37/52 Bird a week - Last baby bird of summer

While most birds lay their eggs in spring or at the beginning of summer, many will also lay more than one brood. This leads to new babies throughout the summer and this week, I saw what I think is the last baby bird of summer:

Last (bronze) baby bird of summer

His nest is in one of the olive trees - and you can see he is a typical hungry baby - beak wide open!  No doubt his parents will be happy when he fledges and can find his own food.......or maybe that will be a sad time?  There are lots of "empty nesters" out there right now - kids gone off to university or start of their adult life.....Maybe the parents will look longing back on those busy times.... Do you have an empty nest?...or is your last baby bird still with you?

PS The baby bird and nest are made from fastfire Bronzclay, in case you were interested.

Here are links to other birds discovered this week:

Expressive birds

So I wonder if you noticed anything different about my bronze bird that I photographed yesterday???

If you look carefully, you may see that, unlike my other birds, this little bronze guy has eye lids and eye brows too!  and yes, a little topknot feather.  Can you see?

I guess my not including eye lids before was an anatomical error as all birds have eye lids. In fact birds have three eye lids - an upper one, a lower one and a nictitating membrane.  Unlike us, however, their moveable lid is the lower one.  As that looks a little odd to us - I gave this guy moveable upper lids instead!

And as for the eyebrows?  Well - no. Birds don't have eyebrows - but I have artistic license!

So how come my new bird has two new anatomical features?  Well, I started a cartooning class last week!  I can't draw and don't particularly want to learn to draw "regular" things - but I thought cartooning might be fun.

When I met my tutor, he'd looked at my website and jewelry etc and he decided that I was a "three dimensional cartoonist!"  I like that phrase!  I started work on drawing cartoons based on Humphrey and Trisha ...... I have a lot to learn but in the process we spoke about expressions and how eye lids and eye brows add to expressions - and voila!  My sculpted birds now have lids and brows so I can start working on different expressions!

I have my second lesson today.  Looking forward to it.  I can see that my sculpting and my cartooning will be switching back and forth with me learning things in one and adding it to the other and vice versa!  And my goal is to be able to show you some little cartoons here on my blog.  Hope they won't cause too many raised eye brows!

Part 2 - Which bronze clay to use? Prometheus, Hadar's or FastFire Bronzclay?

Following on from yesterday's post about our testing out the three types of bronze clay.....

I began with Hadar's bronze clay and made a round tube textured bead, a square tube plain bead, a little songbird and a wing for carving.  The clay took and kept the texture just fine on the round bead.  When it came to the square bead, there was some cracking in the clay, but after it dried, it was easy enough to fill in the cracks and sand it down - although when filling you do lose some of the texture.  The bird was easy to shape and the wings joined relatively easily.  When it came to carving the wing, it was quite difficult to carve - even after I had moistened the surface a little. I also tried carving the square bead but it wasn't easy.

Hadar's Bronze Clay

Next up was Prometheus and I made the same pieces as above.  The Prometheus clay did not seem to hold it's shape or texture.  The texture on the round bead reduced considerably and the shape of the bird slumped so that the base of the bird was just flat where it sat.  It just couldn't hold it's shape.  Making the square bead, there was a lot of cracking and these didn't seem to fill very easily.  Joining was OK both on the seams and the bird however I found I couldn't make a small bird like I could in the other clays - it just didn't seem easy to manipulate in small scale.  Carving, like Hadar's, was difficult and not enjoyable.

I do want to make a comment here about Prometheus.  I tried Prometheus when it first came on the market and it was a joy to work with. I liked it.  Recently I got two more packets and the clay is totally different in every way from my initial packet. I don't know if they have changed the formula or changes occurred as they ramped up production but these last two packets just don't seem to "work" like the first one.  I emailed the manufacturer/supplier after I had tried this new batch a few weeks ago, expressing my disappointment, but they never responded.

Prometheus Bronze clay

Finally - I managed to wrestle the FastFire Bronzclay from Marly to try that.  Wow!  No wonder she didn't want to let it go.  It is a joy to work with.  It takes and keeps texture well and the seams on the beads joined very easily.  There was no cracking on the square bead and the songbird was just as easy as anything. I embedded some bronze wire into the bird too.  The wing was a delight to carve - like running the carver through butter.  What a difference to the other two.  There was no need to moisten the surface or anything.  Just a dream.  I was so enjoying this, I decided to try it out on an "anyone" figure too and he worked just fine.

