I began a new project this week. It is to design a series of laser toner decals to use for the mugs, bowls and other functional pieces I plan to throw in the new year. It begins with cats and will expand to bears, dogs, bunnies and other creatures.
Some of you will recognize these drawings as being of the Staffordshire cats that were posted in Collector. They make for very cooperative models compared to the living kind. The drawings themselves were done in layers in adobe sketch.
By the time the tenth drawing was finished, I needed to see fired results. After some trial and error getting 2017 software to communicate clearly with a circa 2000 printer, I gave a decal do-over to some old inventory as can be seen here.
There is more work to be done on some of the ‘sponge painted’ cats. They need to have more clearly defined edges. There is a second decal firing coming out today with heads set in the centre of plainly glazed bowls. They may give a better indication of how the drawings look on their own without the distraction of a patterned background.
Sadly, my hopes of putting these mugs out for sale have been dashed. The clear glaze on the handles blistered in the decal firing. This may be due to the previous firing being a bisque. The residual gasses can affect the glaze even at 06. Best to do the decal firings following a high fire.
More of the same for this week. I want to try doing the striped cat as a vector drawing. Never done that before. Whole new worlds to explore when you take some time out of the studio.
