clay & 2D art: tableware & a line is a dot that went for a walk

After my PD on Monday and Tuesday, I was able to spend a good chunk of hours in the ceramics classroom. I brought home this mismatched butter box.

I nixed the idea of making a new top for the bottom dish. Instead I'll make a rectangular plant pot to fit, but I will make another bottom for the lid below. 

Time to break out the shrink ruler. Average shrinkage is 12%, give or take that 2%. I loaded the kiln and handbuilt on a Friday 3 slab bowls to join the 2 test bowls I made the day before by slumping electric brown clay over plaster molds and managed to glaze during the school rally this cone 10 mug.

 

After an intense and exhausting Monday and Tuesday, I worked on my Art 300 assignment. Paul Klee said, "A drawing is simply a line going for a walk," or is it, "A line is a dot that's gone for a walk"? Anyway I spent a lot of time last week studying other artists' line work and copying them. I was not happy with my thumbnails of curved lines, but I managed to prep the assignment by painting 2 pages of my Bristol pad with black gouache. It looks surprisingly washed out and less opaque under the glare of my dining room late.

I drafted (and completed) the horizontal and vertical lines and the diagonal lines assignment. I played with perspective and the vanishing point in a "drawing." I played it safe on the diagonal lines assignment which was inspired by a modern quilt. 

I sketched a lot of curved lines in my sketchbook. A LOT. And you can see I gravitate to ocean waves, not just in pottery surfaces but also on a flat surface.

I agonized a lot on the mixed lines variation. I wanted to make a landscape though I stuck to the rule of not cutting out shapes and using only straight horizontal and vertical lines. I need more horizontal lines in my composition. That corner cloud will need lines of rain, no rain lines around the rainbow, but maybe dots to suggest mist. I think the clouds are not a shape, but just curved because of the white space within them. Diagonal lines were easy to to integrate into the mountains. And the vertical lines will be rainfall.

And I love the curved lines of my waves. I'll include straight horizontal lines or bits of horizon in between the mountains and to the right of the smaller mountain.

January was all about trying to go dry. I probably drank two whole bottles of wine in the whole month, which is comparatively moderate when I used to easily drink 4 bottles of wine in week. Dayum. I was a fucking alcoholic.

Anyway I have decided February will be about eating even more plant-forward meals like the avocado and sprouts sandwich I ate on a Saturday. Before drafting my 2-D main assignments this afternoon, I made a Dan Dan noodle bowl with oyster mushrooms rather than ground pork. And because I am almost out of bok choy, I stir fried Savoy cabbage to eat with the noodles. I am so lucky to have the color green in my month of vegetarianism rather than beige and brown foods.