Getting Inspired: Beach Finds

Pretty Pink Vases - with Glazing Tests

Sometimes I forget how spoilt I am living by the sea. My nearest beach is only a mile away and takes 15 or 20 minutes to walk there. Strangely this 'in between' distance (close but not really close...) feels far enough away to be more than 'just popping down to the beach' and requires at least an hour out of the day and a nice hot thermos of tea to properly appreciate. For this reason I probably don't pop down as often as I'd like to. But when I do go I usually find something to inspire me.

Getting inspiration from the seaside is nothing new of course. Artists are always doing it. And there can be a danger in just repeating what everyone else is doing. So when I look for things to inspire me, I try to look for the 'not-so-obvious'. 

My local beach is mostly shingle, and leans towards the 'small seaside-town/polite walk along the esplanade' side of things rather than remote and windy wilds. Nevertheless, even in a tiny narrow strip of civilised beach there's plenty of little pebbles, shells, driftwood and other shore finds to poke a warm boot at.

Pink Vase Detail - Seaweed and Shells

My latest vases are inspired by a choice of three colours found on my local beach. Pink isn't an obvious colour when you think of the seaside, but there's actually quite a lot of it on my beach. There's plenty of subtle shades of pink in the local shells: these look like a type of sea snail and range from the usual coral shades to unexpected deep maroons. Even some of the grey pebbles have a warm pink tone to them. But most of all there's lots of vibrant pinks and purples in the local seaweed which - once you start looking - pops up everywhere in little clusters. These can look like little pink flowers on the sand or miniature trees draped over the stones.

White is perhaps a more obvious colour to choose. White for the surf, white for the smooth insides of shells and white for chalk pebbles and clouds.

The last colour I chose was the beautiful pale frosted green found in sea-glass. I quite like the idea that pieces of sea-glass are ordinary manmade objects made beautiful by the sea: that being rolled around in the shingle and the waves for years gives them a quality that sets them apart. Part natural, part manmade. And of course being fragments of glass means they fit nicely with the idea of glazing on pots.

Sea-glass and Overlapping Edges

Once I had my three colours - pink, white and pale green - all I had to do was combine them in a design that complemented each other. I chose glaze recipes that were similar in tone (pale) and in texture (glossy and semi-opaque). This allowed them to work with each other as a range, as well as with my existing white glaze - a satin matte. 

I knew even when I was standing on the beach that I would be overlapping the pink and green glazes with the white: just at the edge where they meet. This always gives a small band of extra interest in glazing and fits perfectly with the idea of the shoreline. And then in terms of the form of the vases themselves, well that was easy: it came from the opposite shoreline...

The Other Shore

My new vases, both the Pale Pink and Sea-glass Green, are available for sale in my Folksy and Etsy shops.

Garden Labels: Ceramic Plant Markers

Talking of gardens...! My last blog post was all about my wild flower meadow garden. But I forgot to mention I also grew a few herbs this summer too: some thyme, lavender, mint and marjoram. These I grouped together in pots on the patio. As I was planting them out it crossed my mind that the perfect finishing touch to set them off would be some plant name tags. And this inspired me to make a set of ceramic herb markers - an obvious idea really!

As you can see, they're a simple rustic design. I made them using stoneware clay and some letterpress stamps which I pressed into the clay when still soft. I selected ten of the most common garden herbs and used a plain white glaze to highlight the lettering. They should be quite hard-wearing even in cold weather - and reusable of course. And they look so pretty against different shades of green foliage. 

You can see a listing for these markers in my Etsy shop. I'm hoping a few gardeners will like them, and I think they make a lovely gift set too. I'm planning to make more markers with the names of popular vegetables and summer salads on them as well. All of this is probably a bit summery just as autumn comes around the corner. But autumn is also a time for shed-clearing, seed-buying, tool-cleaning and general garden planning of next year's crop - so I'm just way ahead of myself for once!

Wild Flower Meadow Garden: for the Bees!

Cornflower

Today I thought I'd show off some photos of my summer garden. I don't normally go off-topic on this blog and although it has nothing to do with pots or painting, I've been so pleased with our garden this year I just had to share the results. Shockingly, I also realised I haven't blogged at all throughout the whole of July: so I hope these photos of last month's garden display will make up for that.

In the past five or six years ceramics have taken over most areas of my life: and one of these areas has been the garden. Long ago, before any kilns were installed or bags of clay took up space in corners, I was growing some vegetables and summer salads in my garden, happily pulling up some decent sized parsnips and even having a few successes with mushrooms or the odd little chili plant. But all this greenery requires a lot of attention, weeding and watering which in the end had to go by the wayside in favour of making pots. Pots are very demanding things!

