At work in my studio...

My friend Becky Zweibel was kind enough to take this picture of me working on the tile last Friday.

Last Stages of the Tile

Everything is in its place ... The additions, textures are finalized and most of the cleanup done. This is the point I decided to stop. Major changes would require remaking too much of the piece and are better saved for another work, minor changes could go on forever in this type of composition. In the end I felt that there was cohesion and flow across the tile (and that the Law of Diminishing Returns was setting in.) I'm also starting to move on mentally to the next project and feeling the need to wrap up.

A good photo is really helpful as I head into the final stage. Several incomplete areas are obvious in the picture, but were missed in the cleanup session. It will only take a few minutes to fix them and then the tile will sit in its plastic wrapping for a few days to even out the moisture in the clay. Then it gets unwrapped and cut into segments before being allowed to dry in preparation for the bisque firing. In the meantime I'm keeping my eyes peeled for cone 6 electric firings so I can test glazes to use on it in the final firing.

Added elements and Ladi Kwali

I made some changes to the tile, adding a raised element on the left side and changing the raised bars on the top right. Much better. I went back to my color sketch to pick up ideas. The vague nature of the drawing really pays off now. Since a lot of it is amorphous, I can let my imagination run and see selective images that are effectively already there and working right. I plan to tap the same source when I start retexturing the raised parts.

I put three pots in the mid-range soda firing with a commercial celadon on them. I'm not very practiced at spraying so we'll see how they turn out. The glaze is one I'm considering for this tile and another one I made earlier. Glazing is a little hair-raising since I have a lot of time and effort invested in the tile. I made a series of mugs with a similar design so I can test, test, test. I seriously doubt I'll take a chance on firing them in an atmospheric kiln... Too much risk of warping and the kilns are notorious for dropping crud into the glaze. The results in soda will be interesting but I think it'll be electric in the end.

On to other things! I have a couple of place settings to make for a Habit for Humanity fund raiser. The theme is "Africa." I've been googling African pottery and thought I might like to do a sort of Egyptian motif, but I stumbled across Nigerian pottery, Ladi Kwali. She is very famous in Nigeria and is even depicted on their currency! The technique is one I have used before... I don't really want to take time right now to figure out something totally new. I think I'll make coil and slab constructions, coat them in underglaze and use scrafitto, maybe some water etching too. The challenge will be to return to my drawings or make new ones to glean content from. I might do some drawings from things in my yard... Lizards, ants, tropical plants, maybe palmetto bugs and then pull some motifs to repeat as bands.

Removing the Texture

After the texture was removed

After comparing the original sketches to the tile as it exists right now, I decided to smooth out all the texture that was created when I sculpted the raised parts. It was just too hard to see what was going on with that much busy-ness on the surface. That took pretty much all afternoon, but now I can really see the contours and decide whether or not I want to change some of the elements, including the outer contour. Right away I'm bothered by the vertical bars at the top, the wider bar especially. One the one hand I don't want to get into a kind of boring regimentation, but one the other hand I feel like it looks awkward like it is. The upper left corner looks better than it did but I'm not happy with the shape overall. Also I want to bring up some of the repeating shapes that step into the distance in the pattern sketch. There's plenty of work to do before it gets cut and dried.

Establishing relative depth in the tile

The tile is at this stage. I had to break for 10 days of Florida Heat - Wood Fire (which was beyond fabulous!) but now I'm back in my own studio. I have spent some time carving the parts I attached to the surface, so now the raised areas relate to the ground level better.

The finalizing begins! Today I'll work on surface textures. I would like the tile to show the same depth of relationships as the drawing. Since some of the ground level shapes are not receeding as well as I would like, I made a new stamp with a star burst pattern that is creating a nice rich embossed pattern. The heavier texture should fall behind the light pineneedle brushing once the glaze is applied. The raised forms will be taken to a relatively even state so I can see how they look untextured. Then I'll go back in and make some decisions. Since the glaze will be a fairly uncomplicated celadon, the textures should separate spatially by simply varying them in a straightforward way (letting the glaze break and pool across the surface to define the forms in space.)

Developing the Motif as a Sketch

Here's my current tile project being developed using the new method.

