The final days of 3Zs

I finished off the final days of 3Zs by Zentangle.com.
 Day 8 brought us Pokeleaf.  I always get Pokeleaf and Pokeroot confused.  Pokeroot is round and Pokeleaf is ...well.. a leaf!  Not sure where the confusion comes from.

I drew 2 tiles using Pokeleaf.

I like the way the 2nd one came out better than the first.

On day 9, We drew Auraknots.  I added Pokeleaf, Diva Dance, Knightsbridge and Golden Tipple

Day 10 introduced a new tangle: Drawings.  I learned to draw this tangle at ZenAgain in November.  I love drawing Drawings.  It is so graceful and fluid.

Here is square tile with Drawings.

Day 11 brought us another new tangle: Icanthis.  I like this new tangle as much as I like Drawings.

Icanthis is drawn with Marasu and Tipple

And finally, day 12 gave us Crasy Huggins, a twist on Huggins.

Lastly, I drew one large (combination of three 3Z tiles) drawing with 9 of the 12 featured tangles of the 12 Days of 3Zs from the Zentangle.com blog

Tuning up my Tangling

It has been a good year since I sat down and tangled; but 3 months ago, I picked up my pen again and have been drawing daily since.  I even went to ZenAgain in November to rejuvenate my enthusiasm for all things Zentangle.  What a great experience that was!

While at ZenAgain, Rick and Maria introduced new tiles to the Zentangle line of products.  They are 3.5" equilateral triangles called "3Z".  I have really enjoyed tangling on them.  They are made of the same quality paper and fit perfectly with the original tiles.  Go to Zentangle.com to purchase these new tiles.

For the past 7 days, Zentangle,com has showcaseds a differnt tangle on the 3Z tiles.  Day 1 was Tripoli.  Here is my example.

I finished the tile off with some Tipple, my "go to" tangle.

On day 2, they featured Diva Dance

Again, I added some Tipple.

Day 3 featured Shattuck

as the 12 days of 3Z evolves, all previous tangles can be added to the tiles.

Day 4 featured Marasu

I did two tiles for Marasu.  The first one, I didn't like the way I drew Marasu.  I thought it was tooo narrow to really show the tangle.  So, I drew a second tile and drew the tangle larger.

This is the first tile.  Notice I added some Tripoli in this drawing, along with my standard Tipple.

Here is the 2nd tile.  I added Diva Dance and Tipple to Marasu to complete this tile.  

Day 5, it starts to get interesting.  The featured tangle is Tipple (finally), but with a twist.

Rick and Maria drew it in brown ink with gold accents.

I added some Tripoli to this tile.  I like the color variation.

Day 6 featured Molygon

Notice the detail now.  I love how to tiles have evolved over the 6 day period.  I included the gold Tipple, Diva Dance, and Marasu in this tile.

Finally, day 7 brought Knightsbridge

withs Shattuck, Marasu and a gold Tippled Molygon.

I am drawing these tiles in my journal.  I wish I had started them on the individual tiles so I could have a mosaic of drawings once finished.

I look forward to what the next 5 days bring.  I will post them here as they come about. In the meantime, check out the Blog on Zentangle.com

Happy Tangling!

After all this time

I didn't even realize how long it had been since I wrote the last blog.
My last blog was about the stained glass windows I was making.  Well, they are finished and waiting to be installed.  I am very excited about them.  They turned out great.... I think.

Since then, I have combined my love of Zentangle with my love of glass and came up with a new bird... and a couple of other things.

I first drew the Zentangle using pen and ink.  I then had those pieces made into a silk screen.  Using glass paint, I silk screened the patterns onto glass then fired the glass to bake the paint in.
I cut the glass out into the patterns I wanted and proceeded to create the birds.
I decided to frame most of the them, but did make one free standing.  Here is a sampling.

Making a Stained Glass window......almost finished

Remember the window I started on back in October ---- then go side tracked?

Well, I started working on it again and I am almost finished!  It should be completed by next Friday.  Then I will have to figure out how to install it.

Of course, I only work on it on Fridays -- and only for 3 hours, too.

Zentangle Birds

My latest creation: Zerds
 That is Zentangle Birds!

This is truly a work in progress, but I want to share the progress with you.

To start, I drew some Zentangle designs and took them to the sign maker to have a silk screen burned.  Unfortunately, I had purchased a size 110 mesh screen.  You will see why this is unfortunate in a minute.

It had been a while since I had done any silk screening, so I had to practice with the set up and squeegee methods. Then I had to practice mixing the paint (enamel powder and squeegee oil) to the right consistency.  Needless to say, I made a mess.  I didn't photo this process because there was paint everywhere and I didn't want to contaminate my phone!  It took several tries, but I was finally ready to print the glass.