Busy Bees!

By the end of last year the garden had fallen into serious 'disrepair' to the point that one day (inspired by the thought of some exercise) IC decided to pull up every single plant and thoroughly dig over the entire ground. The plan was to have a very low maintenance garden that needed no work at all but which still looked good. So we decided to plant a meadow full of wild flowers especially for all the bees.

Corn Marigolds and Corncockles

This was incredibly easy to do! In fact, once the ground was cleared and most of the weeds pulled up, all that remained was to rake it over a bit and sow the seeds. I purchased the seeds from an Internet site that provides wild flower meadow seed mixes. I chose two mixes full of native plants suitable for all-summer colour and perfect for bees and butterflies. Not all the species made it through to flowering, and probably our original 'home grown' grasses bullied some of them out of a space altogether. But bearing in mind how little preparation we made and how casually I cast the seeds (from a bucket one afternoon in April just before a downpour) I have to say it has been absolutely fabulous.

Secretly I feel it's been our best garden so far - even better than when we grew vegetables. During the whole of the summer drought I didn't have to water any of it, it looked fantastic for weeks, it changed constantly with different species coming through daily and best of all it was full of busy bees!

Corncockle with Corn Poppies in the Background

Here's a link to the site where I bought the seeds by the way. And although I've said this blog post has nothing to do with pots or painting, I have a feeling that this year's garden has already had an influence on me and inspired some creative ideas.

St Ives: Inspiration

I thought I’d do something new today. As you can see from my last blog post I recently went to St Ives for a week. I had a fantastic time and almost overdosed on inspiration. I wanted to blog about my trip some more, but couldn’t decide what to focus on. Should I talk about all the fantastic galleries I went to? Or my visit to the Barbara Hepworth museum? What about Alfred Wallis maybe (especially since I stayed in his cottage!) or something about the Tate…?

But as I was going through all the photos I took, I got distracted. Instead of picking some nice pictures to illustrate a blog post about what I’d seen, I started playing around with the images themselves.

I take lots of photos. In fact I will admit that I’m not really a fan of sketching. It’s probably an outrageous thing for an artist to say! But I’ve always found drawing outdoors a cumbersome way of retaining the ideas I get when walking around. Instead I take photos for reference, and having a digital camera (instead of my old ‘analogue’ SLR) allows me to take literally hundreds of photos without incurring costs. When I’m out and about I can click away, capturing colours, forms and ideas in a fraction of the time it takes to fuss about with pencils, numb fingers and sketchbook pages flapping in the wind.

Anyway, the point is, looking back over my St Ives photos today brought out some interesting ideas. I noticed recurring themes as well as some details which I quickly snapped at the time and moved on from, that now - after some time has passed - seem to stand out. I started putting these together into little groups and then decided to blog about these instead! Here's just a few of them. Because in an odd way these images capture something of what it was like walking around St Ives, soaking in the inspiration. Much better than me waffling on about it! I hope you enjoy them!

See more St Ives pictures on my Flickr Set.

Mid-show Inspiration

As you might know from my last post, I'm currently in the middle of a week-long Christmas show that runs until next Tuesday. Usually I blog before a show to let people know where they can find me, and sometimes afterwards too, just to give an update on how it all went. But this time I thought I'd blog mid-show instead! Because the thing about doing exhibitions and shows, is that between all the packing-of-boxes and setting up and travelling and so on, somehow there's still moments to get inspired and have new ideas.

Above is a composite of some photos I've been taking around the Quarr Abbey grounds - the venue for my current show. It's such a nice venue because whenever I need a break from standing and talking I can get a breath of fresh air for a couple of minutes by taking a quick walk in their lovely gardens. These photos show a few inspiring textures and colours to be found around the grounds including some lovely clean white birch bark pointed out to me by fellow exhibitor Gill. Already these have given me some ideas for making marks in clay - which I'm keen to have a go at. It's frustrating though because I'm going to have to wait a while before I'm free again to start making! Hopefully these photos will remind me of these ideas for when the shows are over.

In the meantime though, here's a photo of my stand for this year's show.

Cabin Fever

When you’re feeling cooped up the best thing to do is to get out and blow away some cobwebs. So last Sunday I packed a thermos full of tea, some sandwiches and took a spontaneous bike ride to the beach.

In my last post I mentioned how I was going to focus more on the creative side of things. (Oh yes, and the painting…) That’s all very well of course, but making yourself sit down and ‘be creative’ doesn’t always work. How may times have I sat staring at a blank canvas wondering what on earth to paint? On days like that I find the only way to cultivate ideas and creativity is to take the pressure off and absorb some new surroundings.

