A return to Naked Raku!

As the September sale at Blossom Hill Crafts approaches, I have been scrambling to finish up my naked raku pots that have been sitting about. Up first is my Phoenix/Fish pot. Above you see the pot right after it has come out of the burn barrel. The naked raku slip and glaze are still on the pot.

Here is the pot after it has been cleaned off a bit (that's why it's still shiny. It's wet.)

And here is the pot after I added some water color marker to it. Windsor and Newton have come out with a watercolor marker that allows you to put pigment where you like and then spread it out with water. The colors are very saturated and I had a hard time getting it to spread. I think part of the reason why it was so hard is because I'm working on a pot and not on paper. Bisqued pots are quite porous still and suck up water and pigment very fast.

Here is the back side of the Phoenix pot... A fish

And with the color added. I think I might add some light blue to the background of this pot. It will add a bit more to it.

Here's my wave pot. This was the second pot I rakued in this series. The first one had roses on it and I wasn't too pleased with the results. I ended up refiring that one. I'll post photos of that one later.

At any rate, this wave pot is more in the style of what I'd like to do in future. The problem is that it's hard to come up with designs that will cover the whole pot, not take forever to carve out and won't lose too much detail in the firing. I did lose some of the line work where the slip and glaze were too thick.

Another view.

Water color added. One friend didn't like the intensity of the color because it hid the line work and gave suggestions on how she would like to see it done. Maybe I'll do something like that in future. However, I am very pleased with this pot and how it turned out. Personally, I like the saturation of color. It's a pleasing contrast.

Finally, a dragonfly pot. I will be adding some light green and blue to the background of this.

Well, I have 2 days before the studio sale. I think I can get it all done.