Rushing to get some Halloween fun made in time for “Art In The Barn”…
it was time to crank out some pumpkins. And once I had made pumpkins, it was time
to turn them into Jack O’Lanterns! But I digress, let’s go back to the beginnning…
I started by throwing some terra cotta orbs… simple enclosed forms with air trapped inside.
Once they had dried a bit overnight, to a wet leatherhard, I gave them some textured
pumpkin “stripes” and altered their shape using the edge of a square chopstick.
And we all know that a good pumpkin needs a good stem.
Doesn’t everyone look for a groovy, cool stem on their store-bought pumpkin?!
So I rolled a coil, gave it some texture lines, attached it with some good scoring & slipping,
then twisted it and animated it a bit.
Now that I had pumpkins… it was time to carve faces into them like a good Jack O’Lantern.
First, I carved out the eyes, nose, mouth and details. Then I opened the pumpkin and “cut off”
the top with a good angle so that the lid fits & doesn’t swivel around. I added some “warts”
for added texture & whimsy… as well as two on the edge of each lid to help people line them
up to close the pumpkins properly.
I let them all dry overnight and then came back to paint them with colored underglazes.
I did some sponge-painting with the orange underglaze so that some of the terra cotta color
would show through and give them some depth – not just flat, solid orange. And a bit of green
on the stems to help accentuate the stem texture. I dried them overnight on plastic grid
sheets with fans oscillating overnight.
Then, after teaching my class Tuesday night, I glazed the Jack O’Lanterns with low-fire clear
glaze. I actually sprayed on the glaze to get a nice even, thin coat. Luckily, this crazy green
color disappears during the firing… and the colored underglazes will pop after firing!
Tonight the kiln was cool enough to unload… and I was pleased to see the shelf-full
of Jack O’Lanterns smiling back at me. Each one funnier than the next.
