Slip Trailing with Charleen Renati

[Music] [Music] my name is Charlene renauldi and this is slip trailing so I am local I'm from Los Gatos here's Dave I work out of blossom hill crafts and I've been there for like 28 years I did the math when Joanne rice passed to figure out how long I've known her so it was a blessing to have her in my life so now we are doing slip trailing today so what I'm going to talk about first is talk a little bit about slip trailers we're going to talk about making slip because believe it or not not everyone knows how to make it so we'll do that and it's important to get the right texture and consistency then I'm going to do some demos on slip trailing and we're going to talk a little bit about the different ways to glaze them to highlight your slip trailing because that's kind of important the first thing I'm going to talk about is the slip trailers themselves so like I said these babies are like about five bucks you can get them with all sorts of different sizes so here's a smaller what do you call this a smaller needle a larger needle these ones are cheap you buy the needle separately this is how do you pronounce it axiom cm x IEM Zim yeah these are hecka expensive perfect but they come with multiple different sizes when you buy it and it is a little more ergonomic so don't run out and buy one of these today but if you do it a lot it's kind of nice so that's that so the next thing we're going to talk about is quite simply making slip it's super easy all I do is you just mix clay with water and mix it with a blender you can use your trimmings to use your slide from your bucket you can use your recycle you can use whatever you want the important thing to think about you want to think about what clay body so your first choice for making slip is going to be the same clay body that you're using so if I'm using B mix today so we're using a B mix lip you don't have to you can do a contrasting color and that's lovely but you want to start with the same kind of slip because then you're gonna have less shrinking problems if you do have shrinking problems with your slipped railings popping off you want to consider switching your slip so that's it and we got our blender and we're just going to add some water and mix it up when I make slip for slip trailing I just do slip and water now yeah you can use the flocculated slip so d flocculated slip is good because you have a higher ratio of clay to water so less shrinkage so I do not you used to flocculate a slip because I find I don't need it I do all my slip trailing on leather hard medium leather hard soft leather hard to you know just straight on the wheel wet clay if you want to slip trail on bone dry you can spritz it with a little bit of water or hard leather hard then you're going to want to do flocculate it so d flocculating you simply add a few drops of Darvin seven to this or sodium silicate it's gonna get super thin and then you add more slip and then you're bumping up your clay to water ratio you're gonna get less shrinkage so i just start with this i like to do it on leather hard soft leather hard and i have no problems if you feel like you have problems with the clay being too dry if you want to work on a drier surface then you need to deflate so there's plenty of videos it's super easy it's a really fun chemistry experience experiment so i recommend you try it so i'm just going to finish this and just add some water alright so I mean I'm working on it we're almost there [Music] okay so the consistency I'm going for some people say slip should be heavy cream I think it's more like a yogurt what I'm working on I never like the heavy cream thing I don't think that's right I mean it's pretty pretty thick what I want to show you really quick is just how to make colored slip super easy just use Mason stains so here I have vivid blue number six three one three and I know they're recipes about how to do it but I don't worry about that so for something like this I'd say maybe three teaspoons ish and just add it till it looks good so here's my vivid blue Mason stain I'm gonna mix it a tiny bit and that is nowhere blue enough for me so we're going for more yes correct so that's the other important thing you have to think about with your clay selection so I'm using B mix that's going to go through here this clay body that I use is M Coast's Navajo Navajo wheel and that's going to go through if you use like a Bravo buff groggy and ain't gonna squeeze through here so you have to pick so if your base clay is a groggy clay you can't use that you have to try something else so that's an excellent point and okay so I'm adding a lot more yes absolutely the lower temperature the more true so cone a cone v is gonna be better than a cone ten I picked vivid blue cuz vivid blue looks awesome in cone 10 it stays true all the way not all the colors are okay so I'm probably good on this yes so let's so that's what I have right now and mix it up a little bit no no I just do why would you why did what has been in Grady when you add it to it yeah yeah it won't hurt go for it yeah okay so to get the slip into the slip bottle that's another good question when I first started this I used to funnel and don't do that bad news so just squeeze all the air out go in here and just suck it up no I swear I didn't know that for the longest talking you I sat there with a funnel and shoved it in it really sucked I know okay so I think the hardest thing about slip trailing is just getting it to be the right consistency so I have students in my studio who will try it they'll use the jar of slip that's on the thing they'll be