… or, saving shots by going artsy…

Not all photos are created equal, especially if you’re an amateur photog like me who asks my competent but limited point-and-shoot digital camera to do things it wasn’t meant to do, like capture images of cryptic birds high in trees with too many leaves against the light on an overcast day through a fogged-up scope (see previous potoo posts) in a hurry.

And, some birds don’t have the courtesy to pose standing still six feet away in the open in the light for an hour while some fudge-fingered camera-camel like me tries to get a shot off before they get on with their lives finding scarce food, competing for mates, and evading swift-grasping predators.

<< app-altered digital image of an Orange-billed sparrow (photo and alteration A.Shock).  Orange-billed sparrows (Arremon aurantiirostris) are striking but rather skulking sparrows inhabiting moist woodlands from southern Mexico to northern South America, not terribly uncommon or hard to see but tough to photo.  A bold black-and-white head pattern, a lovely olive back, golden epaulette and neon orange bill make them distinctive as they hop about the shadowy forest floor in small flocks.

So, not all photos are created equal.  I have lots of “unequal” photos from trips, including this last Costa Rica visit.  Despite expert bird-finding leadership turning up an unexpected number of fabulous sightings by eye, dim and moisty cloud forests, furtive species (and you know who you are, Silvery-fronted tapaculo), and awkwardly-wielded umbrellas all cut down the number of useful pix to post here.  Some species (Quetzales for instance) I missed entirely; others, such as the Orange-billed sparrow, I only got blurry, distant, or otherwise unusable images of.  Photoshop (even the archaic version I’m still using) and iPhoto are both hugely helpful, and have saved many a photo for publication.  But now I have new tools — cribs, if you insist — to produce internet-ready images for this space from unpromising jpegs.  (Let me add FYI, in case the reader hasn’t read the fine print at threestarowl.com, that this is not a commercial blog, and I receive no compensation whatever for testing, using, praising, demonstrating, criticizing, or even just mentioning any product, service, or company).

A recent fairly unintentional acquisition of an iPad has given me tools that are similar to Adobe Illustrator and its kin, but are even more user-friendly: SketchmeeHD, SketchbookPro, and TypeDrawing.  Here is the step-by-step process by which I used these apps to turn an unusable jpeg image into a lively illustration for this post:

<< Far left, original unaltered shot of Orange-billed sparrow: subject too small to see.  Near left, cropped to zoom, the colorful plumage and bill are captured, but the lack of focus due to movement and low light is painfully evident.  Verdict: not publishable in either form.

So, I sicced the iPad app “SketchmeeHD” on the cropped version of the original jpeg.  This cool application renders an original image into an algorhythmically-generated series of layered colors and strokes, as if it were drawn from colored pencil.  It’s easy and quick for the operator (and entertaining, as the image is produced in stages as if being drawn before your eyes by an invisible hand), and nearly but not entirely idiot-proof: there are choices to make, such as opacity, density and substrait.

<< These were the results. It looks adequate artistically (click to enlarge to see pencil-marks), but it’s a bit mechanical looking, sterile.  Annoyingly, but not surprisingly, the lack of focus was faithfully transmitted from the source image, and not magically cured.  Worse, from a birder’s point of view — and probably a bird’s, too — all the distinctive colors have been muted to the point of dullness.  Where’s the olive back?  The golden epaulette?  The eye? The eponymous orange bill, for crying out loud? These are Important Characteristics, Field Marks, and not to be done without, even if this is not a field guide.  Especially if they’re only eradicated by the mere randomness of digital manipulation.  Verdict: insufficient improvement, unpublishable.

But, I have recourse.  At this point, I opened the SketchmeeHD-altered jpeg with SketchbookPro, another iPad app.  By “drawing” with my finger on the iPad’s interactive screen and selecting parameters such as color, point type, width and opacity, I was able to restore liveliness and color to the automatically-generated “pencil strokes” by adding my own hand-controlled digital marks which, even through the electronic medium, supply the human touch, visible in the finished version.

