More Ceramics/Nerikomi

 

This time I used my favourite colours from my test pieces and also incorporated plain white porcelain.

This is how thin I rolled out the porcelain and then I layered it on top of  each other in an alternating pattern and cut the edges to make it straight before rolling it into a spiral.

The problem with this is that the blue was too dry, you can see how it is cracking and not bonding to the white so there's air gaps. It took a lot of rolling out to get rid of the bubbles so it became really thin and long. When I cut it into slices it still had the spiral shape but the lines were wiggly and I think it looks organic but psychedelic. I like the idea of making something quite surreal because the microscopic images I've been looking at have an otherworldly nature.

With my leftover cut-offs of blue and white porcelain I rolled them out creating a swirly pattern which I cut shapes out of with cookie cutters so they have really satisfying clean edges. The circular one is my favourite because it mirrors my microscope photos. I realised that the more clay I used the easier the whole process was so the black and yellow ones started off much bigger and I didn't stretch it out as far. I like the contrast of colours and the X shape reminds me of some of the diatom structures I was looking at. Again I rolled out the spare pieces and cut out a clean circle which has that swirly tie-dye effect. The pink ones were made my stacking white, red and pink alternatively and rolling into a spiral, then cutting into four and putting them back together, but a lot of the structure was lost when I did this. I like the softness of the colours though and the way the lines are fluid and playful.