No updates from the bonsai this week. Everything there growing good. Watering and feeding on a regular basis. Summer is slowing down and I can feel old man winter's approach. Winter IS coming. But not today.
Instead, I've got mud in my head. I keep thinking about pottery and
working the clay. I get home, find excuses not to touch the clay. Yet as
soon as my hands get muddy, I find it difficult to set the clay down. I did a lot of repetitive pieces with few all new designs.
There's a big difference in re-creating a piece I've done before and
creating something entirely new. Re-creating something is easy. There's
no thinking. It's just a matter of doing it, allowing your hands to do
the work. Creating something entirely new is... it's hard to explain. I
don't have a 'mind's eye'. I can't a picture a 'new' thing. I can base
things on pictures or drawings, but I can't simply 'picture it!'.
Oftentimes I do clay 'doodles'. Random shapes in clay that have no
meaning. This is to 'see' shapes. I was playing around with a clay pot,
seeing how thin I could get the walls on a pinch pot. The edges ended up
being ragged, but I just went with it. I then added really thin
'leaves' to the sides, just to see how it'd look. Finally I added some
feet and some twisty spike to make it look like it was roots coming up
from the bottom. My point is that I did not do this shape on purpose.
The shape just came out. Usually these sort of exploratory pieces come out looking
undisciplined or raw. Raw. Yes, that's what they are.
I had
been working on pottery through the week. One of my pots was a sort of crescent
pot. Then I did a sea urchin. I hadn't made a sea urchin in a long long
time. I ended up making the spines longer than I used to make. Overall,
I'm satisfied with the shape of the crescent and the sea urchin. I also made a Zoidberg, but with a different face, hard to explain. For this Zoidberg, I added suckers to the underside of the legs. Looks pretty
cool, but no one will see the suckers. I'll know they're there though.
Aaron suggested I make a spider pot, which I did. Turned out strange. I
like strange.
And with that, the last of my white clay is now gone. I dropped off this final white batch at the studio. They did a glaze firing since last time I was there. Not sure why, but almost all of my octopots did not survive. The legs were simply snapping off in the center. No cracks, no air pockets, no bad attachments. Just... anyways I'm including a group pictures of the batch survivors:
I've been pre making a few round pinch pots early in the week. This allows me to make them into something
else later in the week. It's been working pretty well. I started using the red clay I bought from Wilderbee Farms; this clay is especially soft, so pre making pots works especially well with this clay. Allows it to harden up and do some cleanup before I add legs. Being that most things I make are based on a round pinch pot, this works especially well.
One thing to mention about my F. religiosa: I potted up the rest of the seedlings that were in the first growing The seedlings are taking up almost 1.25 shelves. Doesn't leave much room for my next batch. I forgot to water them, and batch 2 took a hit.
Last thing to mention: I added an anubia plant, a snail and 3 snakeskin guppies (1m 2f) to the tiny aquarium. Will be a short week and I'll have another weekend update soon.
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