BEE Mine!

• January 27th, 2009 • 0 Comments • fun stuff, pottery •

Part one of my effort to update stuff I do regularly!

Just a sample painted for the store in anticipation of the next major holiday: BEE My Valentine! The lace at the edge is sgraffito, while the bees are done with the same opaque bumpy glaze as the dots. I already saw a young girl copy this one; she did a great job!

Gallery Updates

• January 26th, 2009 • 2 Comments • computers, pottery •

I just completed a rather large gallery update for all of the pottery I’ve been painting at work!

http://pinkfrog.net/fractus/pottery.php

Gallery updates have been too slow in my opinion; I’m in a constant state if dissatisfaction at the ease of updates. Auto-updating galleries such as the kinds I can publish from Aperture are great, but I don’t like the way they have the inability to integrate into the look of the rest of my site. Granted, I’ve considered moving to a platform such as iWeb for all my publishing needs, but again, the versatility isn’t what I’d like.

It’s the same with public galleries such as DeviantArt and Flickr. They’re close to what I’d like, but not quite. My main problem with sites like those is exactly that; they’re on other servers. I don’t have direct control over where my images are located. However, I feel like my current galleries are still lacking; I really have no system set up to tag images with attributes, and the navigation is kind of clunky.

The problem is compounded with galleries I wish to set up that contain massive amounts of images that require updating on a regular basis. As as result, the DPCA Project and Epicycloid Gallery have been caught in a state of limbo for several years because I cannot come up with a satisfactory solution for their operation. Both of these endeavors are dependent on web galleries that can: 1) be updated on a regular basis, 2) provide an image-tagged navigation system, 3) provide a tree navigation system, 4) allow for the viewer to sort the gallery by item type, 5) allow for individual pages that can include a specific information set per image, and 6) be able to tap dance. Ok, fine, I’ll drop the tap dancing, but from all of the flow charts I’ve done, the others are needs I have not been able to meet in an image gallery I can construct myself. No doubt there are coders out there who could easily whip up such a system, but I’m not that sophisticated. My capabilities are limited to cobbling together JavaScript and PHP code chunks, and that’s about it.

Complaining and searching aside, I did manage to find an Automator script that helps me to make thumbnails (the bane of my existance) with the click of a button from Aperture. Hopefully, this will mean more regular updating in the galleries and the blog…

Site Update

• November 14th, 2008 • 0 Comments • pottery •

Oh my goodness, I’ve actually managed to find some spare time and post pictures of one of the many topics keeping me so busy.

My day job is amazingly varied, but one of the fun bits is to paint! I’ve painted a number of things for school auctions, and am starting to build a healthy amount of pieces I’ve done as custom work for folks.

The interesting contrast I’ve found is that most of the work I’m doing (to me, at least) is incredibly simple. However, it actually takes me a while to come up with some of the projects, because they have to be achievable to people with little to no painting background. That is, I can’t just start painting a project for folks to copy, I have to come up with simple steps that achieve an interesting result. This became very apparent to me when I taught my first adult class at the store; a woman tentatively started to work on her project, but when everything was broken down into tiny steps she became quite confident in her work and pleased with the finished product. (Well, almost finished! She’ll come back to see it fired soon!) Simple steps to a complicated-looking result.

That being said, I’ve finally started to post projects I’ve done for the shop: here’s a sampling, the entire gallery can be found here.

It’s Maaaaaagic!

• July 10th, 2008 • 0 Comments • experiments, fun stuff, pottery •

Honestly, these are probably prototypes. I’m still getting used to this whole “painting with glass” thing. The “photographing super-shiny objects” issue is a learning experience as well. In any event! Here is my magical plate and bowl set. Glitter is difficult to photograph in the first place, the glitter detail I put on the unicorn and the fairy don’t seem to photograph well at all! (I promise, they’re all sparkley and cute.)

My intent was to create something just a little cheesy, hence the “Believe in your dreams!” and “Magical Bowl” bits on each plate. I assume the urge to write on stuff will pass; as of now I find the idea of labeling kitchenware hilarious for some reason. How delightfully juvenile.

So I got a job…

• June 5th, 2008 • 0 Comments • fun stuff, jobs, pottery •

What? A job? After months of struggling doing freelance? Actually I love my new job. Without naming names, I work in a paint-your-own ceramics shop. While I’ve never worked with ceramics before (Save that awesome plate I made in middle school art class…) I must say this job is awesome. One, it puts me back in a shop atmosphere. Two, I have the opportunity to teach people something new about art. Three, somehow, I got a boss that actually listens to my opinion rather than nod like a bobble-head doll. Four, did I mention the DISCOUNT? Hello, customized new dishes for my kitchen. Five, I get paid to paint. It dawned on me the other day while I was painting shop samples that someone is paying me to paint. I sat there for three hours intermittently helping customers and painting. For money. Realizations like this require the use of both bold and italics.

While I have been working on various drawings and paintings at home, I present without further ado my first finished ceramic piece, a faux Talavera bowl with a wiener dog on it I painted for what else? Mother’s Day. (My mother absoulutly adores Talavera.)