October 2002
Volume 3, Issue 10
by Jean Sheppard
Jean's Photo Gallery
Adobe Acrobat version
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October 2002 Volume 3, Issue 10 |
Gertsch Feather Cane Part Two by Jean Sheppard Jean's Photo Gallery Adobe Acrobat version
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Click on image to enlarge |
Step Six: Turn the plug so the dark portion is along the top. Grip grip the left and right sides and pull them away from each other to stretch the plug out, making the dark side and the light side longer. Or, you can use a brayer or a jar to roll back and forth across the surface. Either way, you want to make the squashed/cubed plug into a long rectangle. Make sure you keep the shape of the rectangle and you keep the dark color on one long edge of the rectangle and the light color on the other long edge of the rectangle.
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Step Seven: The finished rectangle should be about 2 inches wide and about 1/2 inch thick. |
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Step Eight: Now, using the Color C clay (i.e. black mixed with a color), create a long narrow sheet of clay and place this on top of the long rectangle log. I used the widest setting on my pasta machine to create this sheet of clay. the color overlap to be narrow, and not extend to the corners of the clay sheet. |
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Step Nine: Pinch (squish) one end of the rectangle cane down to a point using your hands or your brayer, and... |
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Step Ten: ...put the pinched (squished) end of the rectangle log into your pasta machine. Make sure your pasta machine is placed on the widest setting. |
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Step Eleven: Carefully roll the cane through the machine. If you are rolling the cane though manually (using the handle), you have a ways to go!! I choose to roll the cane through manually (even though I have a motor) because I can maintain more control of the long sheet as it emerges from the pasta machine.
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Step Twelve: Your cane will make a very long sheet, approximately 50 inches long and 1/8 inch thick. It helps me a lot to use a long table when I create this very long sheet. |
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Step Thirteen: Cut the very long sheet into pieces about every 2 inches and set the sections aside. Do not stack them yet.
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Step Fourteen: Place one piece flat on your work surface. In this picture, you can see the dark to light (left to right) skinner blend underneath the Color C (darker) sheet. |
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Step Fifteen: Put a second 2-inch piece next to the first with the dark edge of the second piece running alongside the dark edge of the first piece, to create an "L" shape. Butt the two pieces together.
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Step Sixteen: Leaving the dark edge of the second pieces touching your work surface, fold the second piece over on top of the first piece. It helps to have three hands here - the third to keep the second piece from lifting up off the work surface, but most of us only have two... :)
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