Smiley Ball 1

I’m going to use pictures of my smiley balls as filler when I don’t have another 48 birds or other 2D art to share.  They’re high fired, hand built spheres, and I made ten of them. They are in the garden now, making me smile whenever I see them.  I think I would like to …

Continue reading

48 Birds #6 Who Has Fled the Garden?

I started out with a gesso resist technique, using a wash of light brown and a stamped gesso design.  Honestly I can’t remember how it looked, except that I made the mistake of thinking I’d draw a picture on the background and use it as a springboard for another design. There’s a school of thought …

Continue reading

48 Birds #5 Darling Sparrow

I had read about some gesso resist techniques and wanted to try them.  The author, whose article appeared in a magazine called “Apprentice Building Blocks” from Somerset, neglected to mention whether one had to  paint the background with paint before doing the gesso resist, or whether you were to just paint the gesso on plain …

Continue reading

48 Birds #4: The Sparrow Looks Up

For this piece, as with the previous one, I was hoping for a faint scratchy surface texture, like a print from a scratched negative or an etching.  My attempts to do this with beeswax were messy and unsatisfactory, so I decided to use the slight-resist properties of gesso to do the same thing. I had …

Continue reading

Emu-Klear Drum

I had originally intended to finish these drums in time for Jeremy’s birthday, which falls in the last week of February (I began these in January).  I was too worried about cracks along the neck, which you can tell just by looking is going to be a major stress point, so I left them wrapped …

Continue reading