Painting with smoke

This year I’ve decided that I will be concentrating on Raku firing for my ceramics, and I’m starting out with something I haven’t tried before… Naked Raku. When I told my husband what I’d be doing, he showed much more interest than he usually does, but the naked refers to the clay. The technique results in an unglazed piece… not quite as daring as it sounds, but still pretty exciting!

Naked Raku Pendants

So while I’ve been totally obsessed and not doing much else for the past few weeks, I thought I’d share how they are made… I hope you find it interesting! 

I have been researching this technique for a couple of years and there are some amazing ceramic artists who have been kind enough to share their processes to help others. A couple of my favourites are Ashraf Hanna, and Kate & Will Jacobson. Their work is really something to aspire to and they give regular classes demonstrating their techniques. 

Ashraf Hanna

Kate & Will Jacobson

Unfortunately, I’ve never had the opportunity to take a Raku class so everything I have learned has come from what other clay artists have been kind enough to share in their books, and just trying it out. 

Here’s how I’ve taken the techniques and adapted them to work on a smaller scale for my work…

To begin, raku clay is formed in to shapes for pendants, beads and other components. 

Just before they are bone dry, they are burnished with a smooth pebble. This compresses the clay, removes any dints and polishes it.

Burnishing

You can see here the difference between the pieces. One is the rough clay as it’s first formed, the other is smooth and shiny where it has been polished. My burnishing technique isn’t quite as good as others, I’m very impatient and would lose interest going over the same piece 3 times, so I’ve found that burnishing just before the piece is totally dry gives a nice enough sheen for the finished item.

The reason for burnishing is to help the slip/glaze release in the firing process. It also gives the final piece a beautiful finish.

The pieces are bisque fired and once cooled, a layer of slip is applied. Slip is liquid clay. Mine is made from the same clay as I use for making the pendants, by mixing it with water until it becomes a thin liquid and straining out the grog.

Coating with slip

Once the slip is dried, the pieces are then coated with a sacrificial glaze. This is made using basic materials, frit and china clay. It doesn’t have to be fancy as it will all be destroyed in the firing, it's job is just to hold the slip in place during the firing process. Without the glaze the slip would pop off when removed from the kiln and your design would be lost. 

Coating with glaze

Again, the pieces are dried and a rough outline of a design is sketched on to the piece. Using a sharp skewer the design is etched on to the piece scratching through the layers of slip and glaze down to the bare clay. It is better to use a wooden tool to draw the design so that the smooth finish of the clay underneath isn’t scratched.

Etching the design

Now the pieces are ready to go into the kiln. They are fired up to 850oC, taken out and put in to the reduction bin. The bin is filled with sawdust and straw which ignites on contact with the hot pieces and the smoke from the fire colours the pieces where the bare clay has been exposed.

Fire!

After 15 minutes, they are removed from the reduction bin and they look pretty awful.

Hopefully beautiful on the inside.

They are put in to cold water and as they’re still hot, the shock pops off the slip/glaze coating revealing the design on the bare clay.

Naked raku Mackintosh style roses

Cleaning up the pieces

Revealing the design

Once they’re all cleaned up they go in to the oven for half an hour to dry them and remove the smoky smell. For a monochrome finish, they can be waxed for protection and to give them a satin shine.

Naked raku pendant

To add a little bit of colour, I used acrylic paint to wash over some of the white areas in the designs, and then they were sealed with wax to protect them.

Adding colour

You can tell the difference in pieces from the first attempt and the second. The second batch turned out much darker, I think because I used more sawdust in the reduction bin for my second firing, but it could be due to different thicknesses of slip and glaze between the batches, ultimately the whole process of Raku comes down to doing what you can then leaving it up to chance. I love that aspect of the process, you can only control so much, the rest of it is down to the kiln gods!

And when they’re in a good mood, you can get some brilliant results!

The finished pieces

Thanks for reading, and I'd love to hear what new things you're planning to try out in 2016!

How to Spark Inspiration/Motivation, Part 387-D

So, a short and sweet little lesson in sparking inspiration when you are so absolutely unmotivated you could cry! The last few weeks have been totally stressful for me...my day job has been converting to new financial systems and I have had to focus on training and learning an entirely new way of doing my job, which involves sitting at my desk staring at a computer screen. I have been so mind-weary every day, creativity has been lying dormant.