<< The final step was to use the app TypeDrawing to add the bird name caption.  This app allows you to enter type in a color, size, font of choice and place it in your image; the path of your finger on the screen determines the line and position of the text.

Verdict: Publishable illustration of Orange-billed sparrow.

The photos I use on this site, whether taken by me or others, are minimally altered for clear viewing, and never “faked” (except for fictional effect and with full disclosure). Altering photos to prove the identification or occurrence of a bird in a particular place or time is obviously just wrong (for instance, my Maroon-chested dove shots are unaltered except for cropping to enlarge the bird, and the video is entirely unaltered).  Images in this blog, for the most part, are intended to tell a story, please the reader (and myself), and provide visual interest besides text.  Most are digital photos.  Some, like the joyfully garish Resplendent Quetzal image are produced entirely from scratch from a blank “page” with SketchbookPro, driven by the touch-interaction of the iPad screen with my nail-bitten finger.

By contrast, an image like the Orange-billed sparrow above is heavily altered — in fact, it’s published only because of my ability to alter it. I do “real drawings” too with pencil, colored pencil, and water color, and to me the apps are not going to replace those techniques — they’re just a different medium than those more traditional paper-born tools, with different limitations and different advantages. Maybe you’re comfortable with this process, maybe not.  Possibly, by posting the techniques behind the results, I’ve made readers think less of a finished product like the Orange-billed sparrow image, as not being real “art”, or requiring less skill than a “real drawing”.  That’s up to everyone to decide for themselves.  Personally, I consider it illustration, and I’m thrilled to be able to present a pleasing visual image of a lovely creature that otherwise would have remained uselessly stuck in the craw of my computer.

…our aphid-infested herb garden.

Last week, we found a lady bug (AKA lady beetle, lady bird beetle) wandering around on the ground; we scooped her up and put her on a cilantro plant badly infested with aphids.  A few days later, the flower stalks of the plant were alive with the black-and-orange alligator-like larvae of the ladybug.  There were so many aphids on these stems, the larvae stuck around, pupated, and hatched into mint new beetles.  Here’s the process in photos (A & E Shock).

We didn’t think to look for eggs, so the first thing we saw was about two dozen larvae slurping up aphids on the cilantro plant.  In the picture on the right >>, the final instar of a larva (lower) is attaching itself to the stem in preparation of pupating.  The critter above it, which looks like a wrinkly beetle, is what it becomes: a pupa, waiting for the beetle inside to reach adulthood.

<< The next photo shows a newly-emerged adult beetle clinging to its empty pupal husk.  The unripe tomato color of its wings deepens as it dries, possibly in response to UV exposure.  Also, ghostly gray dots appear and darken along with the elytra.  The wings, pale yellow and transluscent, retract fully under the elytra, and the beetle is ready to trundle — or fly — off.

The photo below shows two empty pupal cases, the sun shining through them and split open like… well, like invertebrate pupal cases, abandoned where their larvae attached to the stem.

Finally, the familiar mature, deep red-orange, sun-spotted lady bugs spread out, looking for food and mates to start the cycle all over again (below).

Hard not to appreciate the aphids giving up their sticky little plant-sucking lives for such a delightful result.  And, thanks, ladybugs, for clearing out the thuggish aphids.  Not to anthropomorphize or anything…

A while back, I posted about my process for making horned lizard bowls (affectionately known as Horny toads) from clay.  Here are the next few steps, all shown in one photo, below.

To the right is a now completely assembled and textured horned lizard, in the leather hard stage, drying.  In the center is a bone dry and partially tinted lizard — note that the clay is now a lighter buff.  I use a sponge and mute slip colors to give the textured skin a mottled appearance, like a horned lizard’s camo-flecked pelt.  (You may remember that slip is a paint-like water and clay mixture with mineral oxides and stains added.)   The colors, which look very contrasty and unnatural at this point, will calm down and become more subtle during firing.  Normally, adding slip is done no later than the leather hard stage to avoid flaking, but the refined slips I use have no problems hanging on.  On the left is a completed horned lizard awaiting its first, or bisque, firing. I’ve added the ants with a very fine brush (a 00 squirrel liner), also in slips.  This is a touchy job: the fine work requires a fairly long process of painting delicate lines — the more ants, the longer the work time — and a lot of handling of a bone dry piece with pointy sticky-outy bits.  If you’ve worked with clay you know that this bone-dry phase (where all the liquid water has evaporated from the clay body) is when a piece is at its most fragile.  On top of that, if something like a horn, a toe or a leg snaps off, it is difficult or even impossible to reattach it trustworthily.  Not that… ahem… that ever happens, or if it did I would admit it… These guys, Regal Horned Lizards, have 10 coronal horns, and so I have to be careful while “anting” them.