The first attempt ended up in a washout.  Literally, I washed the paint off the glass.  Same  procedure followed for the next two printings.  I finally got something I felt I could go with.  So I printed a 12x12 piece of Spectrum 96 white glass and a smaller piece of yellow glass.  The lines in Zentangle are fine, but the mesh was not, so the prints came out pretty heavy.  The designs were recognizable, but not fine.  Still no photos -- sorry.

I fired the first printing and it was a further disaster.  Because I was using high-temp enamel paint, I fired on a full fuse (1450).  The single sheet of glass bubbled up pretty badly.  Oops!  I did get some workable glass out of it though. 

With this glass, I created the Zerd below.

This piece was OK, but the paint looks muddled to me.  The tail, wing, beak, and feet are out of dichroic glass.  I think the tail is off and would look better placed closer to the body.  Since this bird is made of a single glass base, I fired it on a contour fire which gives the layered dichroic glass some dimension.  I am trying to become a fan of dichroic glass, but I am reluctant.  I like bright colors better than shiny colors.

Here is the second piece I did.

Pretty bad.  I was also experimenting with a few other techniques with this creation so they added to the "badness".  First off, I tried doubling all the glass to make a sturdier sculpture.  I tried to do all of this in one firing.  Mistake #1.  When you fire glass to a full fuse, the glass pieces literally melt into each other and fuse completely to become one piece of glass.  This makes the whole piece flat and very glossy.  The glossy, I like.  The flat, I don't.

Further more, some of the glass pieces shifted during firing.  Notice the left leg.  I placed a copper rod between the two pieces of the legs for mounting and to add rigidity.  The glass slipped and the rod is exposed.  The tail pieces shifted as well.   See the yellow dot on top of the right wing?  That dot was placed at the base of the tail. 

However, the most disappointing aspect of this piece is the way the paint lost its definition.  As the glass spreads when hot to about a 1/4 in. thickness, the design also spread.

Back to the drawing board.

I have since redrawn the Zentangle masters into the shape of birds and will have a new screen made using 160 mesh screen.  This will keep the paint from being screened too heavily onto the glass, thus ending up with a clear piece of tangled fused glass. 

Stay tuned for the outcome.

Mosaic fish

First off, Happy New Year to all of you!  May your 2016 be the best year you've had thus far.

As I said, I really enjoy working with mosaics.  

I am working on a wall sculpture that will consist of 10-12 fish swimming in a school.  The fish are about 10" long and 6" tall.  

Right now, I am still experimenting with the technique and look.   Thus far, I have created 3 fish using slightly different techniques, combinations, and firing schedules.  However, they all look similar.  Since they will be placed on a wall approximately 10' up the wall, the difference won't be readily noticed.

I started out with a basic shape fish in clear glass, then I placed randomly cut sized and shaped pieces of transparent glass on the fish form.  I am using an Ombre color scheme going from blue to green with a few pieces of clear irid glass in the middle.

I start out gluing the mosaic pieces to the form, then tac fire to set the pieces.  After that, I will grout, embellish (I used red glass circles or frit) and fire again to a tac fuse so the fish would have some texture giving them some dimension.  I also used some 1/8" fiber paper to give the fish some contour.  

This is what I have so far.  I am still experimenting, but will post as I go along until the piece is finished.

Fish #2.  Hopefully you can see the contouring in these photos.  However, I fired this fish to a full fuse which took away the textured finish.  I used transparent red frit on this fish.  Not my favorite treatment.

Fish #3 going into the kiln for the 2nd firing and after firing.  I created glass dots out of a deep red opaque glass.  

You can see the difference here where I used a tac fuse.  The glass pieces stand out.

 I have placed these 3 fish on the wall to get a perspective.

Fish #1 on the far right has glass dots in a cherry red.  Too bright!  I like the deeper red dots.  I will probably make most of the fish like fish #3, but will copy fish #1 and 2 at least once more to give the school continuity.  Either that, or I will eliminate them all together.

However, I may not be through experimenting either!  

Mosaics

I really enjoy working with mosaics.  I have created several ceramic mosaic pieces and even completed on glass mosaic, but have not done a mosaic piece for fusing.

The first piece I completed was on a 6x6 tile of clear glass.  I formed a fish using several colors of transparent glass in blues and greens.  I cut odd shaped random sized pieces from each color.  Then I filled in around the fish with clear glass cut the same way.  Newy Fagan helped out by filling in some of the larger gaps with smaller clear glass pieces (which enhanced the overall look).  The tile was then fired to a tac* fuse (the glass adheres but doesn't become fully fused leaving texture).
Then, using a mixture of CMC (a cellulose fiber used as a binder in foods like taco shells) and glass powder (black in this case), the glass pieces were grouted.  The tile was then fired again using a tac* fuse  to leave the texture and here are the results.

I wish I had used a different color for the face than dark blue, but I didn't know what it was going to come out looking like!