Original ink drawing

I start with a section of an ink drawing as before. The segment is imported into Sketchbook and I start working it up into a usable model for the tile. The original drawing forms the base layer and subsequent layers are added on top of it, letting me preserve aspects of the sketch intact while altering others freely. Also, layers can be temporarily hidden and merged. You can really experiment and work with the image at a lot of levels with these tools. 

At one point I feel like I need to adjust the design and rotate the underlying photo. You can see the tilted photo under the sketch in the next illustration. I have adjusted the opacity of the photo so that I can just barely see it under the sketch. When I feel like there's enough information in the sketch to move on to the real world, I save a cleaned up version to my photo library. From there it is available across all my devices and I can refer to it as I'm working in whatever way is handy. Drawing apps don't always share well, but hopefully that will be something the developers work on in the future! So, for now: photo library!

Digital sketch layered over photo

Digital sketch cleaned up

Pattern drawn freehand from sketch 

This drawing is going to become a flat tile. For that I plan to use a pattern, so the next step is to draw the image out on newsprint. I like to do this freehand and I don't worry if it departs from the sketch. The sketch is just the basic idea and it evolves as it moves into each phase of the tile-making process. 

Some areas are shaded with pencil to begin establishing spacial relationships, and to indicate which pieces will be dimensional. These are to be cut out of a second slab, numbered and applied on top of the base slab.

At this stage I also adjust the cutting lines, seen here in red. In the digital sketch, they were made on a separate layer. The tile will be cut into parts so that it can be reassembled during mounting. During each stage the cutting pattern changes to accommodate variations in the design.

Clay slabs cut and assembled 

From the pattern I cut and assemble the main design of the tile. Once I'm satisfied with the structure of the composition I begin to use the sketch once again as a source for adding the details and textures that will make the drawing come to life and work with the glaze to give me the finished work of art!

(Note: this project is in process so I will continue to post pictures as it progresses.)

Sketching for Making: Creating and Photographing the Original Art

Moving on to the method as it currently stands, I start as before with an ink drawing that is as close to mindless doodling as I can get at that moment. I believe that drawing while distracted would work best, such as at a restaurant during a conversation or while listening to music. It is important to let the mind be as free as possible, with little involvement from the conscience.

Original ink drawing

Here is an example of why this is necessary: After I made the first in this series of drawings, had worked out the next steps and knew where it would lead, I found that making the next drawing was very difficult. The main obstacle, I soon realized, was me trying to "draw something." My awareness and anticipation were getting in the way, my hand had become self conscious in much the same way as a person does when being closely watched by another who is telling you to act naturally. It just ain't happening...

Scanning the drawing for motifs

So far the method is as before, but next comes the first innovation: using the camera on my iPhone. It occurred to me that instead of cutting out little sections of the drawing, it was better and easier to scan the drawing using the display of my iPhone, then clicking pictures as I go. The obvious advantage being that the selections are fluid and unbounded by context or scale; I can make numerous photos of the same section involving different images together and I can zoom in or out by simply moving the camera. And I can take LOTS of pictures, increasing my chances of finding something that inspires a great project.

Selecting a section of the drawing

Image acquired, a little iCloud magic makes my photos available instantly on all my devices. I switch to my new iPad Air 2 with Sketchbook Pro installed and begin the selection process. After reviewing the photos, the image is imported into Sketchbook as the bottom or reference layer of what will become a multi-layered sketch.

I'm not going to go into any of the technicalities of using graphics software. Any of them will do if you know how to use it well enough to suit your purposes. I use Sketchbook for a number of reasons: it's cheap, it operates easily across all of my mobile devices and my PC. All of the drawings can be shared via the cloud making it fairly seamless to work whenever or wherever I want at any given moment. Personally I find it a bit limited and will eventually move to CorelDraw, but for now it does what I need. Did I mention it's cheap?

One word about choosing software: try to find an app that has "layers." Layers allow you to work over the top of existing art without disturbing what's underneath. Layers can be turned on and off, moved to different positions in the order of the stack, made more or less opaque or simply deleted. Another useful tool is an "eyedropper" which allows you to select a color from the existing drawing and replicate it as the virtual "ink" for your pen or brush tool. Also basic functions such as rotation, translation, scaling and text are incredibly useful. A variety of brushes, pens and textures is great to have as well.

NEXT: Developing the Motif as a Sketch