Making a living

There's often tension between doing what we want to do, and making your living.  My father solved this problem for all his working life by having a series of riveting hobbies to occupy his thoughts and intellect when he came home from his routine job.  However many of us have jobs so tiring and stressful that we have no energy for anything but blobbing out in the evening and weekends.  Books exhort us to 'follow your passion' from the start.  But this can be easier said than done.  When we are young our interests are just developing, so what is the thing you love to do, anyway?  And are you any good at it anyway?  Or expectations or children come along, making money a priority over everything else.  

Ideally of course, your job is your passion.  And, ideally you have the opportunity to develop this passion until

a. You are doing what you want

b. it comes easily to you and you find people saying "I so admire you, you make it look so easy."

and

c. people pay you for it.

Trafalgar Square

From Baker Street we went to Trafalgar Square to see the lions  and the fountains 

 and the pigeons     (no feeding them any more), and I took another photo of N. sitting up on the same lion that she sat on when she was five:  

 While we were there I noticed a few police around, and one was interviewing a little girl of about 4.  We didn't rubberneck to find out what it was about.  Anyway, I'm not sure I wanted to know.  We just walked across the square to New Zealand House where I cast my absentee vote for the NZ elections.

It's a small world; the woman who crossed my name off came from Matamata.

Back to the square via half an hour in the National Art Gallery shop, then we walked down to the Thames and wandered along the Embankment gardens.  

And then back to Manningtree on the train and home by 6.30.

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From Above

Some oils I've done...  aiming to capture some essence of New Zealand hills.  I think I've succeeded.  

Thank you J and M for the flights.  Without them no muse. Thank you also for convincing me for a while that I was the one doing the favour for you!  

We...

" flung our eager craft through footless halls of air. We’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace, where never lark, or even eagle flew." 

- John Gillespie Magee

Painting - Hawkes Bay hills

Earthenware tiles

Using my interest in Art Nouveau design, memories of 50's children's book illustrations plus sources like the above as inspiration, I did some drawings. 

Then I transferred them to squares of clay (about 1.5 cm thick) by drawing over them with a pen which made dents in the clay surface.  

I made the dents deeper with the eye of a largish needle:

When they had dried a bit and were a little firmer I began to dig out parts of the design:

And tidied the shapes up more when the clay was leather-hard:

When the tiles were completely dry we put them in the kiln.  I used terracotta clay which goes redder when bisque-fired (a lower temperature than the clay can eventually take.):

The next step is to paint with under-glaze colour, glaze and re-fire.

  

I'm so enjoying this ceramics lark!

Firing up the Kiln

Here's our tutor loading up the kiln with our first pieces.  Great nervous excitement.  Did we wedge the clay enough, or are there air holes that will cause a piece to explode and blow all the rest to bits and earn us the disgust of our fellow students?  Did we join the coils properly or will our mugs and pots shatter?  Did we use enough slip to join handles and other pieces on or will they gracefully part company? Are the parts of our piece even thicknesses so they will expand at the same rate, or will they crack off?  

We'll have to wait to find out!