January 2017 – Critters & Tales

Adventures in Wren Tiles

Late December I received an order for a wren tile. While making the one that was ordered I played around with other wren tiles.. playing with texture and form. I wanted to share the process here.

I rolled out soft slabs of clay, using a rolling pin. I have learned from Chandlier that rolling and flipping tiles, gives them so many memories, that they then to be stronger and lie flatter than tiles I have made before using a slab roller. I have been experimenting with different methods since 2004, and am really enjoying the tactile nature of hand rolling the slab.

For this set of 5 tiles I played with differant sculpting techniques, from simply carving the picture onto a harden to soft leather hard slap to sculpting softer slaps into sharper relief, creating more depth:

wren-lg-grnware — Carved Soft Leather Hard Tile

wren-burlap-grnware — Sculpted Soft Tile

I then hand painted with underglazes the tiles:

Greenware Wren - Under glazed — Greenware Wren – Under glazed

Unfired Wren in Birth Tree - Underglazed and ready for Bisque Fire — Unfired Wren in Birth Tree – Underglazed and ready for Bisque Fire

The tiles are then bisque fired, cooled, and airbrush sprayed with clear glaze. They are then fired to a low cone ^6 in an electric kiln, so they retain their colour and have a glossy finish.

You can view the Finished Tiles on Molly’s Critters ETSY site:

https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/507238547/winter-wren-tile-ceramic-tile-5-12-art

I have been spending time mostly on my ETSY site – MollyCritters. In the last year. Keeping that up to date with images of the miniature animals that I have been making, inspired by last year’s February Challenge.

My newest additions are my Turkey Vulture: Miniatures, Earrings, Pendants and Pins. You can see them by clicking on the link.

Here is a small selection of what I have been working on: