First tiles fired in 2012

Quartet of the New Year 010212
10.5 inches framed

After leading a whole bunch of tours around Hollywood and Beverly Hills over the holidays, I was anxious to get back to painting some tiles.

As there are so many things I am interested in, my brain goes around in circles like a train in a loop stopping off at the various stations along the line. I have to take advantage of whatever station I am at  while I am there. For right now that seems to be painting tiles.

I am having a lot of fun coming up with ideas for what I am calling "Abstract" designs for lack of a better name. I am sure at some point I will want to paint tiles in my cats series or places series.

And who knows when I will want to move on to something else entirely different in my bag of tricks. I never know!

I painted these tiles in a different order but when they came out of the kiln they were screaming to be rearranged. Like a jigsaw puzzle, there is only one way the pieces fit in a satisfying way.

I really like painting quartets of tiles and just bought a pile of new frames!!
(Photo and design copyright roslyn m wilkins)

Another quartet of tiles show their colors

This set of four ceramic tiles were painted before the quartet shown in my previous blog, for those of you who are keeping track of those things...

The image above is how the bisque tiles looked before they were cooked in the kiln. As you can see, there is no indication of what the colors will look like or what shapes and textures the glazes will form. The fired tiles are below.

I can only look at color samples online which really means nothing other than giving me a basic idea of which glazes to put next to each other... or not. So when I am envisioning the end result I have only a very rudimentary idea in my head.

Again, it would be great if there was some way of showing the luminosity and textures of these glazes on this blog. I guess that will have to wait until I can make a holograph.

As I am becoming a little more familiar with how these glazes will behave that end result is somewhat easier to control.... up to a point. As you can imagine, I had plenty of disasters when I first started using these glazes.

I haven't quite decided how to frame these yet. My first set of four tiles I framed together and afterwards wished I had framed them separately (too late, they were cemented in place). I am going to play around with the framing of these.

I have to say I am pretty much pleased with this set of tiles. There is something about designing in fours that is very satisfying to me. I am tentatively calling these Squares within Squares 1-4. But maybe Universes within Universes is a more poetic title. You can decide.

(4.25" tiles in 6" frames)

(All designs and photos copyright roslyn m wilkins)