<< A favorite teeshirt of E’s, a mimbres horned lizard design.  Nice depiction of the lateral spiny scales along its flanks.

A note on the ants.  They are Pogonomyrmex, a genus of harvester ants, called Pogos for short, understandably.  These are the guys you see issuing forth from their nests, with every seed and scrap of vegetation gleaned clean to the grit for a 5 meter radius around the entrance.  They have a potent and painful bite, but despite that, they are Horned lizards’ most favoritest thing to eat.  It’s tough to capture their essence in a sludgy, opaque medium like clay slip, because they’re waxy like tropical fruit: sort of clear but satiny, too.  I can get close to the effect by depicting them with highlights in white on their red bodies.

Pogonomyrmex ants photographed at Kartchner Caverns State Park (A.Shock)   >>

They’re extraordinary animals: physically very strong, and focused in their social pursuits, with big bolster-like heads (which appear to be larger than their abdomens) sporting impressive grasping mouthparts you would have no trouble seeing with your naked eye, if you got close enough.  Or, you can just click on the photo above — which I call Pogos Agogo — and look at the solitary ant to the lower left.

If you love excellent up-your-nose close-up photos of ants (and who doesn’t?) check out the site of Alex Wild, myrmecologist, or studier of ants.  Better still click here to see his photos of Pogo ants in particular, to get a much better view of the fearsome mouthparts than in my photo above.

Etymological side-bar. In Homer’s Iliad, Achilles’ posse were the Myrmidons. μύρμηξ, myrmex, is ant in Greek.

You can see finished horned lizard bowls in the Three Star Owl Shop.

A new batch of clay horned lizards under way — early steps:

From top to bottom:

1) Rough out body shape by pinching; head and tail included in starting clay lump.

2) Create appendages: horns, limbs.  Allow to “set up” or slightly stiffen, while: refining body shape of liz.

3) Further refine body shape; note detail in head, side fringe.

The next steps are where time starts becoming a factor — these guys won’t “hatch” for quite a while yet. Stay tuned!

(Photos A.Shock)

Gila monsters (Heloderma suspectum) are large stumpy lizards with bright handsome markings that are both cryptic and aposematic simultaneously, and whose hands look like neoprene wetsuit gloves with claws.  They are remarkable for being one of only two venomous lizard species in the world.  They live in the Sonoran and southern Great Basin Deserts and love to eat quail eggs, nestling birds and mammals, and other slow-moving prey items. (Below: captive gila monster on a wooden schoolhouse floor, photo A.Shock)

Approximately life-sized clay Gila Monster “bowls” are items I only make one or two of per year or so. They’re quite time-consuming, since they’re textured, slipped, and glazed pretty much beaded scale by beaded scale.  Here’s one now :

1)  I form a blob of clay that looks like a gila monster.  This early stage is the time to get any sinuousness in the tail, neck and belly, so the clay “remembers” it.  Then it’s time to put the wet lump aside to set up, or stiffen slightly, so that it can be shaped further.  Sponges help hold a pose, if desired.  >>

2)  As the water leaves it, the clay becomes more self-supporting.  While waiting for this to happen, I make legs — oddly spindly for such a stout body — with blocked out feet, to stiffen for adding later.  I also hollow out two thick places in the monster body, to aid in drying: the head, and the base of the tail.  This also makes the completed piece lighter and better balanced.  It is important to make a tiny, invisible passage into the hollow part from the outside, to let air escape during firing, or there could be an explosion.  <<

3)   With the clay slightly stiffer, I smooth the shape into its final form, including carving the toes from the blocked-out “hands”, and rounding the belly “bowl” part.  This shape causes herp boys to giggle, because it makes the lizard look like roadkill to those with scavenging permits for heloderm pelts.  From my point of view, it makes the piece functional, if desired: an Effigy Vessel, and not just a representation.

4)  The next step is to attach the legs, and texture the skin.  This must be done at a particular point of dryness, when the clay is still wet enough to accept the stamps I use to make the “nail-heads” in the skin (Heloderma means “nail-skin”), but stiff enough to hold up to the handling and pressure of stamping it.  Then it’s waiting for it to be bone-dry for slipping (right).  >>

The belly-texture, which looks like pink-and-black Indian corn on the cob, is carved into the clay rather than stamped — this is particularly time-consuming, especially for a part that isn’t seen very frequently.  Early on, I searched the web for a reference photo for Gi-Mo belly-scales, and never found one.  Fortunately, I persuaded a handler at a wildlife education event to flip a live one up for photos (she held it vertically, not upside-down), and got this great shot, which tells me all I need to know about what the unders of a monster look like, including vent details (<< left).  You can just see the heavy-duty cowhide welding gloves the handler was wearing; they were covered with black half-moons: venom-marks from previous crabby bites.  <<

5)  Slipping an item bone dry is slightly risky, as adding water to a piece at this point can cause cracking.  But adding slip to a dry surface gives a crisper, less texture-obscuring coating.  I use a combo of commercial under-glazes and slips I make in the studio.  It’s necessary at this point to choose the subspecies: the banded H.s. cinctum from the northern part of its range, or H.s. suspectum from the southern part, which has a more complicated reticulated pattern.  This one is kind of a combo. >>

6) After bisquing, I glaze the piece with dots (another labor and time-intensive step), each dot on the raised nail-head part of the texture, with a combination of black and pinkish-orange glazes.  After it’s fired, this adds depth of color and a glint to the lizard’s skin, similar to the fresh skin of a newly-molted lizard.  Sometimes, I add a leather tongue, if the monster’s mouth has been made slightly opened.  I’m looking into making a fully-open mouth next time, with wire teeth, giving it a really venomous-looking gape.  Here’s a shot of the finished version, a little more bulbous than an authentic lizard, but — after all, it’s a bowl:

Etymology

As mentioned above, Heloderma means “nail-skin”, for the fact that the monster’s skin looks studded or beaded rather than scaled.  suspectum, the species name, comes from the fact that early herpetologists were uncertain if the animal were venomous or not, and only suspected it was because of anecdotal accounts of its potentially lethal bite.  Eventually it was confirmed by laboratory experiments, and dissection, which revealed the large venom glands in the lower jaw.

Check out more info about the natural history of these lizards here.

All photos A.Shock

Everybody in the world has posted their version of the Miniature Watercolor Box, usually ingeniously created from any flat metal tin, often Altoids, sometimes Velamints, or others (see here, here, and here, just for a few examples of many).  These projects are all well-described and illustrated. I hereby add my version, but will only add a couple of tips I think are an improvement on what others have already shown.

As a hiker/backpacker, I’m always looking for a way to carry along sketching and watercolor or gouache supplies that doesn’t take up too much volume or weigh too much. (Or cost too much: commercially made ones are available at artist’s suppliers but seem exorbitant, if pretty cool.) Not all hikes yield usable painting or drawing time, and I want to carry something that I won’t begrudge space to if I don’t get around to using it. So I was enthralled by the mint-tin plein-air kits I saw on the Web.  It’s just the kind of project to seize my imagination, so off I went.  Which brings up the first tip: if this is your kind of project, beware taking up more time constructing your kits (or posting about them!) than painting with them — and I speak from experience — it’s easy to go there.  Although, the preparation can be big fun and have its own rewards.

The basic idea is to use empty, flat, metal boxes (such as those in the top photo in various stages of the process) to carry small containers (like contact lens cups, or polymer clay depressions, or purpose-made watercolor half-pans) filled with tube watercolors pre-squeezed out into them and allowed to dry.  The dried colors can be re-wet and used to paint, just like commercially available pan watercolors.  But with a customized mint-tin box, you can choose your own brands and colors, or easily switch them out for landscape, botanical, or portrait projects — whatever you like. (Second tip — don’t glue your pans permanently in place, as some folks recommend.  If they’re inconveniently loose, fasten them down with something temporary, like double-sided tape or that gummy product they sell; or, wedge them in with a bit of sponge or paper towel, which would be useful anyway for blotting. You want to be able to take them out to change or clean.)  Many people like to accompany these tiny paint-boxes with water-brushes like those made by Niji and Sakura, which have water reservoirs in their barrels, so they don’t have to carry extra water in a bottle. (The photo on the right shows the insides of boxes in various stages, the top one awaiting enameling, the other two enameled and awaiting paint selections.)

I don’t think I’m the only one who’s been saving metal Altoids tins for years with the idea that some day they’d come in handy.  Well, this is that day.  It turns out the older ones are best — the ones with the flat lids, without the product name embossed in the lid (like the one below on the left, painted with a red anti-rust primer).  The embossing is fancy, but since the inner lid becomes your mixing surface, a flat one is better (more about fixing that in a minute).

The inner lids of most brands are silver like the top one in the photo above — those are usable, but it’s easier to see your colors if you’re mixing on white. Some tins are already white inside. A few folks have inserted a portion of a plastic mixing tray here; good, but there’s both extra weight and extra work to cut it out of an existing watercolor palette (although you do get to wield your Dremel tool).  Others spray paint the surface white.  That’s the solution I went with, but here’s my next Valuable Tip: don’t just use white spray paint, use spray-on Appliance Enamel, found with the spray paints at hardware or DIY stores. It’s perfect — stain resistant, glossy, very white, quick drying, and rust proof.  It was miraculous to watch a metallic surface become pure white, shiny, and even in just 2-3 coats. I couldn’t stop using the stuff — the cats were lucky they didn’t end up slick and white.  Don’t forget to mask the outside with some tape before spraying.  If you want to obliterate the product labeling on the outside of your tin, use regular indoor-outdoor spray paint for that — I’ve been doing that after spraying the inside (mask it so that slick white surface isn’t contaminated).

Next tip, about indented lids: if you have an embossed tin lid, your mixing surface will have dents that cause color mixtures to pool.  If this bothers you, start by filling these dents on the inside of the lid with a waterproof product.  I use a modeling product called Apoxie Sculpt.  Just follow the instructions; you can smooth it out with a wet fingertip and then sand when dry.  Polymer clay would work as well, but needs to be oven-cured.  Remember to do your infilling before using the Appliance enamel.  This adds a level of complication to the project, both because of having to do the leveling and procuring the product, but I know your ingenuity is up to it.  If not, just forget it and find a non-embossed tin — they’re out there, but not Altoids, I don’t think — or, use the embossed lid anyway.  It’s not the end of the world. (The photo on the right, below, shows an embossed lid box filled and awaiting enameling, the other box is complete; it’s the rust-colored Altoids gum box above — you can see that the indentations of the lettering have been filled and the lid now has a smooth mixing surface).

Where to put the paints. Since I don’t wear contacts lenses and don’t have access to old lens cups, I was going to make my own half-pans with polymer clay to hold the paints, but I found I didn’t have the patience to make as many as I would need.  Using a solid pad of clay and making paint depressions in it is a good solution, but not for me: I wanted to be able to change out individual colors.  So I went for purpose-made plastic watercolor pans and half-pans, which wedge snugly into mint tins in various combinations.  Unfortunately, I found that individual empty pans are not easy to find, currently.  Jerry’s Artarama has them in their catalog, but as long as I’ve been working on the project, they’ve been out of stock.  I finally found another supplier, Natural Pigments, a cool vendor in Willetts, CA, who specializes in pigments and supplies for people making their own paints.  They have empty pans available for a good price, but frankly their shipping fees are mysteriously high for such lightweight items.  Still, beggars can’t be choosers, and that’s who I’ve been buying from.  Consider that another hot tip, with a caveat (shipping price).

