Now and Then

This weekend I am off to Cymru Contemporary Craft Fair in Betws y Coed, this week I have been making more plinths for the work to sit on.  Excited about going but we have an early start to get there as we are travelling all the way from here in Thornton in my friends car, packing that morning then trying to get there on time.

I went into Uni this last week to find out which supplier they user for there materials and the head of course had put up our newspaper article on the base room door which is now shared by the 3D Design Students, which is going to make everything a bit too tight for work space, I'm glad I have finished, though I miss having those steady days of working and easy access to kilns and glaze.

Recently as I have been drawing to develop some new work, I have found myself thinking of my old art school days. I only went to art school for a year, and dropped out after the first year as I was then old enough to be a mature student and had a good enough portfolio to move on to greener grass(or so I considered at the time).  I learnt a lot at art school but never  work out how to apply most of it to personal work.  I have two examples I did recently below as my old sketchbooks are in a bedding box under all my second year ceramics work.

This was an exercise we did on the first day in technical illustration we had to learn how to shade, we did shading like this on proper work later on but or course a bit more controlled using straight edges.  When I was in my second year of ceramics I was obsessed with textures and incised the clay with various textures but it never worked how I wanted it to. I also tried dripping slip, tearing pots in half and all sorts of things to create textures.

Our technician at UCLAN made some really nice textured pieces in porcelain, he would make a tall cylinder, dry it with a hot air gun apply a glip(part slip part glaze as he would put it) then stretch it out until it was a bowl.  They were really nice pieces and one of the very few things he marked as his own work.

This is a continuous line drawing, my life drawing tutor showed us these, he said he did them in art school and then used to calculate the length of the line.  He described it as taking a pencil for a walk, the pencil lines aren't supposed to ever cross or leave the page, back at school I did two or three myself in my A3 sketchbook, this one is only A4 so it would fit on my scanner and took me ages to do, I almost gave up half way through but decided to at stick at it.  I have used continuous line drawings when doing sketches of people on the bus, train  etc, which I need to do more of.

Generally I am unhappy with my level of drawing skills and have been spending a lot of time on it recently from drawing buildings, to people to anything I can when I am out and about with the little one.  My other passion asides  pottery is concept art for films, and games particullar the work of Erik Tiemens whose work is a real inspiritation behind my painterly style.  When I was at high school it was his work and that of Doug Chiang that I wanted to imitate but didn't do art and when off to University to study Chemistry which didn't challenge me how I wanted it to.

Pottery and drawing challenge me every day as I know I don't have the same natural talent for making things as I did for maths and science.

Whats in a mark?

I made a plaster mark for my mug handles a few weeks ago, just something plain and simple. I have a mark coming from America from a company called Clay Stamps I am getting one with my mark on and another with a bobble head red fox for my wife's work. When they arrive I will get some pictures of them and maybe some of Anthea's work too. My mark is simply my initials as I feel the same about marking pots as I do about marking paintings, the mark should try to be as unobtrusive as possible and a full signature is too much like ego.


These are three of the four mug designs I threw to go with my bowls, not happy with these. I threw one today which is a lot shorter and seems to fit the family a little better. I really need to get better at these handles as they just aren't seeming to sit right with me, but I don't know the minimum thickness of handles to go on mugs of any size, looks like a day of pulling handles is going to be coming up in the next month.

These are the bowls from the 12 before 12 challenge I put handles on all of them, they are extruded coils, eventually I would like to roll them out by hand but there is never enough room in the clay room when I am working on these, whenever I am throwing the place is dead, I want to make handles and I have all the second year students watching me. the biscuit ware on the top shelf is all mine from before Christmas and is ever so patiently waiting for me to get some glazing done, especially as another kiln of biscuit ware came out today and now I filled not only my space for work but Anthea's too and she isn't pleased as her foxes are now surrounded by stacks of bowls and mugs.


Isn't it surprising what you find on the camera when you get home, I left my camera on the wheel next to me and Anthea picked it up and started taking pictures of my work and hers and in fact all the pictures taken today are by her. What I didn't realise as she took photos was that she caught this shot of me looking awkward over such a small amount of clay, a mere 400 grams (about 0.9 pounds) I reduced the amount of clay to see if that worked better but I might just go back to around 500 grams.

First Ever Post - A little bit about me

I'm a final year pottery student at the University of Central Lancashire's Northern School of Design. I have been at the University for what feels like forever, I started there back in 2005 on a 3D design course which I didn't like and my wife to be at the time encouraged me to move into clay and that is where I have been ever since discovered my love for clay.

When my son was born I stayed back a year and I am glad I did as it has given me an extra year to really better at throwing and start to develop my own style. I know that there is so much to learn for my craft, but I never want to give it up once I leave education.

My tutors always say I work in a painterly style hence the name, though I love the idea of painting though I have never really been good at it and haven't tried since I was at art school. I do look at a lot of art and follow blogs from quite a range of potters and artists.