Fastfire Bronzclay

 You'll have to wait until tomorrow for me to tell you about firing and finishing the three clays.

Mondays with Marly - Taxes and Beginnings

By NEW guest blogger Marly

Marly and Angie own Studio 28 in Waterloo, Ontario Canada.

I’m sitting at the table amidst piles of last year’s receipts coaxing my shy and often timid left brain to step up and make sense of the numbers, tables, percentages, and schedules that make up my income tax return. As I look over a receipt from one of myToronto suppliers, my right brain merrily skips into my head and says, “Remember on that particular trip to Toronto you also went to Massey Hall to hear the Canadian Songwriters Tribute to Neil Young.”  “Oh yes!” I enthusiastically respond, “What a great
concert!” Which inspires me to go over to my computer and click on iTunes...a bit of music in the background to help me get through this tax thing would be perfect! Oh and while I’m here at the computer, I might as well check my email. Ah yes, an email from my dear friend Ruth inviting me to be a guest writer on her blog. What a great opportunity! How exciting!  But wait, now I need to write something!  How does one begin? Looking back at the pile of receipts on the table, I decide that, indeed, this is the perfect time to think about my first guest blog entry.

So let’s go back to spring of 2008. Angie, my good friend and business partner, and I have dabbled in metal clay for a few years, but its when we spend three days with Celie Fago in her lovely Vermont studio, learning about the tear away technique, doming and keum boo, that our excitement about this incredible medium really takes off! 

Lentils Made at Celie’s in Vermont

During our time with her, we are introduced to bronze clay which Celie has been testing for Bill Struve and Rio.  We also learn that she will be teaching the first introductorycourse in bronze clay at the PMC conference that summer. Mmmm.....another exciting opportunity presents itself. Angie is lucky enough to make it in Celie’s bronze clay course which fills up within days of its posting. It is in this course that Angie has the very very good fortune of sitting beside a lovely British woman named Ruth Baillie.  Both of us continue to enjoy her company during the course of the conference, discussing seminars and people we have met each evening over a glass of Ruth’s very own Birdland Merlot. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Ruth, Angie, and Marly at PMC Conference 2008  

First bronze projects by Angie

First bronze project by Ruth

Little do we know that when we say our sad goodbyes at the end of the conference, that we will all be together again in a few months. Wait...what’s that? Oh dear...the left side of my brain is wringing her hands, glancing over to the pile of now neglected receipts, and telling me in a very forced whisper that there are tax deadlines to meet.  I guess, the next chapter of our adventures with Ruth have to wait. But, at least now I know what I’ll be writing about in my second entry. I really wish I had invested in that nifty “receipt reader” thing that Ruth talks about earlier in her blog. I might be a little less reluctant to go back over to the table. Maybe, I should go online and learn more about those receipt
readers, or perhaps go for a walk on this beautiful, sunny day to clear my head a bit before I get back to the numbers...isn’t there some dirty laundry that needs attention?...and so it goes.

New birds

Just spent a couple of days up with my parents in Lincolnshire. We had a lovely day yesterday at the seaside at Sutton on Sea. Whenever we go to the coast in CA, we always look for whales and, to be honest, most times we see some......

So I was joking about seeing whales at Sutton and then saw this big black thing come out of the water. It was quite angular, and if it hadn't gone back under, I'd had tried to convince myself that it was a large piece of wood......but it bobbed underneath and then a few minutes later I saw it again, quite a way down the beach. The rest of the family saw something too.... There was a fisherman there so we asked him what it could be and he said there are sometimes seals in the area - but this was much to big to be a seal........

It remains a mystery - although I was going to check the web in case there was this big report about unusual close up whale sightings just off the coast in Lincolnshire.....They do get whales there and a couple of years ago there were a male and female stranded very close to Sutton on Sea.... So who knows...