Now you’re ready to configure your pans geometrically in your prepared tin, and select your palette — both tasks similar to scattering rice in front of a vampire: there are those who obsess on these things.  I won’t presume to dispense advice on color choice, but just a warning: the smaller the tin, the fewer your colors, the harder the choice, for most.

Let me finish off by saying that if this is the kind of project that floats your boat, there are many possibilities: different sizes of tins (to accommodate larger and smaller palettes); traveling tins for gouache (non-acrylic gouaches are re-wettable like watercolors and like them can be squeezed into pans and allowed to dry); and gifts for artist friends, with or without the paints (some artists are picky about their color choices).  Now that Altoids has introduced Smalls, there’s a Really Tiny Tin to challenge your minimalist palette selection.  And finally, modern mint-boxes are great, but how cool would vintage metal boxes be?!  I’m thinking Kiwi shoe polish, for one…

Gaze upon Sierra Vista, in south eastern Arizona, where the beautiful Huachuca Mountains beetle over the fast food restaurants and motels of the busy town.  Not visible in this shot, but also beetling, is the everpresent and mysterious white surveillance blimp.  One day, I will find out about the white blimp.  Maybe today.

The natural beauty of the region is not far away; below is a view of the foothills of the Whetstone Mountains just north of Sierra Vista.  The landscape here is transitional between the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts, and is high enough to be more grassland and thornscrub than desert.  But this trail in Kartchner Caverns State Park has ocotillo, agave (in bloom) and barrel cactus, and a mix of desert and arid scrubland birds, like Curve-billed thrasher, Greater roadrunner and Varied bunting.  (Not that I’m seeing many birds — inexplicably, I forgot my binox!  I guess I’ll have to be an artist this weekend, and not a birder…)  The landscape is lush and green, even in a moderate monsoon year.  Most of the rainfall of the entire year falls during the summer monsoon season.

Southwest Wings Birding and Nature Festival is in full swing and Three Star Owl is in the thick of things. Yesterday was the first day of the Art Fair and Nature Exposition, and lots of people came for the vendors and artists as well as the birds.  Purchases were made: owls, javelinas, black-headed grosbeaks, and gila monsters found nice new homes.  Peek into the Saguaro Room at the Windemere Hotel, and the first thing you see is the Three Star Owl booth.  (Really, why is it always so hard to get a good booth shot?  In person, the set-up looks quite nice.)  My only sorrow is that the hotel hasn’t turned on the twinkle lights buried in the tulle swagging overhead, left over from somebody’s wedding party.

(All photos A.Shock)

Days are getting short until Three Star Owl’s third appearance at Southwest Wings Birding and Nature Festival, and I’m in a groove, making pieces for the event.  As posted, I’ve been making mugs, and also owls.  Lots of owls.  Even more owls than usual.

So recently I turned to the hairy side of Sonoran fauna, and have been doing Javelinas.  Javelina items are popular with Three Star Owl clients, both Arizonans and visitors to the desert.  Interestingly, it’s often people who have lived their lives in the less urban areas of AZ who are NOT fans of the rooting, tusk-bearing mammal: they may have grown up thinking of them as pesky neighbors, and are weary of battling them over landscaping, gardens, and garbage, or are tired of sewing up the hound.

But in general, javelinas have lots of fans.  I was thrilled when a herd temporarily moved into our neighborhood a few years ago. They were flooded out of their usual habitat during a rainy year when the Salt River swamped the Goodding’s willow woods growing up in its channelized banks.  They did a bit of damage in yards, including ours, but I also still remember the thrill of hearing clicking sounds coming up the street, and looking up to see a mama with two quite young piglets following her!

Javelinas are not true pigs: they are pig-like mammals in the peccary family, Tayassuidae, and have a New World origin as opposed to pigs and swine, family Suidae, which originated in the Old World.  Our javelinas are also called Collared Peccaries, and live in a wide geographical range and a variety of habitats in the arid Southwestern U.S.  There are three other species of peccary in the Americas, which live throughout Central and South America: White-lipped, Chacoan, and Giant Peccaries.