like it doesn't work and I'm like you just got a little water or dry it out so I'm going to do can you see me if I'm here I'm gonna demo this on white paper just cuz you can see it okay so you want to shake it down to get the bubbles out and then I just do some tests to see how its flowing out and that's basically how I do it so I adjust in the bottle people are going to ask me what's the perfect consistency what's the right recipe I got no right recipe it depends on how thick what size nib you have it depends on the clay body you're using it depends on how dry the wear is that you're putting it on and it depends on your personal preference different people have different looks it's got a flow nice out of here the way I adjust it cuz that might be a little thick as I've learned by trial and error too I add water drops at a time do not stick this under the faucet and try to do it because so I'll just literally add like you know five drops and I adjust it and I check it pretty frequently because you know if I let my bottle sit for a few days I'll check it again and adjust it so let's see so let's see okay so now I got a splurt that happens all the time all right so this is looking pretty good I could probably still add a little more water to this to make it flow better if it's really too thick it's gonna be tough to squeeze it's gonna hurt your hand and you're also gonna get a lot of skips in your where in your line I don't worry about having the line uniform all the time I recognize that skips are part of the beauty of slip trailing so no seriously like like if you look at this piece it's all skipped right I don't have a solid line I know if you look at this piece when you come up close it's not a solid line I have skips I fought it for a long time to try to make the line perfect with no skips in my slip trailing whatsoever yeah killed me so um if you look at this where I'll have little skips I consider that part of the character I consider that part of the nature of slip trailing I don't fight it if I'm having to skip like you know if I'm trying to write out coffee or something then maybe not so much because you can't read it but otherwise I just roll with it up here I have examples of two different ways to finish your pieces to glaze them and you want to think about that so over here on this side I have where that is all done with a glaze that breaks so all this stuff is breaking over the slip so there's an application of slip trailing I glaze it it breaks people ask me if I wipe it off I don't I just find a glaze that breaks super super nice so this is John I made these glazes myself this is John Britt cone five folk art white and this is John Brett cone five era Mont so you got a search to find glazes a break so that's one option for slip trailing so all this is Navajo wheel clay with Navajo wheel trailing with a nice glaze on top that breaks really well so that's your one option your other option is going to be to go with a translucent glaze so this is well this has a bunch of stuff going on so this has some incising some slip trailing a glaze wash on it and some under glaze so you can combine your slip trailing with a lot of different things I'm using a celadon on this so you're able to see the slip trailing because it's a transparent glaze so with celadon or a clear so you're either going we're going to go for a transparent glaze or a glaze that breaks really nicely so those are your two options yes know what what do you what do you own oh you don't know so when you clear glaze it it turns it doesn't stay this red it turns brown and I think it looks gorgeous and I forgot to bring a piece here but for example I'll use Navajo wheel with a white slip trailing on it and then I'll you know dip half of it like this in a clear which is going to turn it a dark very dark what would you call it like a darkish brownie muddy I think it's I think it's gorgeous I have trouble my clears come out a little cloudy so that's why I shook my head because I have it yes you absolutely can you absolutely can yeah anything you want sky's the limit on this one okay so when I'm doing designs with slip trailing if I need to make any marks on my piece I just use water down food coloring my lines aren't always straight on these so I need to help myself out a little bit okay so first thing I'm doing when I slip trail is like every time I practice on a piece of paper because every single time it's going to come out of your bulb a little differently Oh see okay so right now I'm getting a lot of um not getting a swell no it's better no it's just a little dry I'm just gonna add a little more water to it so I mean that's really I'm serious the most important thing here your success is just make sure your slip trailing is the right consistency and just you know take a few minutes to make sure it's right so we'll see so I'm still getting a few more skips here than I want so I'm going to add a little more water so trial and error on this I just freehand it okay one of the reasons I love slip trailing is that you can erase your mistakes so I've done so many different I working on different surface design like Mishima like carving likes graffito and you know hats off to people who carve I mean it's gorgeous and I hate it it's so hard I can't do it so one of the things I love about slip trailing is it is so forgiving you make a mistake you clean it up I don't advocate fixing every mistake because some of it is you know the beauty of it anyway I gotta let myself go but you make a major mistake you get out your sponge you fix it it's super easy so that's why I like it so quite simply I always