Silly...

[liralen]

... there was an Empty Bowls get together, with lots of kids and parents, and just the primary palette, which I always have trouble with. I was assuming that there would be black and had planned on just doing simple black and white. There was a pine branch and swallows I wanted to do, which would only have required a touch of red and plenty of black. But when we got there there was no black whatsoever. No black glazes, no black mosquitoes (bottles for doing fine lines), and I kind of gave up.



So I did little pastel butterflies, dragonflies, and flower petals on the outside in a six-sided kaleidoscope. They'll be much brighter than I think, I'm sure. But leaves and flowers and buggies and suggestions of flowers and dots and simple, stupid stencil-like stuff. By the time I got to the inside of the bowl I was tired and people were already trying to clean up stuff. I really didn't want to do the inside of the bowl.

Plus the black and brown finally arrived.

So I growled and did a six stroke koi on the inside of the bowl. Oranges, overlaid with a single stroke of red as blood red for the top of the head and back. I mixed in a cross-hatch of reds that suggested scales well enough that I was happy with it. Then a single, shaped dot for the eye and everyone was like... wow.

The head was near the bottom of the bowl, the tail right at the edge. It looks a little like it's lurking in the bottom of the bowl, waiting for something to eat.

I am always amazed by how little the human mind needs to suggest something recognizable. Someone said they took pictures. I want to find the bowl when it's fired and take a picture then, too, as the glazes are always more translucent than I can believe, and I was very careful to start the koi's strokes near the head and back so that the fins and tail and edges would be lighter.



But, yet again, I've done a bowl that is utterly different inside than out, and one hides the presence of the other. But with the half-globe bowls it's really hard to see the inside at the same time as the outside anyway... so it's going to be interesting to see what the supposed "art committee" thinks of it.

Empty Bowls is a community event, where for a month a bunch of people buy bowls from the local Crackpots (a ceramics painting studio) and then donate the finished bowls to the outreach center. The center then throws a soup lunch and everyone gets to take home a bowl. Some of the bowls that are painted are taken by the "art committee" for a silent auction if they're deemed interesting/artistic enough. I really hate *trying* for it, as I have absolutely no control over any of it, other than by putting my name on the bottom of the bowl. So for the last two years I haven't tried. It just happens that for those years every bowl I painted went into the auction, even the ones I thought shouldn't. *laughter*

This will fit that mold.

I also had to take down all the knitted stuff I'd displayed in the art show. It was good, and I have gotten a couple of inquires into commissions, so it was pretty worthwhile doing. Given that most of the stuff that was displayed took at least six months to make, they're being pretty patient clients with deep pockets, so it's going to be interesting, all in all. I will probably have to design an ice dragon sweater based on the Phoenix sometime soon, too.