Yesterday, I had an amazingly productive day in my clay studio. When I returned home, I still had enough energy to start a sketch-a-day challenge that I had been threatening to do since New Years. I use the term sketch-a-day loosely – meaning that it might involve traditional sketching but more more likely my efforts will include collage, stamping, painting, and mark making.

These exercises are intended to be quick (less than 15 min) and intuitive with very little thought given to content. I don’t want this challenge to be a huge burden for me…one more thing to add to the “to-do” list. I want this daily practice to offer up another way to add surface interest and to inform my clay work. Even though these quick sketches are way less precious than pots, I still found myself hesitating since this was my first official entry in my brand spanking new sketchbook. I have to get over this….

The clay work above represents some of my first attempts at drawing and stamping on clay. While I really like the way that these look as greenware (unfired for the non-clay readers), not all of them passed muster after glaze firing (I’ll share some photos another day). Another aspect of stamping/drawing on clay is that some of the more successful 2D sketches don’t translate well to a 3d surface. This was a real surprise to me.

What did I use?

1. A used teabag (dried and emptied of its contents)
2. Liquitex stain varnish to collage the tea bag to the paper
3. Hand carved rubber stamps
4. Ink pads (not waterproof)
5. Paint brush
6. Black pen – Pilot  0.5 V-Ball (one of my favorites)
7. And, of course, a sketch book with heavier stock paper intended for water media.

 

I learned something else – the triangular shaped PG Tips tea bags are actually one long piece when you cut the seams – who knew?

~C

p.s. My mom told me that she found the font I’m using to be difficult to read – I want to be user friendly and will be switching it to a sans-serif one shortly.