Emilee Williams Art

Winter is coming and I've been thinking a lot about snow-- how magical it is when it finally arrives (for a day or so) and also how to paint it. A quick sketch from my art journal:

Happy Thanksgiving!   I took this picture a few weeks ago while strolling Wheeler Farm with my boyfriend: The blue and red head. A touch of orange on the beak. The grey and black feathers. The textures. I just love him.

Paint splatters on a few of my favorite flower doodles:

In my effort to avoid making bowls, I made a couple of interesting shapes that are...almost bowls. You can't tell from the picture, but this is probably the largest pot I've made so far. I wish I could have defined the shape better by bringing in the collar a bit more. But by the time I got to this point, the clay was starting to do weird things and I wasn't sure how much longer I could keep working it, so I stopped here. I still really like the shape and I am very pleased with how the glaze turned out. Red either turns out beautiful or booger green. I learned that probably the biggest factor in determining what the Jensen Red glaze will do is where it is fired in the kiln. The instructor said to put a note in any of the pots that are Jensen Red and he would put it in a good place in the kiln. It worked perfectly for this one, but not so great for another one of my pots, unfortunately... This small pot probably turned out to be my favorite from this class. It's...

I totally forgot about this bowl when I was writing about my bowls the other day. It was washed and in the cupboard ready to be used. This one is my favorite BOWL from my most recent pottery class:

My youngest brother, David, is serving an LDS mission in Dallas, Texas. I've sent him a few letters but never a card that I'd painted like I did for Tom (who will be home VERY soon). How rude, right? It's about time I send Davie a painted card. I've been messing around with the idea of using masking tape to create layers. Sometimes it turns out well and other times it's a disaster. What usually ends up happening is the tape sticks to the edge of the paper and tears off a layer of the painting. I was very careful to make sure that didn't happen this time. I started from the middle and worked my way out. At first, I was very patient and waited for each layer to dry before taking the tape off. When I saw that it was working and that I was liking the effect, I grew more excited and thus, more impatient. So, I got out my hair dryer and started blowing each layer dry. The result was paint bleeding under the tape-- which I kind of like in this case. I think th...

We had a new instructor for our most recent pottery class and I'm so glad we did because we learned so many new techniques. One new thing I tried was making altered forms. There are apparently many ways to alter a pot and I tried what are probably the two easiest. For this one, I made a tall, round pot and just used the wood handle of a tool to make it square by running the handle from the bottom to the top of the pot on opposite sides. I really like the idea of square pots and I'd like to do this with a much larger pot (if I can ever work with that much clay). Another new technique I tried was using the edge of a tool to draw squiggly lines around the pot while it is spinning on the wheel. After the lines were drawn, I used my fingers to push out different sections on the pot to give it more dimension. I think it would have worked better on a bigger pot. The sections I created were so small that it made it difficult to push them out enough to make a large visible d...

My mom and I just finished our fourth pottery class and I think it was our most successful class so far. We ended up with lots of new shapes and designs. We branched out and tried new things with glazes. And our pots just get bigger and bigger (my mom's especially). I only ended up with a couple bowls this time around and it wasn't on purpose. I had something else in mind when I was making these but I just couldn't make it happen and they turned into bowls. I've decided that I'm no longer going to use the Green Celedon glaze-- it's too plain. I really like how the Tea Dust glaze speckled on the inside of this bowl