I really got into this method of creating.  So much so that I used it again twice! during the workshop.

Here is a second piece.  This tile was also created on clear glass.  I used a turquoise powder for the grout.  Then I fused the whole piece onto white glass to give the design more contrast.  

This tile was fired on a full fuse, therefore, the glass is flat.

I like the blue powder, but think a darker blue would give the piece more contrast.

*  Newy has her own firing schedules, so technically, I don't know that she calls the schedule we used as a "tac" fuse.  But for the beginner mind, like myself, I am using terms that can more easily be conveyed.  The terms I use are "slump, tac, contour, and full" when talking about firing schedules.

Inclusion

Inclusion is placing glass or other items between glass before firing.  Most of the time, glass is stacked (placed on top of another piece of glass).  Products like Mica powder have to be used between the glass.  Inclusion gives interesting results.  The most notable are the tiny air bubbles created where air is trapped between the glass.  When items are placed between two pieces of glass, a small space is created between the glass.  As the glass warms and begins to fuse together, some of the air from the space is trapped and forms small air bubbles.

I did this piece experimenting with copper mesh, dichroic (metallic looking) glass, stringer, and decals.  I like the shapes, color, and movement of abstract art.

Recently, I tried a piece of copper mesh between float glass (window glass).  I fired it to a contour fire (not quite as hot as a full fire).  I don't really notice any air bubbles in this piece.  What you can't really see above is there are tiny air bubbles inside the mesh of the copper pieces above.

In the piece below, I placed a green grape vine leaf in between two pieces of float glass and fired to a contour.  Most of the leaf burned off and left an ash impression.  There is a small piece in the middle that didn't burn off completely.  When I picked up the glass the small leaf piece slipped.  Had I used a full fire (higher temperature than contour), I believe the entire leaf would have burned off.  I will definitely do this again.  I like the results. 

My personal Joan Miro art

I love the work of the artist Joan Miro.  In fact, when I was in my 20's, I had a signed and numbered print of his.  But as youth goes, it got lost in the moves, etc.  I was too naive at the time to know what I had.  

At any rate, while working with Newy Fagan in her studio, I experimented with combing glass.  This technique involved raking warm glass with a combing tool (similar to a metal chopstick for reference).  

Combing proved to be more difficult for me than I thought it would be.  First of all, I didn't expect the heat of the kiln to be as intense as it was.  I had never had a hot kiln open more than a few seconds to look at the progress of my work.  Also, the glass was not as fluid as I had imagined it to be.  The only experience I had at this point with hot glass was working with molten glass during glass blowing.

In building the glass tile to comb, I used rod pieces that made small circles as well as some string, curly glass pieces that Newy made by pouring molten glass on a piece of sheet metal.

I combed the piece the best I could and then Newy took a go at it.  It turns out, the small round pieces of color were really too small to get much of a design out of with the combing technique.

The piece was left in the kiln to anneal.  The next morning, when we opened the kiln to look at it, the tile had cracked in 3 pieces.  But I loved it.  Why? because it reminded me of the work of Joan Miro.

I brought the pieces home and resurrected the tile by adding a few more colored circles and black curly pieces then firing to a full fuse.

This is what I got.  To many of you, it won't look like much, but to me, I get a good feeling looking at it because of its resemblance to the work of one of my favorite artists.  Joan Miro created work on an entirely different level than this, but the elements are there.

I plan on tac fusing it to a piece of 8x8 clear glass and framing it in black to hang as wall art. the colored pieces that look like they are dripping are the parts that were combed while in the kiln.  Beauty is definitely in the  eye of the beholder!

Joan Miro:

Front to Back

I learned something about iridized glass.  It actually is more iridized looking if the iridized side is placed face down for firing.  Not only that, the glass has a texture too it.  The upside is glossy and the back side is matte.

In this project, I made a  4x4" tile on green/black iridized glass.  I believe it was
Spectrum irid 96 -- but honestly can't recall..  I fashioned a seahorse out of dichroic chips and glued them to the iridized side of glass.

Then the tile was placed faced down on some pre-fired 1/32" fiber paper and fired.

The result was beautiful.  Because the irid glass reflects light, the picture doesn't do it justice.

I cannot get the second photo to post straight up.. no matter how I rotate and save it!

Bas Relief day 2

Newy and I did two more bas relief sculptures.

Newy showed me the technique of using the positive images in the fiber mold on the right.  Pieces were cut out and placed on the placemat fiber.  The glass was then placed on top of the fiber paper shapes so it would drape over the shapes when fired.

After firing: 

This piece of glass work is on the way to becoming a wind chime!

  I wanted to use both the positive and negative images in this sculpture.  The fiber mold on the left has both.  On the left, I cut out the sea grass and placed the positive pieces on the right over the fish shape I cut out.  The positive fish shape was placed over the cut out sea grass on the left. The eyes followed the same placement -- positive placed in negative fish and negative left in positive fish.