Also quite a good birdie day (- which is good as I don't have any whale necklaces or earrings!!!!). A saw a kite, some fast running sandpipers, a curlew and a great blue heron...Yes, I'm a little bit better are bird identification that black blobs in the ocean!!!

So for the birdies - I'll show you my latest little bronze bird. Just a simple little bird, quite elegant in shape.

Finishing some bronze pieces

The bronze seems to be quite popular - I've sold all the pieces I had made so I decided to finish up a few other bronze shapes I had sat in my studio.

The colour of the bronze is very pleasing. I know alot of artists are looking for rainbow patinas and the such, but I actually like the brushed finish, in the soft golden bronze colour. It's just a nice tone and goes well with all skin colours.

The pieces are just simple shapes - not sculptural like my other work, as when I made them, I was just getting used to the product. But as they are simple and made in bronze, and don't take a long time to make - they are very affordable.

I've decided to list them on my smashing darling webstore. I have listed with Smashing Darling for a while now and it was really quiet for ages.....Then I recently looked at my statistics from them for visitors and I was amazed! So I'm now paying some attention to my store there. I think the simplicity of these bronze pieces might work there .... We'll see....

So here are a couple of pieces:

This first one makes me think of elephant trunks! Not quite sure what I'll name it - but I did just go to a safari park this weekend...so I guess it's timely!! It shows some carving in the twisted "trunks".





These two pieces I'm calling "having a ball". I'm not even sure if the phrase "having a ball" is used in the US....??














These are my relic earrings! They have script on both sides - one side in Latin and one side in Greek.....and have gentle cracks on the edges, suggesting they have been dug up from some ancient dig site!



And these are my Asian ladies! I think they look a little like the cone Vietnamese hats....and the hats have an Asian texture on them...

Couple more bronzclay pieces

I did another bronzclay firing this week - and hope to do one more today. The firing all went well and I'm using some of the pieces to experiment on with patinas and different finishes. I just made some simple shapes, such a hair clips etc and my firing today is more sculptural pieces.

This piece is a hair barrette with a design like a row of trees. (Looks like a type of crown in this picture!). It came out of the kiln with more colours on it - but they disappeared quite quickly. Which got me thinking about how to form stable patinas. I now have what my husband calls, a chemistry lab set up in the laundry where I'm working on what colours can come from the bronze....

This piece is one that I started at my pre-conference workshop. It is a reversible necklace with
different text on each side. I had been wondering how to string it - so yesterday tried it with some beads - larger ones in a bronze colour and the smaller ones in the highlighted text colour. I left one edge of the necklace "torn" looking with the idea that the whole piece looks aged. It sort of reminds me of something that has been found in an archeological dig.....

The last piece I made as a book mark - a musical bookmark. It has the impression of grapes and vines on it - but the real joy of this piece is it's sound. Bronze has just such a beautiful tone so I added a couple of tiny bell time shapes to this piece - one on with the square (hidden in this photo) and one on the end of the bookmark. When either of these hit against the square, they make a beautiful tone. I could see myself fiddling with these as I read my book...ringing my "bells" as I read! Hopefully not in a library or somewhere quiet!!

The sound of the bronze is just so pretty - it made me want to do more "sound" pieces...... something to mull over for a while and see where it takes me......

Hopefully I'll have some patina pieces to show soon.

Anyone else out there have some experiences with the bronzclay?

Sending my love

Time for a bit of love! What a way to start the week!

Here are some pieces all about sending love.

The first one is entitled "Special Delivery" and shows a little bird struggling to carry a big red heart. The piece is a brooch. The heart is made from a type of paper clay that dries really hard and tough. I like the brightness of this piece - adding some good colour to the silver. He wants to bring his very special delivery just to you.

The second piece is called "sending my love" and yes, surprise surprise, it shows a bird and a heart!! And the heart is painted red...And it is again a brooch. But yet it is so different from the other one. For one, it isn't three dimensional..but still cute.

And finally a desk buddy I made quite a while ago entitled "just for you". No, it's not a bird and there is no heart! It's a three dimensional something or other - no particular animal - just a character - and he's bring a little flower just for you. He sits on my desk and keeps an eye on me. And now he has a friend in Modesty Max that I made from bronzclay.

