Here's what I've been working on...

 With my BA Printmaking show 2 weeks away, I have been spending a lot of time in the print shop.  It has been a nice respite from the ceramics studio.  Not that I do not want to be in the ceramics studio anymore, but it is a nice change of pace.  I do also really enjoy printmaking, and I have missed it.  I had hoped to be done with this by now, but I have come down with a cold, and have opted to rest instead of push myself and get more sick (like I usually do).  But, unfortunately not meeting my art goals makes me feel bad mentally, so it is a lose lose situation.  Assuming I do not feel worse tomorrow than I do now, I will run the first layer of black tomorrow night, then the second on Wednesday.  Hopefully that will finish this one up, then I will have the weekend and next week to do the other monotype I need done for the show.  I really hope I feel better tomorrow.  I can't have another day where I lay around and don't get much of anything done. 

Plus, I need to make the shelves for the ceramic pieces I am pairing with the prints.  I am going to put a couple of the owls featured in the monotype with this print, some porcelain kitties with the cat monotype I still need to make, some little cute kitschy things with "Getting Kitschy With It," and I am working on the below Buddha for my Buddah monotype.  I put some mason stain mixed with low-fire clear on it and fired it to cone 04.  There are little dots of mason stain chunks in it, which I am not too thrilled with.  But, the glaze did stick really well to the piece and it is nice and shiny.  If it weren't for the dots it would look really good.  I am going to do some nice gold detailing, which will make it look better.  I have actually fired this guy twice, and it does look a lot better now than it did the first time, but some of those damn dots won't go away.  They are smaller now though.  After the first firing, I scraped all the glaze with one of those kiln shelf scrapers to pop the bubbles, then washed out the powdered stain that was in the bubbles.  Then I put clear on top and refired with more clear on top (with a 30 minute hold).  They are smaller and smoother now.  I don't think I have this problem with my animal stacks... I did use the same kind of glaze.  I think it is because I splattered this on and brushed on most of the animals, which smoothed out the stain that was in little chunks.  But, I feel like I spattered it on the African Lady I glazed last semester and she has no chunks on her.  She was fired to cone 7, but I do not feel like that would have an effect on chunks of dry mason stain in glaze. 

This is the animal stack I am firing right now to cone 6.  I hope it doesn't lean as much as the first one I did.  The base is thicker and I tried to evenly put weight around the whole thing.  This is firing to 6, with the first at cone 7, so that might have a little effect.  I think the colors on this will look awesome if it fires well.  I am going to get a cake stand to make a mold of to make bigger stacks.  That will be so cool.  As soon as this come out of the kiln I am going to fire a luster, for the Buddha and maybe this stack if I think some luster would serve it well.