Today I’m playing with underglaze and glaze making handmade ceramic tile for a community art bench. Here are images of the stages where I apply underglaze, glaze, and finally fire the tiles in the kiln and the resultant brilliantly colored handmade ceramic tiles.
I have several projects that are billable and getting them done allows me to finish a commission and receive payment for it. Then I have many creative projects of my own that are incubating and are at various stages of doneness. Ranging from still being idea psychic babies and are merely thoughts in my head and some are at the stage of being on paper somewhere. Some at the stage of having the design drawn out enough that I can start creating it and some are at various stages of being done in terms of having an armature for a sculpture ready or having the tiles bisqued but not glazed for a mosaic mural, etc.
Orange ceramic glaze in squeeze bottle Makes it easy to draw fine lines are using Ceramic at glaze.
This is a mosaic garden art bench that I’ve been working on for a couple of years in my spare time. The bisque-fired handmaid tiles have been sitting in a box asking for attention – today I gave them some and they reward me with creative pleasure. I think the tiles at this stage look like cookies that are being frosted. The ceramic glaze and underglazes will start off being intensely colored when wet and then as they dry out they get powdery and pastel. So by the time they dry out they look like frosted cookies.
These are ready to fire in the kiln once the glaze dries.
The kiln fired handmade ceramic coneflowers are ready to be incorporated into the mosaic.
