Feet of clay

Much of my time is spent puzzling over the properties of clay.  I’m making terracotta maquettes for my MA, small figures which relate somehow to my embroidered drawings, and while they’re fun to make, they’re also irksome as their feet keep cracking (those which have feet – some end at the knee, some go headless).  My problem is that my lazy impatience dictates that they dry too quickly and unevenly: I don’t have the knack, yet, of knowing how much and when to dampen, wrap and unwrap the figures so they can enter the kiln in a state of optimum readiness.

I’m also learning about slip glazes, which I tried yesterday for the first time. We’ll see how they turn out.