Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Creating Slip for my Slip Trailing Sculptures

The process for creating the slip "powder" I use for all of my slip trailing and/ or slipping and scoring is made after crushing and destroying the lessor greenware (un-fired) pieces that never made the cut. 



These are the pieces I create with the slip squeezed threw a hair dye applicator onto a plaster bat.


Breaking apart big pieces of un-fired clay pieces with a large wooden pestle.  



Still breaking the pieces!

Crushing away!

I used to use the Mortar piece that went with the wooden pestle, though I had so much to crush it wouldn't fit so I learned that just rolling the pestle against the table crushed the clay chunks even faster! Yay, learning!

After crushed, the powder gets put through a rusty yet still fine sieve. 


At the fine powder stage, I would normally add it to water but here I am saving it in a large poring plastic tub for later!

The fine powder is later added to water and sieved a second time to make certain that all of the larger chunks of clay are eliminated so the slip can be squeezed out of a tiny hole! I have also added different oxides and tones to color the slip for later work!