Thursday, June 18, 2009

Plumeria Postmortem

My faithful readers (hi mom!) are surely waiting to see pictures of the plumeria tiles now that they have been glazed and fired. If you want to catch up on how I made them, check this post and this post. Overall, I am fairly pleased with them. For someone 9 months into clay, and for first tiles made from a first mold, they're pretty good. I used the same underglazes and clear glaze on top of these tiles so that I could compare the two different clays I used. I believe the Shenandoah and Dogwood clays proved to be about the same.
The green underglaze that I used for the background doesn't like the clear glaze over it, which resulted in a brown or washed out effect in areas. The darker green on the leaves came out much better, and I will probably use it again, but with a different green in the background. I was pleased with the white and yellow parts of the flowers, but next time I make tiles from this mold I will probably spend some more time perfecting each individual tile. At the workshop I was just trying to get several made in a short timeframe. The back of each tile could use some work as well, but since I don't have an air compressor, I'll have to carefully extract them and go back and smooth the surface.

I don't plan to list these prototypes in my Etsy shop, but I have learned a great deal from them and I think the next round will be even better.

3 comments:

Diary of a Madd Weekly Painter said...

I think they are gorgeous tiles. From what I can tell from the pic's is the glaze gives an older, vintage look. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Great work.

loneweever said...

They're beautiful !!!!! And in a roundabout way, souvenirs of your trip to Hawaii .....

You started pottery 9 months ago?

You've Come a Long Way Baby.

ArtPropelled said...

Lovely tiles!