Underglaze + oil

After the glaze transfers didn't work out, I thought of different ways I could get the image onto the clay. I thought I could project the image onto the clay and then paint it on by hand, however this would have been a lot more time consuming so I decided I would not do this. I then thought of how I could recreate this feeling of water as surface decoration on the clay. I wanted to separate the underglaze using oil in order to create an effect that looked a bit like water. I first tried this by painting the underglaze and oil mixture onto the clay but this did not give the effect that I wanted. What I then discovered worked better was smearing on the mixture using my hands.

I liked the way this turned out and I feel that the resist from the oil resembles water in some way - particularly the way light reflects on moving water. I chose to decorate the larger vase in this way.

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This is really not the precise look of photographic imagery I was originally going for, and in this state I wasn't sure if I liked it. But the sludgy look the glaze has which looks a bit horrible is in some way like the River Lea. The scenery from the river can look idyllic and beautiful (in some way what I wanted this vase to look like) but the reality is, the water quality, especially in the city, is very poor and actually quite disgusting. When I google search 'things found in the river lea', disturbing headlines come up of bodies found all along the river from over the past few years. This river is far from idyllic.

Experimentation with Ceramics

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