I love watching sculptors create, and I thought you might enjoy watching me create a butterfly woman. So here goes…
Step 1: Create the sculpture from Soldate 60 ceramic clay. Once she’s formed, I wrapped her loosely in plastic and shut her into a “wet box” (i.e. a repurposed old commercial refrigerator that no longer works. WHY? So she’ll dry slowly and evenly. If clay dries too quickly, it cracks.
I waited almost 3 weeks for her to dry enough to be called “greenware.” In this state, she feels dry and sort of powdery, so she went into the electric kiln for her bisque firing.
Step 2: Here, I’ve applied mason’s stains. The face got a reddish stain and the ears, dress, and hat got a blackish stain. The stain was mostly wiped off before I applied 8 under glaze colors to the face. WHY WIPE OFF THE STAIN? Because I only want it in the crevices to add contrast to the colors and highlight the texture of the clay.
I found a photo of a beautiful moth on Pinterest and viewed it on my Kindle device as I did the under glazing.
Under glazes have 3 ingredients: pigment, clay, & water. Glazes contain silica, alumina, flux, & colorant.
I have about 40 under glazes & glazes in my arsenal, so I chose those which most closely matched the colors in the photo. Painting with under glaze is challenging because it’s like painting with mud! It’s tricky to get subtle colocations. Her lips look white because of the clear glaze I put on them: I like my sculptures’ lips to look shiny. (Once she’s cone 5 fired to about 2160 degrees F, the glaze will become clear and she’ll have kissable-looking lips.) The only other “glaze” on her, thus far, is the gray-colored bodies of the moths. The firing should turn them to a mottled brown, but we’ll have to wait and see because glazes are notorious for NOT coloring up as expected! The humidity in the air, the sculpture’s closeness to the sides of the kiln, and even proximity to other glazed sculptures in the kiln, can impact the final color, so I’ve got my fingers crossed. She’s not quite ready to go in the kiln yet…
The butterflies colors are actually painted on with under glaze (a mixture of clay, pigment, and water) instead of paint. When the sculpture is fired in the kiln, (maybe next week) the colors will permanently be part of the sculpture. Sometimes, I add acrylic paints, metallic pencils, and pastel pigments to the sculpture AFTER it’s fired. I don’t know if I’ll do that with this sculpture… It all depends on where the Muses take me.
I love that you’ve explained your process. It’s very interesting. And how do you do the butterfly applications so that they are absolutely flush with each piece and look painted, rather than applied?
Sent from my iPhone
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Ah…NOW I understand your question. (I thought you wanted to know about the under glaze painting I do on my large “Butterfly Women.”) You were actually referring to the highly-detailed smaller butterflies I add to the sculptures once they’re fired. Well… that’s a little secret. 😉