Ceramic/Asemic

I have been experimenting with glazes and oxides recently. I rolled some tiles in krank clay just explore some finishes…

These are simply white glaze with black oxide brushed on over the top.

There is a lovely effect that can be seen on the image above, where the oxide has been drawn from the brush and created some areas of saturation at the top, and then a real textural effect as the oxides ‘thin out’ towards the end of the stroke.

I was also testing some imprints too. Inspired by the chinese tradition of the ‘chop’  I decided to see if I could achieve a similar effect with a bit of  typography…

These were all from an incomplete set of Cooper Black – an ampersand and a Pilcrow!

Reading List

The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster
Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Sexy Beast by Stan Cattermole
Exile And The Kingdom by Albert Camus

Playlist

Sentimentalist by Sanso-Xtro
Handcream For A Generation by Cornershop
Come Find Yourself by The Fun Lovin’ Criminals
Tree Coloured See by Nobody & Mystic Chords of Memory
Vessel States by Wilderness
Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables by Dead Kennedys
Marquee Moon by Television
Trees Outside The Academy by Thurston Moore
Alice by Tom Waits
Person Pitch by Panda Bear
From The Cradle To The Grave by Subhumans
The Feeding Of The Five Thousand (Second Sitting) by Crass

and all four discs from The Hindustani Raga Guide…

Who Lives In A Pineapple Under The Sea?

As the father of two, Spongebob Squarepants has featured heavily in my life over the past few years. I have to confess that my morning routine includes an episode of Spongebob & co. whilst chewing through my morning muesli. I have been known to watch it at the weekend when the kids are still in bed! This is my homage.

This is not a ‘How To’ guide, just a look behind the scenes…

I had already explored using the pen tool to trace over a wallpaper image (the livetrace tool being somewhat lacking!) and decided to go for a 3D style look without keylines. I have always enjoyed seeing cartoon characters given 3D properies, like Homer Simpson in one of the Treehouse of Horror episode.

I began with the extrude and bevel tool with a fairly extreme perspective. I then mapped some ‘sponge holes’ onto the front. This took a few attempts to get right – if you are not familiar with this software, you have to make this part separately, with any active properties (blending, blur etc) and make it into a symbol before this stage can happen.

As you can see on the next image, I had applied a very slight blur to the sponge holes and this made the edges of the main form look too sharp (for a sponge!)

A two pixel blur was added to the whole form, just taking the edge off the hard vector forms:

The holes on the side were added separately after experimenting with the mapping tool. I had many problems with this as I think the surface area was too complex for the mapping tool. These are just overlayed with a multiply blend. I intended to distort them to fit the contours of the sponge but decided that it looked ok without.

Squarepants. Square. Pants. Squarepants. I used a combination of the extrude and rotate tools, as well as a couple of gradient overlay panels:

Mr. Pants legs were simply four short lines with a revolve applied…

The shoes were not so different, although made of separate pieces…

Back to the body, and then a few trials to establish how to make the arms (not as easy as the legs as they are curved). In the end I used five separate pieces for the right arm. I had spent a while trying the get the gradient tool to to work in a number of ways, but elected to use separate gradient filled shapes with a multiply blend to get the finger shapes to show. The Pathfinder tool was absolutely essential for this.

The left hand was made in a similar way as the exploded image below shows…

The sleeves were simple white shapes revolved:

So onto the face details. I drew out the eyes as concentri circles first and was going to add a radial gradient to them some depth, but then opted for a tricoloured line and a revolve:

I also added a small drop shadow to enhance the 3D effect:

The eyelshes were made in the same way, but each one had to be individually rotated…

For the cheeks I used two ellipses, each with a radial gradient fill. The orange layer on top was set to multiply in order to give it tranparency and interact with the yellow below – this gives is a gentle pink tinge.

The nose? I had to use the mesh tool here, adding highlights and shadows to the vector points around the top and bottom:

At this point it is probably worth having a look at what I have done so far…

The body parts are assembled and given some further accessories (collar & tie) and a paralellogram shadow.

And then the  face begins to emerge…

The screenshot above shows that Spongebob is really coming together – another cheek, and the all-important mouth, and then finally, a Krabby patty!

The mouth was fairly straightforward; mainly gradients, inner glows, dropshadows and the mesh tool on the upper lip…

Then it was off to the galley for some vector cooking!

