progressing
"Before" photo of some of the jewelry parts and some of the leaves - you can see many places where the clear glaze didn't cover.
New photo - after glazing them a second time. They are covered in glaze now so they are at least usable. The details are not as sharp and nice as I want though. I think the mistake I made was putting the clear glaze directly over the underglaze on the bisque ware. I should be putting underglaze on before bisque firing and then glaze later. I feel like I am learning ceramics all over again. When you are self taught the lessons come at the price of failures. I always used to be okay with that. Either spend $600 for a class or spend 6 weeks in time learning from mistakes. The thing I think I am learning - will be to put the underglaze on the raw clay and fire it right into the clay at the beginning. The details will be sharper then and stay put - not move and soften with the glaze as it fires - or cause the glaze to crawl.
A couple day's worth of work. The panel frame that I will be filling with mosaic is shown in the upper right of the picture, leaning on some drawers. I've come to the point where I don't like the middle of the design at all and I feel my next step will be to redraw it from scratch. I have some new ideas that I do think will make for a much stronger design. Going to add a wall beside the path in the foreground, a fence and a farm in the distance.
Today I want to take Black Beauty to a bike shop in Meadville and get her adjusted. The gears and chain are not meshing correctly. I heard somewhere that after 500 miles (maybe it was 200?) on a new bike you are supposed to get it looked over and adjusted since all the cables will have stretched a little in that time. I have over 1200 miles on her so I think it is time. When I was biking last night at Lake Wilhelm up the hills it kept on jumping out of gear. Very frustrating to be peddling along and have your foot fly off the pedal with a jerk.