These are two cups I made, nearly identical, with the dragon motif.  They are only two and a half inches tall.  I did the design by painting on wax resist, then dipping in shino.  The other cup turned out much darker, nearly black with trapped carbon.  The darker cup, unfortunately, got broken .  Same clay (Coleman porcelain) same kiln, same glaze, same size, same design.  Drastically different.

This is a small porcelain vessel I made, approximately three inches tall, showing one of the problems I had with painted underglaze.  The underglaze designs are a lot more detailed before the glaze is added.  Later I tried to correct this by spraying, which mars the design less, but ends up being thinner, which makes for a rough surface. After firing, to clean up the blurriness of the design, I painted over it with chinapaints and fired it again.

This is another of the series of porcelain vessels with cobalt I made a couple years ago.  See ‘lidded porcelain vessel with cobalt: fox-man and crows’ for description of technique.

This is one of a series of porcelain vessels I made a couple years ago.  I’ve been using powdered cobalt on porcelain bisque fired to cone 04.  One of the things we tried, in order to reduce fading, was to fire it again before glazing. It didn’t work very well.  I also tried spraying on the clear glaze instead of dipping it.  That, also, didn’t work very well to reduce fading, but it did help cut back on the smearing.  Kurt Weiser does pieces like this frequently, and he uses a midnight blue underglaze instead of powdered cobalt.  I think I should just find out what brand he uses and do that, next time I want to do cobalt painting.

This piece is just under four inches tall. 

I got a new photography setup, so I thought I’d photograph some old pieces I had lying around in my studio.  This piece is one of my favorites, because it’s comfortable to hold and has a nice weight to it, plus the face cheers me up.

This is a high fired stoneware ball, b-mix with Stephen Hill yellow.