Post #314834 by VanTiki on Mon, Jun 25, 2007 2:19 PM

On 2007-06-25 11:03, Babalu wrote:
How big is this guy...14" or so? Are you throwing and altering these shapes, or is this a slab construction, or both? What type of clay

Mahalo Babalu!

I'll do my best to answer the questions:

He isn't too big - 14" would be nuts! Even my big Stone God #1 is just over 12" tall. Mt. MonkeyBusiness is around 9" tall - and he'll be shrinking a bit more during firing. As I mentioned earlier I've been worrying that my mugs are getting too big. Sure, they look cool - but I don't want people to avoid them due to shipping costs! Here is a shot with the Official Mug Of Scale:

I'm slab building all these mugs, as I don't own a wheel. I have been playing around with altered wheel-thrown forms such as the pickled heads

but for the most part I am hand-builder as I came into ceramics after learning to sculpt with oil-based clays.

As far as the clay I am using - I have stuck with Laguna's cone 5 Calico clay for a while now and I really like it. Nice off-white color when fired and it has a neat iron oxide stipple that comes thru the glazes. For the Tiles I use a white cone 6 body from Laguna. The pickled head was thrown with a cone 10 clay called "robsbot" or something crazy like that (I'm sure you clay folks will know it - I bought it from a club so I never saw the name in print - I only heard it spoken in mumbles :) ). Everything (except the cone 10 head) gets fired in my home studio L&L Electric kiln. I just pulled Stone God #1 and #2 out of the kiln yesterday and they look great. Now I gotta glaze them!