Three Star Owl will be offering Javelina candle-holders and salt and pepper shakers for your table.  Here’s a colored pencil drawing of a pair of shakers in progress.  It’s not the drawing that’s “unfinished” it’s the clay objects, which are in two stages of completion, still in wet clay.  One is modeled and textured, the other not yet detailed or textured.  The shaker holes are the nostrils at the end of their snouts, and each one is re-fillable through neat rubber plugs in their bellies.

And here is a larger candle-holder, completed. The salt and peppers will have the same coloration, matte slips and oxides, with a little sparkle in the eye.

(Photos: top, javelina dirt-napping at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, E.Shock; javelina in our front garden, munching spring wildflowers, A.Shock; colored pencil sketch on recycled, speckled paper, A.Shock; Three Star Owl javelina candle holder, A.Shock)

I’m now in heavy production mode for the upcoming Southwest Wings Birding and Nature Festival in southeastern Arizona (see Events for details).  Some of the objects I’m making in small batches are smooth-surfaced mugs for glazing bird portraits on.  Flat-bottomed, hand-built (as opposed to wheel-thrown), and intended for daily use, these mugs have proven popular items at nature festivals and among Three Star Owl’s birding clientele.  Who wouldn’t want to drink their favorite beverage out of their favorite bird mug?

I recently finished a batch for a client with a home in the Colorado Rockies, and here are a few shots of the process.  One of the reasons I’d like to share these photos is so folks can have an idea of the amount of work that goes into these mugs, which have three images of a species on each cup.

The mugs start out as flat rectangular slabs of clay that I make with a rolling pin and hardwood slats from the “home improvement center” as guides for thickness: very high tech.  (Many potters have slab rollers in their studios, which are fabulous items for making clay flat, but they’re big, and I’m not giving the swamp cooler the boot when a rolling pin and some wood molding will do.)  Then I curl the clay rectangles into a cylinder, seal up the side seam, add a slab base, a rim coil and a coil handle, and dry them very slowly over a period of several days.

After they’re bisqued, I draw the outline sketch of the chosen bird with regular no.2 graphite pencil right on to the clay.  This is convenient because I can erase pencil lines or whole drawings if they don’t go as planned (although nothing eats through erasers like rubbing on bisqued clay!), but I don’t have to remove the lines before the final firing: the temperature in the kiln is sufficiently hot to burn off the pencil completely.  The photo above gives a general idea of the tools used for glazing; the one to the right shows the roughed-in pencil sketch for a Green-tailed towhee.  (Remember to click on any image you’d like a closer look at).

The next step is glazing the interior: that happens before glazing the images on the outside, so the glaze doesn’t drip down a finished bird while pouring out the extra from the mug’s interior.

Next, I brush the glazes on.  This is like painting, without the advantage of being able to see what the image will look like with its proper colors.  This is because most raw glazes have very little in common visually with their finished, fired selves.  They go from chalky, pastel flat patches to shiny, brightly hued areas often with brush strokes visible where the thickness of the glaze varies.  These two photos show the difference between a male Western tanager, before and after:

Each mug has an image of the bird on each side, often the male on one side and the female on the other, and a thumbnail sketch, usually a profile portrait of the bird, on the bottom.  The bottom image must be done with matte slips, so they don’t stick to the kiln shelves during firing.

This batch of birds is spoken for, but if you’d like some of your own, contact me and I’d be happy to make you your own, with your own choice of birds (for details click on Shop).  Or, come visit Three Star Owl in Sierra Vista and see what’s in stock at Southwest Wings this August.

(all photos A.Shock)

…in which Galactic Possum battles the Celestial Army of Campervans and nearly always loses.  Nearby constellation Ferafelis vorax waits to feast on the carnage.  Visible only in the Southern Hemisphere.

(A.Shock 2009, 6″x9″ Watercolor, gouache and charcoal)