Incising and carving....

I had some ideas I have been wanting to try out and this week I had a chance to put them to work... So I started by throwing four different shape vases all with 2 . 5 kg of porcelain...

And here trimmed and feet placed on
 two of the vases...
The third from the left I decided
 to alter slightly by flattening
 the sides...

Here are the four vases, ready to be trimmed...

 Next step is scoring a design on the surface of the vase, the clay is still quite plyable and is not at leather hard. I have found incising is much easier when the clay is still soft not wet but soft definately not leather hard, only because at leather hard it has more of a tendancy to crack or break with pressure so from trial and error it is much easier when it is still soft, it is certainly more forgiving.... I forgot to take photos of the this step on the first vase I did so this is the steps on the fourth vase and in the background are the other three already carved and incised...

A leaf design with veins
highlighted as smaller leaves
 and carved swirls...

Starting the incising process with a sharp scalpel knife,
making sure to keep the blade moving
 ( no stops and starts in the middle of a line)
from start to finish of the line to be cut. It
just keeps the line fresh, crisp and fluid...

After all of the incising is complete the carving is
started and this highlights or defines the leaves and veins and
gives a dimensional feel to the piece...

At this point I just start a gentle clean up of the cut edges on the outside and then the inside with a paint brush and sponge. I also use either a bamboo kebab stick or my pin tool just to check each point of the leaves top and bottom to make sure they are neat and compressed to help them in the drying process so that they are a little more compact and hopefully less likely to crack. As I'm thinking that it would be at these points that the stress would be higher and the most likely place to get hair line cracks if it was going to happen...

So from here the drying process will be slow and then onto bisque firing....  

The first three.... 1. Butterflies and flowers.
2. Leaves and swirls.
3. Roses and leaves

The smallest and fourth now finished and in it's line up with the first three...

This was the very first one I made with a candle inside
to check how it looks...

The inside of the one above...

Butterflies and flowers aglow...

All four lit up... Now I know they look the part the slow drying
process starts and then in for a bisque... Then a natural look
glaze and I can't wait for that...

Thank you for having a look at what I have been up to... Don't forget to pop over to Mudcolony

and see what everyone has been doing this week...

http://mudcolony.blogspot.com.au/

Have a great week!!

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