After firing:

Tomorrow:  Firing right side down. 

Bas Relief: Day 1

We started our workshop doing bas relief, a method of carving an image that is slightly raised from the flat background.

To do this, fiber paper is used.  Fiber paper is a heat resistant paper made with alumina silicate fibers.   Images are carved out of the paper using an Exacto knife.  The carved image pieces can be used under the glass to leave a raised image in the glass.  The carved out piece can be placed under the glass so the glass sinks or sagged into the vacant areas when fused creating the images.

In the first sculpture (the birds), the carved out sheet of fiber paper was used.  The flat, clear glass sheets were cut to fit the perimeter of the fiber paper and placed on top.
Here are the results.
This is one piece of glass, turned front and back to show you the two different effects of using positive (draping over the fiber paper) and negative (slumping into the fiber paper).

Here, the birds protrude slightly from the background, while their wings (cut out of the original image) are the same level as the flat background and appear indented.  This is the image that results from using the positive (or cut out pieces) technique.

Here the birds are slightly indented from the flat foreground, while their wings (added back to the cut out image) are even with the flat foreground, but look slightly raised.  This image view results from using the negative technique.

Either way, I am happy with the results.  It almost looks like snow in the background.  Those are tiny air bubbles in between the glass.  Two sheets of COE 96 clear glass were used in this project.

I will write tomorrow about the other two pieces.  Visit www.seazeningwithglass.blogspot.com for more workshop stories.

3 days of Warm Glass Heaven

I recently returned from a 3 day Warm Glass Workshop with master glass artist, Newy Fagan.

Newy has been creating in warm glass since the late 70s.  She is most known for developing a technique to manipulate glass while it is in the malleable stage in the kiln.  She creates horse sculptures that stand on their own as a result of this technique.

Newy has her horses in galleries all over the country.  Visit http://www.turqtortsedona.com/Artists/fagan/index.htm to read more about what this gallery has to say about Newy's work.  Visit Newy's web page at http://newyfaganstudio.com/

My 3 days with Newy were very inspiring to say the least.
Newy lives on about 19 acres of land near the Ocala National Forest in Central Florida.  She has two horses (a quarter: Buttermilk, who she fondly calls, "Bubby" and a miniature, Lacy), and 3 dogs (whose names I can't recall, but whose kisses I still feel).  Her studio is fabulous.  When I walked in, I wanted to lock the door and stay for awhile.  The materials were nice, but the artwork dispersed all over the studio was wonderful eye candy. I would look, admire, examine it all day -- and did -- for 3 days.  I pretended I was living the Bohemian life style I always wanted to live!  It was great.

I will tell you more about all we did over the next couple of days.  In the meantime, Google Newy Fagan and learn more about her and her art work.

Birds of a feather....

I really like birds.  I like to watch their behaviors and listen to their chirping or in some cases squawking, imagining the conversations they must be having.

I create birds as I imagine them.  These hand crafted, one of a kind glass sculptures are loaded with personality.  They make wonderful gifts for friends, office mates, co-workers, and even yourself.  Imagine  one of these fun creatures propped on a bookshelf and catching your eye after a tiring, less than pleasant day... Instant lift!

The first collection I created is called, "Just Sayin".  Each unique piece is created out of glass and fused together in a kiln, decorated, then mounted on wood with a saying like, " Live in the Moment", that I think fits the birds' personality.  The birds are signed and numbered.

Here is a collage of some of the birds in this series.  The individual birds with descriptions are found in my store, www.seazening.wazala.com and choose the category: Birds

Seazening with Glass

I started a. New blog about my adventures using glass medium.  Follow me on seazeningwithglass.blogspot.com
Seazeningwithglass.blogspot.com

True Sea ZEN ing.

Over the past month or so, I have really gotten into making glass tropical fish, albeit a little whimsical.  As soon as I finish one, I come up with another idea.  

The first couple of fish I created, I did so for fun.  I didn't know what to do with them, so I put steel stakes on them and stuck them in my plants on my deck.  They looked at home in the plants!  It also added color and everyone who notices them, smiles. 

This led to an idea.  I decided to enter an arts and crafts show in December.... my first ever.  These fish would be my product.  I thought they would make cute holiday gifts.  

 Fish are mounted on steel stakes so they can be used to liven up indoor or outdoor plants.  They are a great addition to a patio or deck!
Each creation in "the Bimini Series" is named, numbered, and signed.

These fish are on sale in my store at www.seazening.wazala.com
I take special orders to a degree because each glass sculpture is created as a one of a kind piece of art.  I can make a fish similar to another but it will never come out exactly like it.

I have included a sampling here:

Cassia

Cosmo

Dorothy

Burt