early July things

 

I started making mugs! I get closer to my goal of making a giant sports direct dupe mug. My next steps are just continuing to throw mugs, practicing throwing with bigger pieces of clay and learning to make a variety of handle styles, so I can reach the Giant Mug goal. I also eventually want to practice doing more underglazing (basically painting underneath a translucent/transparent glaze, like this black design shown on the mug image above) and on-glaze decorating techniques (painting on top of a glaze, not done it before).

Here's a less successful but still interesting pot. It's not so successful because the wax resist somehow got on the upper area of the pot (the light line near the rim). Also there's some glaze mess on the inside of the pot, because I messed up the glaze application initially and then roughly cleaned it before re applying a different glaze; there was still some residue of the first glaze and instead of combining, somehow the two glazes didn't get along so there's a big unglazed spot on the inside... 

However! I actually find the new glaze itself very interesting colour and texture wise, I'm not usually into blues but this one has a lot of variation within it, so I'll probably try do some more pots with this glaze. I'll see how the next result comes out, I wonder if some of the variation is coming from my haphazard prior glaze dipping and subsequent messy cleaning.

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I have a few more pots that came out of the kiln, none are particularly noteworthy to be honest. I am getting better at throwing bigger, taller things, though. I have put 4 new mugs up for their first kiln firing, so I'm looking forward to see how they get on (fingers crossed the handles stay on).

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In craft news

• I'm continuing to use and destash my yarn!
• I sold/traded a couple jumper weights of handspun yarn that I'd made because I didn't have solid plans on what to make with them, and I have enough works in progress/queued specific projects to get on with.
• I'm working on my dad's cardigan and making good progress. It looks like I'll still have a whole other jumper quantity of yarn even after finishing it though! So I might make myself a cardigan or sell/trade the remainder.
• I did buy a jumper quantity of pale coloured Sandnes Garn peer gynt yarn for a Kosekofte which has been a knitting goal for quite some time. For the colourwork contrast colours I will be using a bunch of handspun and leftover yarn, so it still sort of feels like a win in terms of stash.
• I suppose if there's leftover then I can use the rest for some mittens or other small accessories, or sell the peer gynt yarn.

In game dev/art news

• Continuing to try learn to code and doing a bit of shader and in-engine (Unity) learning at work too. Hit a wall with one of my tutorials so I need to ask someone about that soon.
• Continuing slowly but surely with the dress up pixel artwork.
• Done some watercolour painting recently as well as some general sketchbook drawing which has been fun 😌

should/could be painting right now

[A bunch of disparate thoughts/paragraphs, not particularly cohesive here]

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O is at nursery for a few hours and I'm off work, so I could be getting better acquainted with my watercolour paints that I bought myself in January. Yet instead I'm doing a little bit of knitting, organising my room a bit better and thinking about walking to the shop to buy something different for O to eat for lunch...

To be fair, I have managed to get a bit more sketching done in the evenings, although it's digital art. Nothing wrong with that of course, and it's much more convenient when the lighting's rubbish indoors at night. But I need to make more of a concerted effort to get on with watercolour and traditional artwork. Just because I like it, too, not because it's better in any way!

A recent sketch, playing with the symmetry tool in Procreate (software for ipad)

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I've done a bit of cleaning up in this room. Recently my parents have been organising their own belongings, and whenever they visit they bring a bunch of my old stuff with them which I had left with them over the years, between houses and towns and so on. A lot of sketchbooks, art supplies, some wool fleece, metal etching plates which have been drawn on... So bit by bit when I have the time I process this stuff and see what to keep, give away, recycle, or (last resort) bin. I don't think I've thrown much if anything in the bin yet. Lucky for me, sheep fleece is compostable and arty paper and such is recyclable.

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I couldn't sleep last night and spent some time thinking about wanting to write a mundane fantasy story about how a nation deals with immigration in a way that is kind to people. We'll see if anything materialises.

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At work we're working on setting goals for the year and mine is to do a bit more work in-engine.

[Game engine - for non game development people - the software used to make games!]

This might mean some coding which is both exciting and intimidating! I want to make a very simple prototype of a doll making game (I used to play on these websites in the early 2000s and also did my own pixel art dolls too) and also I'd love to make some sort of recipe storing thing that I could use for making meal plans or picking recipes. I know all these exist already but I want to make my version 😆

I have been making small inroads towards the doll maker project, trying to explore what kind of style 'base body' I want to use (the body onto which we would put clothes, hair, etc). And again I come across the feeling that art directing yourself is a skill in itself that needs practice! By this I mean choosing a style that feels right (in terms of mood) and is appropriate for the type of thing I'm making, and within scope (what level of quality/complexity should I aim for). The experiments continue, and perhaps I'll share the sketches I've done so far in a separate post!

actual goals for 2026? 🤔

I had dreams of writing this blog post about my 2026 goals while O fell asleep but eczema itching has scuppered that plan. Perhaps a reminder to not place too much expectation around goals!

A little while later:

Ok, I do still want to make a sort of loose goal system for 2026 which centres around me figuring out what I want from life and my job...

My primary goal:

Improve in drawing/painting

A simple goal, probably a little broad, but to elaborate, I want to get more comfortable with drawing and painting again; I plan to do so through continuing with a regular art practice (somewhat of a fail lately because of illness in the family and big deadlines at work). I want to draw more from reference, the usual thing. No pressure to define any conceptual (like own IPs/universes/stories) or stylistic things, just focus on getting back into the swing of things and importantly having fun. 

Secondary goal:

General learning in game development

This is even less pressure. Just maybe do some designing of little games to exercise that muscle again, maybe even try to make some tiny tiny projects in game engines (very simple ones). Maybe watch some more game dev documentaries (no clip documentaries), read a game dev book, keep up with industry news. Just rounding out my skills if I can.

Casual goals:

No pressure at all to do these, but they're fun ones so I think they'll be easy to find momentum for. 

Play more games

This helps to inform my game dev and general industry knowledge. We refer to a lot of different games in our research when making our own stuff at work so having good background knowledge certainly helps. I'm also including board games/physical games/TTRPGs here!

Make more pots

- and hopefully get better just from continuing. Not much to say here, I just want to keep going and make gradual improvements without any sort of time pressure. 

Stuff that I want to keep ticking away but without any pressure or expectation

1. Japanese lessons

2. Using up my yarn and fibre stash in textile projects