Finished Work

I finally got all my work fired and glazed. I'm quite pleased with the individual pieces, though I think I prefer the white glaze to the sandy colour, as it smooths over the bumps better, whereas the sandy one seems to highlight the imperfections. I knew that since I was hand modelling each piece I wouldn't be able to get them absolutely perfect, but I wasn't sure whether to make a feature out of the lines and bumps on the surface or to try and disguise them. Overall, although I think the sandy glaze is more natural, and does have a sort of bony feel to it I prefer the white glaze. It's simpler, and in my opinion makes you pay more attention to the shape of the piece.

 Building the pieces up together is quite tricky. I didn't make them match perfectly so that the structure would be ratehr unstable and fragile, and convey the weak element of the spine; but it does also make building the piece up for display a little trickier! I like the interactvie element to it though, and it is something I would like to work more on.

Overall I am happy with this piece, but I think I could work more on the overall structure of the individual units, to make them look more fragile, and also on how they fit together, to see if I could push this stacking element into something more stimulating.

Final Project

I have been working on the shapes which I decided on to illustrate my ideas on the spine. The first pieces I made were a little too flat when you stacked them up on top of each other, so I tried to twist the shapes more, and make each one individual so they brought a different element to the piece. I still have to finalise the type of glaze I want to use. There is a certain amount of lines left on the surface of each piece, even though I smooth and sand them before firing. I don't know whether to try to cover this with a white glaze, or highlight it to make the pieces look more like bones. I have some small test pieces in the kiln at the moment, so when they come out I will have a better idea of what I want to do with them.