Research
Do some research into artists and illustrators who have used ceramics as a surface for their image making. You might also want to look at ceramicists who have a strong link with image making in their work. Find contemporary examples as well as exploring older ceramic traditions. What sort of motifs are used regularly? Could you say there is a visual language of ceramics?
Ceramic art is made from ceramic materials including clay, the earliest form of pottery came from a Chinese pottery, but the earliest examples where not decorated or illustrated.
Pottery can be decorated in many ways, Glazed using mineral based pigments.
Hand painted before or after glazing, it’s also known as under glazing or overglaze – decoration, slip painting a decorative technique where you make a thin clay and water liquid known as slip, which is applied like paint.
Engraving images into the clay surface for decoration, and patterns that can also be applied to the surface, you can wrap the pot or vessel in something that has texture to make an imprint.
A lot of the decoration used in the early years were of the people and the community around them, it showed the life of the people making the pots. Also another form of fertility and ritual objects where made and depicted on these vessels.
Grayson Perry is a well known contemporary ceramic artists, I like the programs he makes on the TV, especially Graysons art club. I like watching him create art work, his ceramics are very interesting, the god like creations of Alan Measles as sculptures, and then decorated after.
Also the pots and vessels he makes that are illustrated all the way round in a sequential manner.
The pot below is illustrated all the way around in portraits of artists, it looks like Grayson has used decoupage for some of the images here, and then also hand painted some. There is also some relief work which you can just about see painted in gold, these would have been made out of clay and stuck on with slip, before glazing and putting in the kiln. The colours are fabulous bright and almost florescent, it contrasts well with the black and white photos.
This pot is again decoupaged using script/ words or pages from a book it look s like. The limited colour palette of red, black and white works really well here. I like the shape of this pot as well, the neck is very thin and the shaping from the neck to the top has nice curves to it. The cars look hand painted and illustrated, and they contrast well with the script and the red dappled paint.
Grayson Perry also creates some ceramics with satirical messages, which are shown with nostalgic pieces and also innocent and social commentary side by side. This random set off illustrations that connects together makes Graysons art different and celebrated.
Grayson has a very strong link with image making in his work, both ceramics and his art. I think his art stands up on any surface but having it on pots and vessels creates another link of consumer culture, his objects are one of kind and are luxury pieces you would find in expensive shops and in museums, like the Saatchi gallery.
Lei Xue creates intricate pop art inspired porcelain sculptures and installations, that work with old and new together. In his series ‘Drinking Tea’ he creates porcelain cans in Ming Dynasty aesthetics, creating the illustrating relationship between old and new. Using the old illustrations on cans of fizzy pop, in a manner of a tea party, this brings together 600 years of art history into one installation.
Summery
What sort of motifs are used regularly
As mentioned above a lot of artists use social images on their work, images from there area, from their life. Also decorative images like borders, flowers, foliage and geometric patterns all seem to be popular and used regularly.
Could you say there’s a visual language of ceramics?
I would say that Grayson Perry has captured the visual language of ceramics in his work, he uses social images, images that affect himself, or what he wants to convey. This seems to be the same when going back to the earliest designs and illustrations used on decorative ceramics.
Exercise 4.7 Contemporary ceramics
Create a range of illustrations for contemporary ceramics that draws on the visual history and symbolism of pottery.
Bring the illustrations up to date.
Work on the same scale as ceramics themselves, ie. larger or bolder.
reflect on applying illustrations to a surface other than paper, what opportunity did this offer, and how can you take this experience back to working on paper.
Research
Blue and white willow pattern
Originally buddhist imagery, pagoda’s, landscapes, birds, trees and willows from Chinese porcelain. A transfer composite design woven around a romantic story.
The chinoiserie pattern was made for kitchens and homewares, the invention occurred around the 1780’s, Thomas Minton, Josiah Spode, James Richards and Thomas Lucas are thought to have had a hand in producing similar styles or the actual first Willow pattern in Shropshire.
It’s usually made in a circular or oval plate design.
Contemporary equivalent designs
For the contemporary research I did a Pinterest board of styles, ideas and designs that are based upon the original Willow patterns.
Keywords
Blue/ white, Round, Oval, birds, trees, willow, landscapes, nature, borders, natural.
Ideas generation/ design / thumbnails.
Thumbnails of ideas
Art work
Sketchbook work that ran along the lines of the thumbnails above and Nature, landscapes, natural, playing around with ideas.
Thumbnails of plates both circular and oval, on the two designs I’m leaning towards.
Design
Scan of the dragonfly and lily pad illustration
I decided to go with this design because it met most of the brief requests, It is nature, natural, a landscape, has a Chinese theme, and I think a little more contemporary in style and design.
I am planning on using the scan in Procreate to go over the individual illustrations in blue colour, then save them individually as well as PSD files, so I can easily transfer them to a mock up at the end.
I am going to experiment with the brushes on Procreate to find a texture that matches the watercolour style of the willow patterns.
I think the brushes that worked the best were, Salamanca, eagle hawk, Inka, water bleed and buzz.
I started by using the water bleed brush, I felt this gave the best effect, it was slightly translucent, and gave a watery feel to the colour.
So I started creating the Psd files for all the individual elements:-
I then played around with the motifs and finally made the psd’s into a placement print on Illustrator, and saved them as a jpeg, so I could import them to Photoshop and my mock up’s.
I found a free mock up for a plate and mug on raw pixel.com.
had a few problems with the mock up, but I got there in the end, and after some changes to the placements of the motifs, and re-arranging on the plate and mug, they is the design how it looks mocked up.
Questions
What did this opportunity offer you, and how can you take what you’ve learned back into your paper based work?
I found that with ceramics you have to be bolder, and work at a larger scale, here I expanded each motif so it filled more of the surface area, although I wanted some to come off the edges.
Working in just a tone of colour, here it’s the blue, still has lots of impact, I was worried the details wouldn’t show, but because of the texture of the brush it’s gives another dimension that makes up for the lack of small details I’m used to achieving.
This style was much more loose than the original illustration, but I think it works just as well, if not better. It has a more sophisticated feel, more simple and refined.
I have learnt to be more bolder, loose and how to work in just one hue of colour, so all these elements I can take back to my paper based drawings and sketches, for future work and illustrations.
Reflections
What went well?
As mentioned in previous exercises I find working in Procreate a lot quicker, and you can get a lot of the art work done as it’s easier to navigate and transfer files between the iPad and computer, so the art work worked really well, choosing the different brushes, and applying the textures to the motifs and saving them individually really helped speed the process up.
Looking into the research of the Willow pattern, resonated with me and I found it easy to draw and find inspiration easy, as it’s very much like the things I already draw and like to draw and paint.
What would you do differently?
would probably if I had more time to mock up maybe three of the original illustrations to see which ones worked the best, sometimes things look differently on actual products than you expect. But saying that I still think I would have chosen this design, as it matched all the areas on the brief better than the other designs, and I do like the way it looks on the mock ups.
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