Preparing for Spring

Porcelain brooches

Winter is the best time for developing new work, I find,  when there is a lull in sales and I need something fresh to put out into the world for when spring eventually arrives.

I wanted to make some new small pieces that I can post economically as sending ceramics can be very expensive, so I developed some drawings of animals that I can print onto clay and add then colour to. They have ended up as a collection of mostly domestic creatures, probably because I spend so much time working from home at this time of year I have unconsciously reflected my surroundings, although I don't actually have a cat...or an alpaca for that matter!

I have been combining the prints with some scraffitto, sponge printing and brushwork on other forms.

I'm also making a lot of tea pots which are selling well and have added this design to tie in with the humming bird design.

Wren its time to start drawing again

Last year I made a clay jigsaw puzzle - just because I could - and put it in the Greenhill exhibition, I had some interesting responses, mostly along the lines of if the pieces were loose and could be played with like a real puzzle people would buy it (because of the complexity of the design I had glued the pieces to a board, it was an exhibition piece after all and who knew people wanted clay jigsaw puzzles?). So after some discussion with my inspired problem solver friend Rose, I have decided to make some smaller puzzles with loose pieces for The Clay Collective exhibition '2D or not 2D'. I'll use the same method of drawing birds, making them in to decals and applying them to the glazed puzzle pieces. Here are the drawings so far...I don't draw as much as I used to but am having a lot of fun with it.