Weddings, pottery and painting

Congrats to Hrach and Lori on their wedding! Luisa and I attended yesterday as each other's dates since both our husbands were at BGG.con in Texas (Jeff's coming home today, yay!). As part of our wedding gift to the happy couple, she and I collaborated on creating this bowl:



Luisa designed and shaped the bowl, then gave it to me. I painted a design on it: the flowering vine as well as the couple's name and wedding date on the outside, and a small heart inside at the bottom of the bowl. Then I gave it back to Luisa, who glazed and fired it.



This time I was careful to outline all my colours in three coats so that they would come out properly after being fired. It was painstaking work because I was SOOOO paranoid about screwing up; Luisa had done such a wonderful job on creating the bowl, and you can't really paint over a mistake the way you can in acrylics. In fact, one of the reasons I started painting acrylics was because I wanted to get some practice with real-life painting and build up my confidence for pottery painting. I use different paint for pottery, of course.



We were both pretty pleased with how the bowl turned out, and we're going to do some other pottery projects together. I may even put the occasional piece up for sale on Etsy. I sold three paintings yesterday, by the way; thanks so much for your support!

I also very much appreciated tips from my artist friend Beckett, and went out and bought better brushes as a result. I also read up on how to take care of my brushes, though I'm a bit confused by all the conflicting advice. Some sources advice washing with soap and water, letting the soap foam but not rinsing it out; the soap apparently acts as a sizing ingredient and helps keep the brush shape, is rinsed out when you first wet the brush before painting next time. But other sources say to always make sure to rinse out every trace of soap.



This source advices artists to put a new brush in their mouths (IN THE SHOP!!) to see if it holds together nicely when it's wet before deciding whether to buy it. Eugh.

But I digress.



The wedding was lovely, and I enjoyed learning about some Armenian wedding traditions. The "crowning," for instance, when headpieces are tied around both the bride's and the groom's heads. During this ritual, the best man stands between the two, holding a cross over them both.

I got a lot more practice with my camera and Sigma 30/1.4 lens. With the low light in the reception room, I had to crank the ISO up to 1600 to avoid using the flash. The pictures are a somewhat grainy as a result, but I continue to be amazed and pleased with that lens. I also came across some of the challenges of shooting photos at a wedding and quickly learned NOT to try setting the exposure or focus by aiming directly at the blinding white of the bride's dress or the unrelenting black of the groom's suit.



Thanks to Lori and Hrach for a fine evening, and to Luisa for being my date. :-) For those interested, I have more pics from the wedding online.






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