work here on my lap and I'm just doing some dots and some lines super simple when I do do large dots you need to wait maybe about 10-15 minutes and go back and smush the dots down again especially if it's like on a coffee cup because they get kind of sharp you know the reason why I'm showing you one of these pieces that's round like a coffee cup or a vase or something like that is because I don't do the whole piece at once because it's sitting in my lap so I will basically do 1/3 of it and then come back and do 1/3 of it again later and then do another third of it so if I'm working on a coffee cup set of four I do one do the other by the time I get to the third one we're good so that's so you know probably do about a third of this let it sit and then I can hold it and do the rest of it correct correct so if you touch the tip down it's going to it's going to carve out a little bit of it and it's also going to be a flatter line so if you want a raised line you have to be above above if you don't like that if you do work on say a bone dry then you can drag but yeah it's not even bone dry bone dry you have to get bone dry and you have to spray it and then do it so that's one of the advantages of working a little drier is you can do that yes you do have to keep it elevated and I'm just going to section this off and let me think that's gonna be like ouch okay so so once again I'm going like this and so let's see I don't know who can see this I'm sorry can the camera see it so this is more of a leaf thingy oh that is watered down food coloring yeah I just like it because I don't get any um it doesn't indent the clay absolutely um I hope so I have a little oh man and then we're gonna put a little stem on here I'm gonna go around here we're gonna put a big dot everyone loves dots okay so we're starting like that this on the axiom this is the what color is a small they're color-coded so so come up and look at the color and you can figure it out yeah so I'll do one more of these and then I think you guys are good to practice any questions that I've missed yes I like it it's not it's it's kind of pricey though so if you're just starting out I recommend the other one but what I'm not showing here is I haven't made a mistake oh I did make a mistake that's great okay so when you make a mistake this is great I want to show this so I just had like a I don't know it farted there was like an air bubble there right so I take a flat brush like this and then just a little bit of water and then I just brush it out and now it's gone right so that's why I like it I also sometimes use this kind of tool for fixing mistakes I'm not sure what this is called this is called Oh a color shaper it's for painting you'll find in a painting store so these ones work too yeah it's a rubber tip and it's flat so that's C and I always shake it out I always give it a try I'm gonna do one more of these but you know I don't like this so I'm going to fix this my line is wrong the color doesn't go bad and you know if you let it sit for a long time and you're gonna need to hit it with a blender again but no the color is gonna be great so I'm sorry if you guys can't see this very well they're really hard to clean I had these bottles and I had to clean him yesterday I thought there with a hose with the on the jet in the front yard it was terrible I don't clean them out every time what I do and I do need to show this to you let me finish this is your want to use a straight pin in I'm almost done with this uh-oh see there's another mistake okay this is it and I'm done and I'm going to show you the straight pins okay so what you do these come with covers but you've also put a pin in it so basically you just stick a pin in it and that keeps it dry and that keeps your tip from being clogged if your tips get clogged you just need to like sit here with a pin and fix it so that's it sometimes they rust maybe I should get stainless steel pins but I think that's it and I recommend everyone just start playing with designs on newspaper that's what the way I do it I never start anything on the pot I have a nice table and I just design all over my freaking table and then I take a picture of it and so I always start out on that so I would recommend that you start with some newspaper and then over here we have these old tiles we cut out for you and everyone gets two of these you could probably go over them with a rib first because they're kind of rough we didn't smooth them for you you see oh I've never tried one I want to try that yeah yeah but I mean I have one actually does have a needle and when I had to get my pad drives I saved yeah so other ideas are I know some people do use this product called an air pen I've never tried it but you don't have to squeeze it just you turn the button on and it comes out yeah and and the other thing I want to mention is that all these things that we're doing with trailing you can trail slip you can trail glaze you can trail under glaze you can trail whatever you want so any of the techniques you learn here feel free to move on to different materials as far as trailers - yeah I forgot to mention if you have a large piece you can use like a condiment bottle you know the like the squeezy bottles and use one of those for slip trailing and you cut the end off to different different thicknesses [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Orchard Valley Ceramic Arts Guild

Views: 33,486

Rating: 4.7847867 out of 5

Keywords: ovcag, pottery, clay, ceramics, slip trailing, slip

Id: RDEE_E36nVs

Length: 30min 33sec (1833 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 04 2019