So - do these pieces convey their message? Hope you feel like they are sending you some love today! Have a great day!

Bronzclay Update

So I got to spend a bit more time on my bronzclay pieces from the workshop today.

This first one, entitled "Comfort me", was the very first piece I made with the clay. It is a slightly domed circle. I used a tearaway texture for this piece and the script on the circle is from the 23rd Psalm - it includes:
and though I walk in the "shadow" of death, I will "fear no evil"...."rod and your staff"....."comfort me". On the front of the circle is a separate quotation, lengthwise - which says "comfort me".

The bronzclay was fired in coconut carbon for a total length of 9 hours. I love the colours this gave - this soft golden - tones really nicely with "flesh" - and looks great with blonde hair! To finish the piece I brushed it and then highlighted the text to make it more legible.

My second piece is Quentin Quail. He is my latest desk buddy! He will be sitting at my desk, with Mac (my computer) and my other little friends (Robin and Ding...maybe I'll introduce you to them later!). His basic shape I create by hand, adding the wings as separate pieces of clay. I tried some carving on Quentin - adding details to his wings and feathery texture to his chest. The biggest challenge with Quentin was that I tried to combine fine silver wire into his topknot and his legs, with then adding shoes. When you use silver clay, the clay shrinks and grabs hold of the wire strongly. It seems that the bronze is holding on tightly to the silver in Quentin's topknot - but not on his shoes. His legs are secure and his shoes don't fall off - but they do twist....Maybe he is just a dancing quail!! I finished him off by sanding him but I'm waiting for a new polisher to arrive in the mail and then I'll shine Quentin up even more...but for now, he is a nice little desk buddy. He is about an inch tall.

And thirdly I made a bronze flower. I shape the flower by hand, first forming it into a pyramid, then using scissors to cut the petals and then shaping them by hand. Hanging from the flower, to suggest the stamens, is a small bead. I have ordered some bronze cable to make this into a necklace as the gold cable seen here isn't quite the colour - but you get the idea. The photo seems a little glarey as well..... Surprisingly, the flower was the piece I made that didn't have any cracking problems during it's creation. Not sure why - but the other pieces needed quite a bit time to fill the cracks during their construction.

My family and other animals

A few months ago in the spring, we went back to England to see our family. We go back twice a year and spend a couple of weeks catching up with everyone. On this last trip we met up with my sister and her family at her new holiday home at Windrush - Heronslake (be sure the check out her website as I built it!!!). Anyhow, the first evening there we went to the local brasserie with my two nephews, Matthew and Peter.....and so this charm bracelet came about.

I had had the idea of making some silver animals - whimsical animals but wanted them to all have individual names. I'd begun naming a few - but then mentioned it to my nephews and sister as we were sitting over dinner - and the rest of the evening was then taken over with coming up with animal names for all these different animals. I think I could spend a year making animals and I would still not use up the names.

We decided on two names per animal species so that if they were earrings, each would have a different name.

I think the first name that came up was Matt the sheep and Ted and sheep - ie Matted...as in wool???....
Now I'm not going to explain all of them to you - you have to read it and figure it out...... My eldest nephew is Matt - or Matthew - and so after all the naming, and creating the animals, this bracelet became "my family and other animals"!!!!

So - the names - we have:
Matt and Ted the sheep
Curdle and Cud the cows
Trotter and Truffle the pigs
Wattle and Comb the chickens
Welsh the rabbit and his friend Jack (ever had Welsh rarebit?)

and the not on the bracelet...and in many cases not even created yet....we have:

Ebony and Ivory the zebras
Mozzarrella the mouse
Greg and Gruff the goats
Bill and Trill the birds
Claude and Claudia the cats
Dig and Doug the dogs
Pete and Pilchard the penguins (Peter is my nephew!)
Cliff and Bob the seagulls
Gulp and Fin the goldfish (Fin is my brother in law!)
Over and Fore the bears (not my nephews contribution as you can imagine - but their dad!!)
Lionel and Lilly the lambs
Eg and Bert the chickens
Ee and Ore the donkeys
Spike and Needle the hedgehogs
Clip and Clop the horses
Giddy and Up the horses
Crispy and Peking the ducks
Tad and Pole the frogs
Incy and Wincy the spiders

You can tell that we have amusing times when we get together! I have yet to make Peter the penguin - but I was drawing him out yesterday...so he will be the next creation I think. I've sold Matt the sheep, and Matt and Ted the earrings...and Mozzarrella the mouse. And not forgetting of course, Quentin and Queenie the Quails...!!!

