Sheep dip

Hi, everyone. There have been so many different things I had to deal with in recent months. I am finally on top of it. Such a nice feeling! Come to think of it, since March I have been buried in paper works, enquiries and all other administrative works that I was not quite able to finish. None of them was a fun, but important. They were not stressful but tedious. Now I can focus on my work and ceramics. That's much nicer! 


Yesterday evening and this evening, I glazed my bisque in the garage (it was chilly today). This time, I have several sheep to glaze. Sheep? You might wonder. If you know my ceramics, I have made all sort of animals but not sheep. 

They are some of the sheep I glazed today. 

There are three reasons for this. First, I want to make a Sheep woman. There is a model for this idea. A lady and her friend were always next to each other in ceramics course. They chatted all of the time of ceramics course for 10 weeks. When one does something the other followed and they did same thing. I was lightly amused by them. Last summer when I happened to see her in a supermarket, I got a vision. Sheep woman. After that, I frequently took our dogs to a small field of sheep. I have digested images over the winter, and made several of them as practice this spring. I have experimented the texture of clay to express fleece. But, I haven't found how to glaze it with the effect. I sent my first one to firing. But its glaze was a bit too thick. So, this time, I varied the thickness of glaze for each sheep to see which would look best. My ceramics are always experimental. 


Sheep are so British to me, and they are everywhere in UK. I feel it is good subject for me to observe and express them. That is the second reason. The third reason is that I have a friend whose son has a kanji  翔, that is Japanese character, which means to fly, in his name. The composition of this kanji is interesting. It has sheep on the left and wing on the right. This also inspired me.      


For these reasons, you might see more sheep on my blog. I am also very keen to glaze the other chameleons I made. But, alas, the Oribe green glaze ran out. We will head out to the a ceramics supply shop this weekend to get all material we will need to make more of it.