Prepwork for some mini self-portraits dried while I was away....
Underpainting in acrylic-gouache; hastily scrawled kiln schedules in the background....
Switched over to the "dirty side" of the room so I could break out the powdered glasses.
Testing seven Uroboros (System 96) powdered glasses and some homemade milled colorless frit, plus a 50/50 mixture to see how dilution works. Sandwiched between two pieces of hand-blown cylinder sheet glass.
The kiln is running overnight....
At the studio today: unloading the first batch of kiln tests/future pendant blanks. "Blanks" meaning here that they are unshaped, raw pieces that will eventually be cut, faceted, and polished in a cold shop.
Testing laboratory glass slides with specimen wells, Glassline brand paints, white glue + mica flakes, Uroboros powdered colors and handmade sheet glass (blown cylinders from Spectrum 96).
Also continuing with the salt solutions––picking up and examining yesterday's dried vellums, and pouring new batches onto little plastic sequins to see what sort of half artificial/half crystalline formations we can create.
Carefully staged action shot...
Iridescent little flowers...
Examining one of yesterday's paintings in the sunlight pouring in through the skylight...click the image to see the studio shots.
We then moved on to organization. Over twenty different kinds of hand-dyed cultured pearls in all types of gorgeous nacred pastels and jeweltones, rebagged into glassine envelopes.
We had some sorting of silver and gemstones to do, as well...so I used my folded-silver boat ring from my very first jewelry class as a scoop...
Scars, hairs, African textiles from ASOS and my most favorite birdie scissors.
We've got the "gallery wall" on the close-side wall of the studio up and running.
Finally, my long-awaited copy of Cumbrian Alchemy, featuring the work of my friend/atomic priest Bryan Wilson and his colleague Robert Williams. You can purchase a copy by contacting artshop@cumbria.ac.uk.
I've finally got the "dirty side" of my studio up and running. This is where the hazardous materials, messy moldmaking business, glass dust, enamels, wax etc. live. They are NOT allowed on the clean side of my studio! I picked this up from the age-old darkroom rule that you live and die by, which is wet side/dry side.
I still haven't found a good place for the mica flakes and glitters I like to use, though. They're so invasive they don't even belong in the dirty side, I think. Someday I'll have a boxed-in ventilation booth dedicated just to glitters...
Some sort of pastel crystal rainbow due to a trick of the light.
I've always been a huge fan of the nearly-colorless, white-on-white, especially if it involves sparkle––so, this week I'm revisiting poured paint solutions and substituting salt for pigment instead. I've tried pure oversaturated salt solution, which crystallized beautifully and left cuboids large and small bonded fairly tightly to the paper; I've tried pouring the salt water over pre-existing gouache paintings; finally, I've tried introducing liquid fluorescent pigment into pre-spilled salt water. All three have yielded interesting results.
I'm interested in MSG as a possible additive. The crystals are sharper and more cylindrical in food-serving form, but who knows what kind of fabulous larger formations they may form when diluted and dried?
