Colman’s Drawing Becomes a Bowl is Finished
The bowl got an over all light planishing to even out the surface. I still had some deep hammer marks in a few places but wanted to soften them later. I was more interested in adding something of interest to the base for visuals inside the bowl.
I drew a star on the base of the bowl, no chasing, I just started to push the metal down with repoussé tools. In the past I have chased a design on the outside of a vessel meant to be see on the inside and didn’t like the way it worked. Recently I saw a guy on YouTube just go in to the back of a large platter (on black pitch) very deeply with repoussé tools, when the front was exposed, he went in to define the figures with what looked like chasing tools, considerably softer-edged than mine. The Corwin book talks about ‘running’ tools of different widths and profiles for different effects. That must be what he was doing. I’m moving just a little way down that road with this element.
While I worked on the sides, the pitch lining was cracking a little. That was most likely due to its thinness, if I had filled the bowl or lined it more heavily, it may not have cracked in the same way. As it was, I just heated the inside of the lining, pressed the pitch back together, let it cool and continued to work.
When I put the star in the base, it knocked out a piece of the pitch, metal was pushed farther than the thin layer of pitch would allow.
The pitch was melted out of the bowl and I soaked it in turpentine for about 4 hours (to remove pitch residue without fire), while I had dinner and watched Thursday night TV.
Afterwards I gave the bowl a brass brushing to remove the turps and cut one of the scallops to see if my shears were the right tool, they worked.
The star had a lumpy appearance inside the bowl. Again, something new from the Corwin book, I took some plasticine that had been lying around the studio for years and put it to work. The base had to be supported while I worked on it but I didn’t want to go through the pitch placing and removal process for this small part of the bowl. We were having a heat wave when I picked up the plasticine, it was more pliable than it had been during winter, still pretty stiff but nothing like it was when I was using it years ago in cooler weather.
I packed an inch thick layer of plasticine onto the base and worked on a board for mobility and to keep the oily stuff of of my worktable. I worked on defining the edges of the star with a pear shaped repoussé tool.
After I worked on the inside a bit, I made a bigger piece for the inside so I could work on it from the outside. The plasticine had to be tall enough to raise the rim of the bowl above the board.
Working from the outside I was able to smooth out the star’s surface. It was interesting to note that when I remover the plasticine from the inside the copper and the clay were both blackened. I don’t know if there was some unknown agent acting because it didn’t happen on the outside of the vessel with plasticine from a different part of my stash.
The whole base outside of the star was still not work hardened, I began to us a dowel to push the base around the star flatter, the bowl is unsupported, resting on the board.
I spent a lot of time refining the shape of the bowl, widening and making the base circular, and removing the visual break between the base and the curved sides. It took a combination of different hammers and mallets, short trips to a stake, stump depression and board, and the use of different shaped wooden dowels.
I cut out all of the scallop dips.
The rim was filed into shape ( #2, #4 half round files) and sanded with 800 grit emery paper. I gave the whole surface a rubdown with the 8oo grit paper. I think it’s finished now, removing the texture might remove its character.