Do feel free to offer up more naming opportunities for animals... I'm sure there are plenty more out there....and all I need is more silver... or maybe there are some bronze animals waiting to come out in the new bronzclay????

Conference

It's busy here! Lots of lectures and seminars and friends to have fun with - so no time to blog I'm afraid. I come home Sunday night - so I'll share some more stories then....and hopefully get around to finishing some bronzclay pieces off too. Have a great weekend.

BronzClay II

I had another great day 'playing' with the bronzclay. It was fascinating to see all our pieces come out of the kiln after 9 hours of firing. They were fired with 2 different types of carbon (the pieces are buried in carbon to block oxygen from the firing)- and each one gave differing results in terms of the patina it created on the pieces. My photograph of my pieces - still components - came out worst than yesterday's on my phone - but I'll attach a small one to show the variations:
You'll see that the two circular pieces in the middle are quite different in colour and have dark greens and blues in them - with polished high points showing up in golds (maybe you can't see - but take my word for it!!). They are leaves on one circle and flowers on another and will become earrings....one day. They were fired in the carbon derived from coal and it tends to give the darker colors. The other pieces (apart from the tiny I-don't-know-what at the bottom) - were all fired in carbon from coconut shells. It gives a lovely golden finish.
My birds and more sculptural pieces are firing tonight - and its a mystery to know how they will turn out. There were some surprises today - mostly pleasant - amongst everyone's pieces -and the favorite being some bells and "ringing" pieces! I tried a little noughts and crosses game today, some hand cymbals/chimes...and lots of other little things...can't even remember them all.... Tomorrow we'll pick them up - but won't be able to finish them off and polish them until I get home.

Looking forward to the start of the conference tomorrow.....

BronzClay (Trademark) - or Bronze Clay

So I flew to Chicago yesterday then rented a car - ( why do they always want to give you a minvan when you order a compact??????!!!!!) and drove to Purdue university - West Lafayette in Indiana where I will be for the week for a conference and workshop. This morning I got up at the equivalent of 5am California time and it did not feel good! Anyhow - went to my first day of a two day workshop with Celie Fago - using the brand new product BronzClay. It is just being launched this week here at the conference. It is like the silver clay that I use for my creations - but obviously, is bronze! Only a handful people have ever used it and they were the testers......but it seems that we are really testers too. There aren't answers to the many questions we have - it is new stuff and we need to try and see if something works. Obviously, the testers have come along way and it was really helpful to hear from Celie about her experiments and see her beautiful results. Very inspiring.

Bronzclay is 11% tin and 89% copper along with water and binding materials. And we had a whole day to play with it. Here is a photo of some of things I made - pre-firing and finishing.
Apologies for the photo quality - but I only had my phone with me. Anyhow - you will see some flatter pieces, some curved pieces and some more sculptural pieces (yes, a Bronze version of Quentin sneaked in....if he works out). One of the biggest differences between Bronzclay and silver clay is that when you fire it, you need to deprive it of oxygen. All pieces are therefore fired in activated carbon in the kiln. The whole firing process takes about 9 hours - and so the pieces above are "cooking" as I type.

Here is a photo of the pieces created by the class and just going into their stainless steel container with the carbon.
As bronze is cheaper than silver - alot of us wanted to work larger than normal - without that fear of "wasting" money if it didn't turn out well that goes along with using silver. To that end - Quentin quail in bronze today may be too large to fully sinter in the kiln....but you don't know until you try.

There are two types of activated carbon you can use and depending on which you use, you get different patinas. And I think it is the patinas which are going to make this such a popular product - not only for the artist but for the buyer as well...the lovely green and blues and golds......Hopefully I'll get photos tomorrow to share with you.

Its just great to be at the forefront of new products. I have a whole day to play again tomorrow - so fingers crossed that some of our experiments have worked! We'll learn from them, whatever happens!