specific niche food sources across the Galapagos Islands, though they are thought to all have evolved from the same single species over a million years ago. This group of birds played a major role in the development of the theories on evolution by natural selection.
I researched each of these species for accuracy with a lot of help from eBird.org. Each of these birds is sculpted to scale based on the accepted average size from eBird.org, accounting for shrinkage in the clay. They are so nice to hold. Like they are just really great sizes. It feels like you're holding a little bird. But birds are kind of mean, so they would probably bite you if you were trying to hold them. I don't recommended you do that, unless you're like an ornithologist and that's your job. But anyway, or if it's your pet bird, that's probably cool then But anyway, in painting them, each is going to be colored in male mating plumage. These are mostly LBBs, or “little brown birds” for all the non-birding folks watching. I wanted them to be consistent, and male mating plumage is how I felt I could bring forth the best and most diverse assortment of what this particular collection of birds had to offer.
At the end of the video, I going to have a good look at each bird, as well as the common and scientific names spelled out across the bottom for everybody.
I would really like to sculpt more birds. Some with bright colors maybe, and some of my local favorites. I really love pigeons, maybe a series of pigeons is in my future. Let me know in the comments what your favorite birds are, and if they are local to you or not. I guess it doesn't really matter, but it's interesting to know. Although, I have absolutely no idea what to do with all these bird sculptures. I guess I will have to make some trees or perches for them to sit on. If I made pigeons, I could hide them around the city of Dallas with the real pigeons. So many possibilities, who is to say.
I had originally planned this sculpture to be one piece that was displayed on a double helix where the finches sat on the DNA to help tie all of the science principles together with the birds. It was going to be a hanging piece, but it didn’t work out. I did manage to get the clay to successfully dry and fire in a four-foot spiral, but there were a lot of technical difficulties on getting the piece together. There wasn’t a good way for me to get the dowel rods into the helix. The helix didn’t line up well and the discrepancies caused tension. The entire structure was unstable, making it very clear that I am an artist, and not an engineer, but I think with some work and adjustment anything is possible.
Although things didn’t work out the way I was planning, I still ended up with a collection of 14 lovely little bird sculptures. Life is just like that sometimes. You plan, you live, you reroute, you learn and you go forever forward.
The acrylic paint was a very dry finish by itself. To add durability and a bit of texture, I sealed these birds with a spray on matte Mod Podge. This stuff is really effective as far as water-proofing and durability, but, it’s not the best for people or the planet, so I am going to use with care sparingly.
I found it interesting how much my painting style is much the same on this 3D object compared to how I paint on 2D canvas. Though I am not surprised. My style is a part of how I express myself, and I have been expressing myself with a paintbrush for over ten years now. On my own personal journey of discovery and introspection, it is interesting to see what translates and how it translates and how it all relates back to what I know about myself.
Thank you so much for tuning in this week. At the time of posting this, I am starting preliminary work for a series featuring a bright red, and two variations of black clay. Very exciting stuff. My videos are scheduled one to three months in advance right now, so if you want up to date early access, consider supporting my channel at patreon.com/bluenosetrading.
If you’d like to see my weekly art video, and tons of art shorts, subscribe to this channel, Blue Nose Trading.
Please remember that you are super important, and that you have some pretty rad ideas. I will see you next week!
Kommentare