Magnets

I began working on my first goldfish. Learned how to rough and slip clay and worked on creating a fin shape.

Today I had to rehydrate my 1st goldfish by wrapping him in a damp paper towel and isolating him in plastic wrap. Then I started working on my 2nd goldfish. After shaping the body,I added the eyes, top fin and tail by roughing, slipping then blending using a blending tool.

I supported my 2nd goldfish‘s tail fin by adding soft clay to the front and back and made his dorsal fin. I also began hollowing out my goldfish to be a lighter weight.

I finished hollowing out my 2nd fish and reslipped its tail with magic slip. I began scaling my fishy using a ball tip tool then began cleaning off the excess clay.

I finished scaling my 2nd fish and started attaching the fins and tail on my 1st goldfish.

I scaled my 1st goldfish using a pointed metal detailing tool and reattached my 1st goldfish’s tail with magic slip. Then I shaped the body of my 3rd fish and attached his eyes and dorsal fin and scaled his body

I smoothed out my 3rd goldfishes scales from yesterday and redid them with a needle tool. I also added his fins and tail fin and slipped it immediately with magic slip in hopes its tail holds better. I made small hearts as accompanying magnets to the fish and initialed all my work. A few complications i encountered during the process mainly entailed the tail not holding to the body of each fish which I fixed by adding magic slip around each of its seams to help support it.

I decided to use water colors for each of my goldfish which turned out surprisingly well. I painted my first goldfish multi-colored and added a shimmer coat to give them a shiny effect. The second fish I painted pure gold/orange and used different variations of oranges and reds to give him a realistic look. My third fish I painted orange, redish pink and white which turned out to probably be my favorite. After finishing the water color painting I went over the eyes with white and black acrylic to help them pop more which in my opinion really made them perfect. Then they were sprayed with clear and they were beautiful. In all the painting didn’t have too many complications and were fairly easy to finish.

Adding the actual magnets may have been one of the easiest parts of the whole journey. My gold fishy only need one and got to hang out on the board while the other two magnet fishies’ 2nd magnets dried. After adding the addition magnets I don’t think they could turn out better! I am so happy with the results and they are nearly what I hoped they would end up like. The scales could be more defined and each fish isn’t uniform but the more I spend with them the more I love how they turned out!!Thinking back to when I first started ceramics I’ve come a long way in my clay manipulating skill first trying to learn how to roll a perfect ball of clay to now being able to scale fish and use different levels of clay softness to find the perfect fit I desire for each project.