Studio Visit, Mt. Hood Tile Mural
Happy Saturday everyone, it’s been a pretty good week here in my little corner of life and I hope it has been in yours as well.
It feels so good to finish, pack up and ship art that I’ve been working on for months!
On my table I’ve had a tile mural of Mt Hood in process for a few months and finally it is finished. It's 31” x 21” and made up of 12 glazed earthenware tiles.
Below is the space where the tile mural will be installed with the client's sketch as a placeholder for the real thing:
The clients are renovating their kitchen and have a space above their stove where they've planned a tile mural of Mt Hood which is a majestic peak of 11,250 feet high just northeast of Portland in Oregon, USA. Mt Hood has always occupied a personal and special place in me and I hiked many parts of it during my time in Portland. It’s really such a beautiful mountain that is visible from the city and I've always felt it's like a mother watching over us!
Once we worked out size, concept and costs, we had a phone conversation. I learned more about what they had in mind, went over logistical details, and we also spent some time sharing ideas which was especially fun with this couple. I really love collaboration and enjoyed bouncing approaches back and forth until we all felt good about our plan.
Next I determined how many tiles to use, the size of each tile and the shrinkage of the clay from wet to fired. I rolled slabs of earthenware clay, cut each tile and let them dry for about 2 weeks before bisque firing them.
While waiting for the tiles to dry I did a few pencil sketches first followed by some glaze sketches to test out colors and practice the composition. I liked the one on the left but the client liked the simpler one on the right and this preference - along with our original concept - guided most of my color and compositional decisions.
Once bisque fired, I sketched out the imagery in pencil and put on the base layer of glaze. With a glaze painting like this, I usually do one layer of glaze and fire it before adding another so I like to see how it looks as I go. These tiles have 5 layers of glaze.
At the end I used ceramic stains to create trees and I really like the effect.
Here is the progression:
first layer of glaze, shown unfired
second coat of glaze after 1st firing but before the second one
and on it goes, this image was taken after the 2nd firing
and finally - complete
I was very intentional about each brushstroke I added to create a minimalist feel to the imagery and color in keeping with the client’s vision.
And below some details showing the trees which read more in person than in the above image:
They will receive the shipment next Wednesday and I’m on pins and needles until I get word that it arrived safely and that they are pleased. Fingers crossed!
Have a great weekend everyone and be sure to check out @blocktrades post where you can offer your vote on the Steem Proposal System
As always, many thanks for supporting my presence here on Steemit, your votes, friendship, interaction, and great content all make a huge difference, keep on Steemin’!
Your support means the world to me and enables me to pursue my life and creativity with more freedom and opportunity, thank you! You can learn more about me and my work at www.ruthfrancesgreenberg.com
This is truly gorgeous, really love to see how the photo turned into that gorgeous piece of wall art. And what a joy to know that they will look at your piece daily while being in the kitchen!!!
thanks so very much @soyrosa for your kind words and support!! I am so impressed with how you've grown your presence here on Steemit btw....you're rockin' in!!
Hehe - working hard and having fun! :D Thank you for your support from the very beginning! <3
My honor and pleasure!
That is B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L!
thank you so much @mintvilla :-)))) means a lot coming from you!
Hello @natureofbeing, thank you for sharing this creative work! We just stopped by to say that you've been upvoted by the @creativecrypto magazine. The Creative Crypto is all about art on the blockchain and learning from creatives like you. Looking forward to crossing paths again soon. Steem on!
YAY, thank you!!! Love @creativecrypto xoxoxo
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HA! I haven't seen this before, how fun!
Quite beautiful and in a way a nice tribute to your old stomping grounds!
I must confess I had no idea you had moved from the left coast till you showed up on my blog earlier today... I hope your new surroundings on the East Coast will suit you well! Anyway, it's nice to "see" you again!
I guess I am one of the ones still trying to "keep the old flame burning" here; lots of changing faces as I am sure you have noticed. My own presence here became "thinner" for a while, as well... again, nothing to do with crumbling crypto markets and everything to do with personal circumstances, including the fact that 2018 was a particularly difficult year for our gallery; we may end up turning it into purely a show space for my wife's and my own creative dabblings, as well as a spiritual workshop space... time will tell.
There are some very good people in the community, trying very hard to encourage and stimulate engagement; overcoming all the "automation" that seems to have taken root here. Not sure about the recent Steemit, Inc. shenanigans, but hopefully we're heading in a better direction now that the cards have been laid a little more openly on the table...
Thanks @denmarkguy, it did feel like an appropriate painting to make after arriving in CT and gave my homesickness something to focus on! I really like it here in the east, but the NW is really a hard act to follow for any place in the US!
I hear you with all you say about Steemit. I too had a very very "thin" presence here for a good 6 months also due to personal reasons rather than anything going on in the crypto or steemit worlds, and was really surprised how much everything had changed when I returned recently. And yes lots of Steemit Inc bizarreness that makes no sense to me but there are some really amazing people trying hard to make this place good and using their influence in very altruistic ways. And all in all I am also keeping the faith. I like being here for so many reasons that the lack of monetary rewards while unfortunate, have never been a deal-breaker for me and have never been very capable of doing anything to help on a programming level. So here I am once again and focused on content, curation and relationships!
This post is sponsored and featured by @Appreciator in collaboration with @c-squared. Just keep up the good work.
That is beautiful to see, a tile mural of the mountain, I think looking at it in person would be great and soothing.
I am wondering about tile mural art, is it always hand painted or is there a mass produced factory?
Thanks @scrawley!
There are both mass produced and handmade tile murals but they are different species :-)
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So Lovely @natureofbeing and it is amazing how many layers it takes to build up such rich colour. Yet, it surely shows in the final result. I've been nervous shipping paintings before, but can't imagine the stress of ceramics in the mail!
I'm happy to see you creating. I'm hoping your absence from Steemit has been due to your joy of loving your new area and your new smaller but more private studio space.
Thanks so much @donnadavisart, in my 30 years I've only had 1 piece arrive completely broken but I'm always always so on edge about it because so much work goes into each piece!
My absence has been from deep creative burn-out actually but thankfully glimmers of my creative life force are returning :-). I go into it more here in a recent post
Very cool, looks a lot nicer than the photograph itself.
Lol, yeah not the best photos, this was surprisingly hard to photograph especially during these very short winter days when the light is almost always wrong for it!