For this ceramic project, we were assigned to make wearable adornments. I chose to create charms, that could either be placed on necklace or bracelet cords as jewlery, or as a keychain for your pants pocket a/o backpack. I made seventeen charms in total, though some of them broke slightly, and some of the holes that I poked to put any string or materials through the charm closed up during the kiln firings. However, most of them turned out alright and can be used. Outside of ceramics, I use a lot of blues and greens in my mixed media artwork, and I wanted the ceramic designs for this project to really align with my own artstyle. Out of red clay, I made five designs in total, using a rolling pin, and carving out each design with sharp pins and ceramic tools, cookie-cutter style. The base color of each charm design is sage green.
In order of the slideshow, starting with the second slide, the first design I made were palette charms with different facial expressions on them. For the palette half of the charm, I used various color amaco underglazes, and aligned colors so that they would mimic a rainbow color scheme. I made the faces a splotchy mix of white and maroon. The second design I made were these heart character charms with glasses on them, and a shocked facial expression. I painted their glasses yellow, the inside of their mouths orange, used red and blue underglazes for details, and poked holes around the heart charms, for border engravings. The third design I made were smiling diamond charms, with coloring a little more primary than the other layered design on the rest of the charms. Unlike the other charms, I also played around with more drawn shapes on the diamond charms, mainly blue and red circles. The fourth charm design I made was a totem-like charm, different from the other charms, as it is stand alone and not part of a set. The totem-like charm was originally going to be each charm I made, stacked on top of each other to make one design, but I scrapped a lot of the shapes and ended up witgh three. I used warm toned underglazes, red, orange, yellow, and some blue. Lastly, I made star creature charms. I wanted them to look like they were holding in a laugh, and drew curved smiles. In each end of the star charm, I carved tiny triangles outlined in blue underglaze, yellow dots for their noses, a orange outlines circle to surround their faces.
After the charms’ first bisque firing, I made modifications as needed, cutting out physical parts that were weaker, and carving in spots to the designs that weren’t deep enough yet. Then, I went over each charm with a coat of clear glaze. After its glaze firing, I was really happy with the end result, and is my favorite project to date (closely tied to the yllow pot I made).