Properties of Clay

There are 7 stages of clay drying and each has different properties

Stage 1) Raw Clay (Earthenware) -This first stage of clay is basically a muddy like powder, it comes in different colours such as black, grey, red and purple. This clay however still contains all the dirt and impurities.

Stage 2) Slip - This is Clay that has enough water in it to make it smooth and runny. Slip is normally used to patch up any holes in ceramic pieces or to join clay together.

Stage 3) Plastic - This is the stage of clay that is the most usable. In this stage it is smooth and soft enough to shape and mold but strong enough not to fall apart.

Stage 4) Leather Hard - This is the stage of clay where ceramics are half way dried, this stage is the best for adding fine detail, holes and handles as the clay will not crumble or split under light pressure.

Stage 5) Bone Dry
This is the stage where all of the water has evaporated out of the clay leaving it very fragile. This is when the clay is most easily damaged because even a slight knock or bump could destroy the whole thing. The clay is then very carefully lifted into the bisque kiln.

Stage 6) Bisque - Bisqued clay is clay that has been fired in a kiln, after this any glaze or decoration can be added to the clay before its final firing.

Stage 7) Fired - After the pottery has been Bisqued, it needs to be fired again. There are lots of different types of final firing, here are 3 of the most common:

• High Fire - This is mainly for functional pottery, like dishes and bowls, and is fired at approximately 2300 degrees to make the glaze harden to a hard glass coating. The entire heating and cooling process of High Fire takes about 3 days. 

• Raku - This process is done in a small outdoor kiln, and the pot is heated until it glows red hot (approximately 1800 degrees) and then immediately taken out of the kiln with tongs and either burning horsehair onto it, or placing it into an enclosed area like a garbage can filled with newspaper, pine needles, sawdust, or any other type of combustible material. This process only takes an hour or so.

• Pit Fire - This process involves digging a hole in the ground, placing your pots in it with wood and sawdust, and lighting it on fire. It takes about 5 or so hours to let the pots get hot enough to turn rock hard.  These pots always come out different, and sometimes need to be fired a couple of times to achieve the type of coloration you desire.

Barbara Rae

Barbara Rae is a Scottish print artist, when we visited the pallant house gallery we saw examples of her collagraph work.

The prints were titled Harbour Night and focused on the sunset in a harbour, she uses a combination of collagraph and etching in her work. The etchings are made on top of the collagraph prints to add an extra sense of character to the work.
The use of colour in her work is very important as it sets the scene and mood and defines the persona of each piece, the colours allow you to see what the artist had in mind when creating the piece.
I am using print techniques in the same way as Barbara Rae by combining techniques to create a better and more advanced image, i am also exploring collagraph, a technique that Barbara Rae has developed.

Collagraph

Equipment and materials:

Card
scissors
textured wallpaper
mesh
string
fabric
craft knife
textured materials
glue 
paper
press
cutting mat



Step by step:

Firstly collect your materials
using glue attach the materials onto your cardboard square
the materials can be cut into desired shapes and sizes
once the glue has set cover the card in a layer of shellac
ink the card plate and place paper on top
run the paper and card through the press and remove paper once finished 


Health and safety:

do not put fingers near press wheel
watch hands when turning press wheel
be cautious when dealing with craft knifes and scissors
do not consume glue


The technique i have explored is collagraph, i have explored collagraph by producing 4 4x4 plates exploring different materials to see what textures and effects they produced.

The qualities and key features of collagraph include relief included in intaglio, abstract and textural print. Its not a good technique however for producing representational work as it is difficult to gain detail. These features are a lot easier to obtain with collagraph than with lino which produces straight and distinctive lines and marks, also easier than mono print which wouldn't pick up as much as the texture but offer a better tonal scale. Painterly and Dry point techniques would differ due to the difference in the types and depth of marks produced as they would be flat or embedded instead of relief. 

With collagraph you are able to produce multiple prints using the same prints however after frequent use the materials will flatten and the plate will not print to the same standard.

The limitations of collagraph are that if too much ink is applied then the print will not come out properly, it is difficult to get different areas of colour, for the plate to work you need an even surface, it is sometimes difficult to stick down certain objects and the print can become faded.

With this workshop the only problem i encountered was sticking down a plastic mesh and it would not stick so i held it on with paperclips.

The strengths of my work were that my colour palette was fairly even and i found it fairly easy attaching most objects, the weakness would be that i did not produce as wide of variety with the plates as i would have liked.

i have used the technique of collagraph in a similar way to Barbara Rae by adding multiple colours to a piece and building up materials onto a single plate.

i will expand on the techniques i have learnt by using new and different materials to further develop my work, i would also combine past and present techniques to make improvements to my style.

Pallant House

On Tuesday the 16th September we visited Pallant House Gallery in Chichester. One of the main artists featured was Barbara Rae with her print works.

The work of Barbara Ray appears to be more abstract than anything else with no clear subject matter present, her work however does feel and look very organic with the way she uses line, shape and the contrast between colours, which in some cases can be very bright yet still give that same effect.

In the gallery I discovered another piece of artwork that interested me. It was titled Regarding Guardian 2 and it was a 3D sculpture by Dhruva Mistry created in 1957. The piece is a rather large statue of a mythical Guardian made from Painted Plaster. i expect a frame of some sort would have been made and then built around.

(picture to follow)