Whoops long time no see! Here’s a big post, though.

Big hares

I made more big hares (I updated the website but the whole point of this feed is that you don’t need to remember to check it so I’m showing it here). I think I’m done with them for now. The goal was to have three/four of them and depending on how you count I have three or four (I sold one. I’m not sure whether it still counts as part of the series now).

Small hares, smoked

And tiny little ones.
They’re fun to do. Faster than the big ones. Expressive and easy enough to synthesize their shape into something sharper and simpler (though I thought making a small version before the big one would help, but figuring out a shape is easier when bigger - or maybe it taking longer gives me more time to think - or maybe I figure it out anew every time I change size, I don’t know)
I made one I Did Not Like so I’ll probably try to make it again to see how I can tweak its shape into something I like. I’ll either recycle the one I Did Not Like or glaze it. I don’t really like using glaze when I love the shape I made, since I fear it’ll cover up the details, but maybe on this one it could give good results. Also the smoking made the owls go from “the most uninteresting thing I have ever made” to “tied for favorite ever” so surface work, it turns out, is important.

Small hares, geometric

Since I did a lot of small hares I tried to make a batch in the same position and they shifted and now I have the geometric ones. I like them. Maybe I should make more sculptures where I make thirty of the same shape, two-three a day every couple days so it has time to settle and shift too.

Small geometric hares, carved

And some have carved then glazed patterns now too. If I make more I may try not carving it before, just glaze, with the same kind of patterns, as it should give the same results (maybe even better) with much less work. I love the mix of glazed and non-glazed areas in clay objects.

Small geometric hares, partly glazed

And some I partly glazed but without patterns. I smoked some of them too, to add visual interest to the unglazed parts.

Small geometric hares, textured

I also made some with clay with more/bigger grog (crumbs of fired clay in the soft clay body; makes it stronger, especially for big sculptures, but less smooth unless you actively smooth it out yourself). I like the contrast between the very smooth glaze, the smoothed clay and the groggy clay.

Medium geometric hares

I tried making geometric hares a bit bigger (about 25 cm tall instead of the previous 6-10) and it went surprisingly fast (comparatively). I’m assuming it’s because I now know how to make them since I made quite a lot small ones, so the part of, huh… Gestual research? Goes much faster.
I surprisingly had to put smoke resist over the glaze; I thought it was smooth enough never to catch smoke but I was proven wrong.

What next

I have several christmas markets from now to mid-december around Paris, France (dates and places here) so I’ll mostly focus on that for a month-ish and most likely produce little - if any - new work.
After that? I’m not sure. The snowwalkers series is mostly done. I could make more of the small ones if they sell well. I could add ptarmigans to the series (wide feet, live in snow, and their scientific name means “hare’s feet”, which appeals to me), both big and small, and figure out the optimal stylisation for them (they are very. Round. Which will be fun to try to make something interesting but still with some edges out of). Maaaaaybe figure out the optimal stylisation for lynxes and snow leopards, as well, since I stopped making them before realizing they could even have an optimal stylisation (which I now have for hares and owls).
Or I could make one of several ideas I have that I was waiting for Snowwalkers to be finished before starting. For one of them I need to decide what surface it’ll use (smoking is nice but I’ve been smoking for over a year and I’m ready to consider a change for another big series - not that I will for sure change. Just, you know. Consider it). For another I need to figure out how my clays react at different temperatures.

(I’ll continue the clay-colored series too, but that’s a slow background thing, not my main series)