Last fall I purchased an 8 foot log with about a 14" diameter from a lumber yard and had them saw one side of it flat. The idea was a huge glass totem pole for our yard.
Well, the time has finally come - spare time to start working on this awesome project. Over the holidays I drew the design and last week started to cut the glass and work on the firings. I have reverted back to my first way of painting and coloring that I adapted from Richard LaLonde. That is, I used a squeeze tube of black Glassline paints to do an outline, then fill in the outline with frit. In this process there is no shading. That means the depth is more two dimensional, but the colors really pop.
That is exactly what I wanted - really bright, pops of color on this totem. This will truly be my largest piece to date and I am hoping it will be magnificent. I chose to use animals for this totem that frequent our home. There is a coyote, a raccoon, a skunk and an eagle on top.
Each section of the totem is painted, fritted and fired seperately and then will be layed together on the wood when the weather warms up. I just pulled the third section of the coyote out of the kiln this morning and just had to lay it down to check it out!
The background is my very busy braided rug, but you get the idea, I hope.
There are three sections of glass here and the total coyote is about 12" wide and 40" tall. You can kind of see the breaks - one just below his "hands" and one just below his jaw line.
Here is a picture after just the first section was complete and laying on top of the colored pattern.
I had to make a run up to my supplier about an hour and a half away yesterday to get more frit for this totem and other projects. So now I will be off and running. The raccoon and the skunk are done in one piece each, so the progress will seem a bit quicker until I get to the eagle on top. The eagle has a body section, a head and two large spread wings.
