Owl

The design of the owl really made me think hard about what tradeoffs I needed to make to be consistent to my style yet still convey the animal’s key features. Owls have large eyes but my animal jars all have tiny eyes. I ended up deciding to let the design of the underglaze painting show off the owl’s features while maintaining the same style of eyes. This helps the owl jar still feel like a member of the family.

The feathered wings and tail needed lots of attention to get a dynamic yet clean shape. Unfortunately, after the glaze firing, the gaps between the feathers were filled in. I learned the importance of carving away excess glaze powder to not lose important sculpted details.

This owl saved the fate of my pancake jars. When I finally opened up the slightly fused lid from the owl’s body, I noticed that the culprit wasn’t the clear glaze but instead the underglaze. This is when I made the realization that the Amaco teddy bear underglaze has a tendency to fuse to itself or raw clay. For reference, the kiln at the studio is fired to cone 06 for bisque and cone 5 for glaze.

Luckily, I dropped off the pancake jars the same day and quickly took them off the shelves to sponge off the brown glaze from the lids’ contact points. It was time consuming work but worth the extra headaches in the future.