Hello and welcome back to my channel, Blue Nose Trading. My name is Tori Solis, and today I wanted to share a compound look at the creation of one of my chicken pots. These chicken pots have been, and will continue to be, an ongoing development for me. I love how each series grows, improves and changes.
This chicken is part of a series of speckled buff chickens that I have been working on over the past month. This one I sculpted for this video actually cracked in the kiln, sad day. But her sister is going to stand in for the second half of the video, so no worries.
These chickens start out as a wheel thrown pot. After throwing the base on the wheel, I let the pot firm up so I can trim the bottom of the pot. After trimming, I put the pot back into a damp box, a very damp box, and I let it soften up in the damp box. I let it get back to a more workable state for sculpting.
These take a good part of the day to sculpt just one or two of them. The great thing about my damp box, is that the damp box keeps the clay a perfect state of workability, until I can get to the sculpting part. If you want to see how I made my damp box, I have a really great video for that. Having a damp box is what I would consider an essential part of my work, and you might also find it useful, so I will go ahead and link to that video for anyone who wants to see it.
Once I pull the pot from the damp box, I use a piece of rolled out slab to begin forming the structure that's going to be the head and the neck. I'm really careful to smooth and form this piece. It needs to be even and it needs to be free from any cracking or overly weak points.
Once I'm satisfied with the upper body, I slip and score the body of the pot and the body of the piece that I just made for attachment. I use my fingers to smooth the seam of the attachment, as well as to firmly compress the slip attachment area.
Once I have the base of the chicken complete, I score the entire outside of the pot. I do this to prepare the surface for the feather attachments. I work with fairly wet clay to make the shapes of the feathers that I attach and smooth with my fingers. This part of the process takes quiet a bit of time, but I find that the results are well worth it. I adore the texture that's created by the layering of these clay feathers.
After all the base feathers are attached, I'll start working on the shapes for the wings. I make the pieces for both wings together at the same time. Making them together helps me to ensure that they are going to be symmetrical, or the same on each side.
If the clay where the wings is attached is leather hard, I'll slip and score the attachment points. Sometimes if the clay is still wet where I'm going to attach the wings, I might just skip this step. Most of the time by the time I get to attaching the wings, they are going to need a little bit of slip for extra security.
After the wings are done, I sculpt and attach tail feathers. I always slip and score the attachment for the tail feathers because this particular area has a small surface area for the attachment, and I want to ensure that connection is very secure. Since there is just a small amount of clay making the connection there.
After all the feathers and bird appendages are done, it's time to sculpt the face. This is probably the best part. I rarely have a plan when it comes to sculpting their faces. I typically decide on the spot what sort of expression, feeling, or vibe a chicken is going to have. I save the faces for last, not exactly because they are the best, but because they have the smallest and the most fragile parts. It is all too easy to bump, smoosh, ding, or otherwise ruin a face while I am working on the main body of the chicken.
Once the sculpture is done, I set the pot on a board of HardieBacker to dry for several days before the bisque firing. I really love using HardieBacker boards to dry my pieces because they pull a ton of water out of the bottom of the pot. I feel like this helps them dry more evenly, since I'm not able to flip them over like I do with some other pieces.
After a few days, or weeks, or whenever I have enough dry sculptures to fill my kiln, all these birds are going into a cone 04 bisque firing. My kiln is an old manual Paragon set'n'fire with a kiln sitter. There is no schedule for me. It's done when it's done. I put a cone 04 bar in the kiln sitter, and I just turn it on and say "good luck".
After bisquing the pot's going to be ready for glaze. I'm going to be using the glazes I made for most of the body of the pot. For the face, I'm actually going to be using Mayco stroke and coats. Mayco Stroke and Coats are really great when you need a solid, stable, bright color, that isn't going to move. Their orange and pink are perfect for the details of the face-work for the beak and the comb of my chickens.
Every chicken is different in so many ways. For this chicken, who I've decided to name Margaret by the way, I wanted to use a ton of neutral and natural colors. I also wanted to accentuate and incorporate the beautiful, raw speckled honey color of the unglazed Laguna speckled buff.
For Margaret's feathers, I used: gloss black, waxwing brown, cream breaking rust, gloss white and gold metallic. I applied two coats of each glaze to an assortment of the feathers. I also left a few of her feathers completely unglazed. The idea is that she is going to have a fun, calico type of pattering across her body when she comes out of the firing.
I'm using a paintbrush to carefully paint each feather neatly. This is a time intensive process. I could just dip these chickens into a single color, but I want each of them to reach their full potential of magnificence, so I don't take any shortcuts.
Once I have enough glazed work to fill the kiln, everyone is going to go back in for their final firing. They're going to be fired to around a cone 6. Like I said before, my kiln's an old manual, and sometimes it likes to fire a little extra toasty.
Margaret came out absolutely perfect. I am so in love with everything about how her colors came out. I love her so much actually that I'm going to enter her into the ceramics creative arts contest at the state fair. By the time this video comes out on YouTube, I'll already know the results of the contest. For everyone on Patreon, all my early access homies, I will have the results of the contest around August 25th.
If you'd like to gain early access and help support my channel, you can become a patron of my work at patreon.com/bluenosetrading. If you'd just like to see my videos whenever they come out, you can subscribe to my channel, Blue Nose Trading.
Remember that you're important, and go hug your friends. I'll see you next week.
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