soo.... I've been in the studio.

Busy busy.

The one octopus pot that was hiding in the studio still hasn't been fired. Soon, I imagine. I have multiple octopus pots that I'm going to high fire (cone 10). Still awaiting the dragon high fire. Very anxious to see how they turn out.

As of this writing, I have two fish sculptures and three or four pots on the raku shelf, waiting to dance in the raku kiln. The pots harken back a few years ago, when I was going for pots with ultra-smooth surfaces. I'm doing these based on a request. All raku pieces have my trademark combination of raku and low-fire crystal glazes.

I decided to ignore the broken pieces. For now. So much to do, so little time.

Awaiting their bisque firing are multiple pots: a couple 'turk' pots, a couple round pots, two 'primitive' pots, a 'rocket' pot, a couple free form pots, a couple of fish sculptures, and a couple of goblin heads.

In case anyone cares, I'm back from vacation mode. I went to San Diego for a week with the family, did the whole Sea World and beach thing. For a week I was very active, being out and about from about 10am until 10pm. Just non stop activity. Lots of eating, but lots and lots and being active.

So now I'm back to work. And I'm back to the clay studio. Most importantly, I'm back to creating as much clay as possible. I had with me one octopus clay pot that I recently did, along with a smaller piece. I took it in to the Dragon, and hand built a few more items:

two fish
an octopus pot
Mishy pointed out that I had a few pieces that I had forgotten about, so I also had a few pieces to glaze:
an octopus pot with horns
two dragon heads
a sea urchin pot
a primitive dragon whistle
a couple of sea slugs
a broken fish

I used high fire glaze on the octopus pot. One of the dragon heads was a little broken (tongue was broken). Rather than toss this item, I decided to experiment a little. I dipped this dragon head in high fire Robin Egg glaze. I then used a sponge to remove most of the glaze from the raised edges, highlighting the details of the dragon head. I'm really anxious to see how this will turn out!

The other pieces I will get to eventually. The other dragon head will most likely be raku fired, the sea urchin might go high fire. As for the broken fish, we'll see. Maybe I'll use it to experiment.