Ceramic Skull

Right from the beginning of this project I knew that I wanted to make a Skull out of ceramics. I wanted to make something real and holdable like the skulls I'd seen in Pitt Rivers, something kinda believable. This is what I like about making things in 3D, they're physical, real and right in front of you.
So I went to Valerie, the ceramics teacher, and asked her if I could make a skull and how I should go about it. She told me I needed to start with a big lump of clay then slowly carve and mould it down into shape. I worked from a skeleton reference book she had. After a whole day of working I produced this:

Yeah, it doesn't really look like a realistic skull at all..
The proportions are really quite off: The eyesockets are gaping, the nose low down and the whole form is rather flat. This is what happens when you work from a reference image with just two perspectives and work from your imagination a bit too much. Turning a 2D image into a 3D form is pretty hard as I discovered.
In fact, it was that day that I discovered that ceramics is damn hard!
So I squashed it up and gave it another go the week after.
This time, I changed a few things; I borrowed a model skull from college and decided to try and replicate it as closely as possible. This is what I managed after another full day in the ceramics room:

   

I think that I did far better this time! Having a real 3D form to work from clearly helped a lot. At no one point can the clay be thicker than 2cm if you want to fire it so I opted to scoop out the inside then make a lid/the top of the skull but while I was making it I decided against this because I realised the skull would make a great bowl to 'offer' things in. Yes! I could present the hell money that I made in it like an offering in an altar.  I was very happy that I had this idea because it gave me a way unite the ceramic skull and hell money projects which I felt were kinda lacking when presented on their own.

I have an image in my head of setting up a little altar with this skull, the money, candles, flowers and the book I am making for this project. I'd like to make that!.

But before that, I needed to glaze my skull. I looked at various examples around the classroom and decided that a plain glossy white would look nice on the outside of the skull and wanted a golden effect on the inside of the bowl. This is for purely decorative reasons but think that it will look quite bold. Anyway, Plenty of the skulls I saw in the museum had been purely for decorative reasons rather than for specific meaning. For example, this skull of a tribe leader, decorated with macrame'd carved stones:

I glazed the skull last week and it looked like this before going in the Kiln:

The Golden/bronze glaze looks like a matte gray when unfired. It also contains Lead, which is poisonous so I had to wear gloves and be very careful where I got it. It should be done tomorrow and I am very very excited to see this skull. It's been four weeks in the making!

 I am really pleased with how it turned out and I definitely think it passed the 'classmate test'- lots of people wanted to hold it, examine it and play with it which I always think is a great sign. Who wants to make art that people don't want to look at and play with?

I think that the skull presents the money well and love the uneven golden mirroring on the inside. If I was going to make this again, I would consider glazing the inside of the nose and eyes golden as well. I would also make sure the teeth were securely attached because most of the ones on my skull came off when it was drying on the shelf.
Overall, though, I managed to make a skull that I think has a very realistic form and I learnt the most I ever have about ceramics and glazing from making this.
In my final piece, I'd like to present this skull along with candles, flowers and my book, like an altar. I think that the lit candles will reflect amazingly off the skull.
I will go more indepth about my final piece in a later blogpost.