This gives you a sense of scale of how small Taboo really is. Sneeze and boink! -- there goes a leg!Thanks to good ol' Mom helping me to (again) clean out the garage yesterday, I've finally been able to get back to ceramic work! While I intend to glaze the piles of tiles that have sat forlornly for months, I've...well...perhaps it's spring in the air, but I've gone and done something crazy (at least with my experience level with ceramics) -- I've started to glaze a Taboo! This tiny piece is so delicate, with teeny legs everywhere and a tail that sticks out in an unsettling way from a tiny dock. With bisque, this is a recipe for disaster. So I have to really pay attention to what I'm doing, which is a challenge because I'm naturally uncoordinated. I'm a born klutz. If there's a door jam, I'll walk into it. If there's a horse to fall off, I'm on it (but not for long!). If there's a glass to knock-over, I'm there. It's my super power.
But I didn't stop there. Oh no. I decided to glaze something rather tricky, especially on something so tiny: A homozygous tobiano with gobs of "ink spots" (also called "cat-tracking"). I'm basing his pattern on two snazzy horses, Ima Switch Hitter and Royal Dreamwalker. Wish me luck -- oodles of luck. Nebulous clouds of luck. Clearly, this project is a big, swollen "we'll see how far I can hold off impending bisque cataclysm."
But I didn't stop there. Oh no. I decided to glaze something rather tricky, especially on something so tiny: A homozygous tobiano with gobs of "ink spots" (also called "cat-tracking"). I'm basing his pattern on two snazzy horses, Ima Switch Hitter and Royal Dreamwalker. Wish me luck -- oodles of luck. Nebulous clouds of luck. Clearly, this project is a big, swollen "we'll see how far I can hold off impending bisque cataclysm."
Here he is with his Miskit® applied (the orange stuff). This is a liquid rubber we use to mask off those areas want to be white. I'll apply plastic wrap to his legs and tail when it dries, so they stay white, too. I think picking the masking off those bits would tempt too much that dreaded sound in ceramics, "BINK!" No thank you!I know all this is a bit ambitious, but I'm dying to try some ideas for the mapping I've been mulling over. I want to achieve that speckled, smudged, shadowed look in glaze. Ever since I began writing that series on painting conventions for The Boat, I'm jazzed to experiment with new methods to see if I can better match what I see in life more. So if all goes well, I hope to have him up for auction sometime next week. Please pray for me. No binking -- amen!
"Dare to be naive." ~ Buckminster Fuller