And so my ‘inspirational’ bike ride took me to the tiny seaside village of Gurnard. It’s a difficult place to describe. It’s not really a typical seaside place – there’s something a bit special about it. It’s tiny. It has a tiny bay and river with tiny boats and tiny pebble beaches. But what I like most about Gurnard are the groups of higgledy-piggledy wooden beach cabins that sit right along the coast.

What caught my eye about these particular cabins in the photos above is the stretch of open grass in front of them that runs right to the shore. No nonsense holidaying. And from these angles there’s a nice contrast between the flat grey walls of the functional sheds and those little squares of bright green and blue beyond.

Anyway, I quite liked the feel of these photos so in the evening I spent some time cropping and arranging them into composites like this one - which can be a really useful way of exploring possible compositions. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to do anything further with them yet (it’s been a busy week again!) but I hope to get some suitable sized canvases and maybe paint something from them soon.

Teapot Revisited: or, What Are We Doing This Year?

In the past couple of weeks I’ve had some time to relax away from making pots and painting, and reflect on just how busy 2010 was for me! Pretty much rushed off my feet for most of the year, or so it seemed! And although it’s been really good and I’ve learnt lots of things and had lots of positive feedback from people, in the last few months I’ve been feeling as though things were running away from me a bit: getting swept along in a rush. And so it seems a perfect time – especially since we’re firmly into 2011 already – for me to re-evaluate what I’m doing.

Hence the photos of this teapot. A long time ago, back in March 2010, I made this ‘unexpected teapot’. It was unexpected mostly because it was hand-built (which I don’t really do, being mostly a potter) and also because it was unplanned and fairly spontaneous. And ever since then I’ve been meaning to blog about it when it came out of the kiln. It came out months ago but I never had the time to mention it. So here it is at last: slightly wobbly around the edges for being hand-built, but charmingly so I hope! It’s been reduction fired in a gas kiln and glazed using a clear glaze that allows the natural iron in the clay to show through as a lovely speckled effect. It’s only small – it holds just enough for a single cup of refreshing green tea - but it’s very cute I hope you’ll agree, and for once I decided to keep it all for myself (which is something I rarely do these days!)

But the point I’m trying to make is that this teapot was an experiment - and recently I’ve been feeling that experiments and creativity have been a bit sidelined in all the noisy demands and logistics of running a small art/craft business. It’s probably inevitable at times that the ‘business’ side of things takes over, but I’ve decided that this year I’m going to be focusing much more on developing what I make by getting back to the creative side of things. Get the balance back. At least that’s the plan.

Oh yes, and I really must do some painting too…

Charity Shop Inspirations

I’ve been rummaging around in charity shops lately looking for possible ideas and inspiration. There’s usually a few bits of old crockery, china and general ceramics in charity shops and although most pieces are no longer fashionable (some are truely hideous let’s face it…!) sometimes there’s a piece worth turning upside-down and inspecting if only to work out how it was made (before re-shelving it). And then occasionally there’s something that isn’t made of ceramics but it gets the ideas going anyway. Hence this little pewter jug I found for £1.50 in my local RSPCA shop.

I don’t know anything about pewter. It’s the first piece I’ve ever bought – although the fact it's made of pewter is incidental really because the thing that struck me about it was the little spout. I realize it's a common feature of metalwork to form a triangular hole when adding a separate spout on jugs, coffee pots etc. But in ceramics the instinct when making is to avoid this more complicated route and choose the quick and simple solution; which is to shape a lip on the rim of a jug by smoothing a channel in the clay while the pot is still wet. Of course I've seen examples of ‘hole-and-spout-pouring’ jugs in ceramics before, but it doesn’t feature as a design as often as a shaped spout. So I’ve been toying with the idea of using it; something a bit different and quirky maybe...

Anyway, the point is, it’s a nice little jug I think and it's currently perched on my shelf in the studio (along with some other charity finds) to remind me of potential design ideas. I also bought this little 1958 copy of The Observer’s Book of Painting and Graphic Art. You can’t beat Observer’s.

I just want to say thanks again to Kate at Bluebell and Rosie for featuring my tea bowl in her Folksy Friday today on her lovely blog which you can see here. And also to Helen for featuring my buttons on her Folksy Friday last week on her blog Dizzy Izzy Handmade which you can see here. And finally to Haptree for featuring my raku buttons on Craft Blog UK recently which you can see here.

Thanks guys! Bye for now.