Today after work I decided to just sit at my bead table and look. There were some things that had been sitting there for a while that I just hadn't played with yet. I pulled out a couple of bags from recent purchases and looked at them. Walked away, came back, walked away, etc...

Small raku-fired beads by Keith O'Connor

I saw this pile of raku beads I got from Keith O'Connor's trunk show at my friends house.I remember loving them so much when I saw the stacks of these he had in almost every color of the rainbow. I wanted some of each, but was strapped for cash so chose pairs of my favs.  I intended to used them as pairs in projects...earrings, probably. When I saw them all in a pile like this, though, I thought...don't fight it! Use them all!

Copper bracelet with Keith's gorgeous beads.

I didn't add anything else, just wire-wrapped them with copper wire and made a quick clasp.  Simple, yet totally effective!  Disclaimer, I used a stupid headpin as my charm that wouldn't patina, so I'll have to go back and fix it!

Karen's gorgeous beads!

The second package I picked up was an auction I won at the Ceramic Art Bead Market on FB from our own dear Karen Totten!  I remember when I bid on them how much this color combination moved me.   I have been looking at them and fondling them for a while.

Wrap necklace with Karen's beads, an enameled bead by me, and one of Keith's raku beads.

I have been seeing lots of simple wrap necklaces...beads or other components on each end of a long chain that can be wrapped around the neck or just looped over in front.  I thought this was a cool way to show off gorgeous beads in a different way.  I hope to be creating a few more of these.  Again, pretty simple, yet colorful and unique!

So the crux of today's lesson: You don't have to be inspired or feel creative. Take the time you need. It's okay to walk away from something and come back to it as many times as needed. Trust your first instinct. Take a chance.

Screen Printing on Ceramics

This week I’m on a countdown, myself and my beads will be travelling down to Uttoxeter race course next Thursday to take part in the UK Flame Off. It’s a fantastic show full of everything a bead maker could desire and is a great chance to shop, sell and spend time with friends. 

So all I’ve been doing since we last met is making beads, making beads and making more beads. Today I thought I’d show you my new favourite technique.

Exciting new techniques!

If you’ve followed my posts here on the blog, you may have spotted that I love surface design, and I’ve been working hard to create my own style using the results of lots of experiments. My goal was to create beads with images on them. I love to sketch and wanted to try out putting some of my drawings on to my raku beads and pendants. 

I really enjoy the process of creating, but I’m very impatient. I want quick results that I can easily repeat. So after becoming frustrated with trying to paint designs, I decided to try out screen printing. 

Sketches

The designs were transferred from my sketch book to my computer and I printed a transparency. 

Laser printed transparency

The screen is prepared with a light sensitive emulsion, the transparency is placed over it, and the whole thing is exposed to a bright light for a few minutes.

Exposing the screen

The screen is then washed out and the unexposed areas of the screen are revealed with the design.

All is revealed

I mixed up some ink using black stain, and printed on to tissue paper.

Tissue transfer prints drying

The transfers were cut from the paper and pressed on to clay shapes to make pendants and beads.

Transferring the image

And after bisque firing, they were glazed and raku fired.

Finished screen printed beads & pendants

And a few re-fired with precious metal lustres.

Lustre fired beads

I love how they turned out and I can't wait to make more, I need to get back to sketching... I just have to make a few more beads!

Building a Raku Kiln: Part 1

 Yesterday was the perfect day to start building the new raku kiln.  A few months ago we had a little "incident" and the other raku kiln was destroyed.  Anyway, this gave Colin the opportunity to get creative and build a brand new one!

 The first thing Colin did was assemble a cart.  He wanted a more permanent kiln but it was going to be HEAVY so he needed a way to make it mobile.  He found a gardening cart with a 400 lbs capacity.

Once the cart was finished he started laying out the fire bricks around the tallest of my bead racks.  We needed to make certain it would fit.  He then disassembled the bricks and started laying out the bottom.  High-fire cement was used to keep all the fire bricks together.

This is about how far we (when I say "we" I mean Colin.  I just sat around eating watermelon and "supervising".) got yesterday.  He's going to add another layer of bricks inside for added insulation and he has to build the lid.

I'm hoping to get 2-3 raku firings in between now and August so that I can have some of this at Bead Fest...

I'll share more photos as this kiln gets finished up!

Diana P.
Suburban Girl Studio LLC