Again, this was quite straightforward – lots of combined use of the 3D tools with a few overlays, gradients and drop shadows.

I struggled with the lettuce and decided to make use of the Livetrace tool for this part…

And finally, Mr. Squarepants in all his vector glory!

I need to get out more…

Special K!

Now that Frankenstem has been bisque fired, it is time to thinke about the finish. I decided to go with a Raku firing for this – smoke firing that turns the unglazed ceramic black, and in this case, will give a very contrasty crackle to the glazed parts.

I coated each white panel with the special glaze – this will give me strong contrasting shapes in black and white.

I then decided to throw a pot. I have never done this before, nor really ever wanted to, but the mood took me and I was given a crash course. This is my very first attempt:

My second throw was even better and I managed to sculpt some shape into the base:

I’ll keep you informed of their progress…

Several days have now passed, and Frankenstem has been subjected to some harsh smoke firing (Raku) and has been cleaned up for a formal viewing:

Raku firing is prone to disaster, and it is often the case that pieces can crack in the process. This was no exeption – it broke at the weakest part, but if it was going to go, it would have been there…

Nothing that a bit of superglue won’t fix!

The real appeal of Raku is in the quality of the glazing. It  creates layers of clear crackles and underlying black ones where the smoke has penetrated. I ended up photographing lots of this type of thing:

(click on the image for more detail)

But after a while I got to thinking about the visual similarity between the detail in the Raku glaze and its map-like qualities…

Sketchbook Saturday

Some of the things I draw are quite interesting. Some are quite good. Others just ‘are.’ I am not organised enough to be constantly carrying around a particular book, or even consistent enough to fill a book with stuff worth seeing – all of this work was drawn upon whatever was to hand; sometimes books, more often bits of photocopier paper; card offcuts; the back of meeting agendas etc. I have scanned them and superimposed them into an image of a sketchbook just to put them into context – they are not finished pieces, works of art or any form of serious output. It’s the stuff that most of us do, somewhere at some time. The kind of stuff I wish I could fill a sketchbook with.

Every so often I will post a couple of examples, without any explanatory notes or justifications. It’s just another one of the things I do…

Schoolhouse Digital – Corporate Identity

Here is a logo I designed recently for a digital video and photography company run by two excellent and very talented chaps by the names of Ben and Pete.  Rather than document the whole process as I have done with past previous design projects, I have decided to present the Identity Guidelines that explain and support the design framework.

I have simply presented this page for page, which makes it fairly self explanatory…

However, this wouldn’t be a Lestaret post without a bit of ‘behind the scenes’ so here are a number of images developed during the process, some presented, others just for decision making.

                 

The Fall And Rise of the Ceramic Letterforms

Oh yes, it’s about time I got back into this. I rolled out a couple of 20mm thick slabs of krank (gritty) clay the day before to allow them a bit of time to cure and become handlable, before tracing out and cutting two lower case ‘k’s’ and a batch of strips about 50mm wide.

I had decided to make this letterform in the same way as I had the previous ones, but be more experimental with the finishing and glazing. The first stage is to score all of the edges where the strips and the letters meet and then liberally coat with slip – a more liquified version of the same clay.

Each strip is positioned and trimmed to size, removing any excess slip and smoothing out the joins.

This process continues until the ‘walls’ are raised and then the ‘lid’ goes on in the sam way. Sorry for the quality of some of these images but I was using the workshop camera which is a bit knocked about now.

As I was smoothing the joins and straightening the edges I added some black slip – a more decorative version of the slip used to stick everything together – and merged it in with a serrated kidney and various other tools.

At the last point I decided to add a little tension and trim off the part of the stem so that the letterform would be able to sit back on it’s haunches.

I knew that I was being optimistic with the stress on the very thin join, but had hoped that if I was careful… But alas, no. The whole letterform was just too fragile to move, let alone finish, so another direction had to be taken. Before the structure could break and damage either side I carefully cut the stem off:

leaving this typographic ‘relic’ behind. I’ll take this a little further.

But what of the stem? Well I just couldn’t stop myself slicing once I’d started…

And then a mood of remorse descended and I began to rebuild it…

To become FRANKENSTEM  (pause for laughter.)

I coated some of the sides with white slip as I tidied this up, making sure to get some of the edges and corners to stay sharp.

At this point, the clay and slip is still a little too wet so I’ll leave it to dry more overnight and finish off any last details when it is a little firmer.