Hello everyone, today I will be going
over the process behind the creation of
the Javan Blue Banded Kingfisher.
First, I would like to discuss why I
chose this bird as my subject matter.
As a fisheries and wildlife major, with a
focus on conservation biology, I wanted
to pick a low profile endangered species
such as the Hawaiian crow or the Javan
Blue Banded Kingfisher. These species are
all critically endangered, with very
small populations, and very low coverage
on their endangered status than species
such as Giant Pandas or Malaysian Tiger.
I eventually I decided on the Javan Blue
Banded Kingfisher because of its beautiful
coloring, very small population (around
50-249 individuals), their shy and elusive
behavior that makes photos hard to come by
and its reasonable size (around 20cm and
and fit in one hand). Once I had selected
my species, I could begin the planning of
my piece. I began my practice with life
drawings. First, from the things in front
of me, plants from the garden, then life
size images of the Javan Kingfisher at
different angles for reference while I
build the piece.
Because I did not have much previous
experience with working with clay, I was
given a series of tasks to practice these
skills. This included carving plates with
different designs and levels of
difficulty to get a feel of working with
clay. I had to paint these plates, as
well as painting the Professor's own
pieces to learn how ceramic underglazes
are applied and understand how they will
come out after the kiln. Once I practiced
these different skill, I could begin
practicing my hand building in preperation
for the Javan Kingfisher. To do this, I
chose a chick-a-dee songbird for refernce
This helped me gain an understanding for
how the bird's feathers looked on the main
form in a 3-D space. This was relatively
quick as the bird fit in my hand, and was
later used as a test tile for the colors
that would be used on the Javan Kingfisher
Now that everything was prepared, I was
ready to begin building the form of the
Kingfisher. In order to make the piece not
so heavy, I began by pinching a basic form
including the head and main body, and kept
the inside hollow with an air bubble
inside. From there, I could start to add
larger details, the start of the beak,
tail, head shape, and wing form. Then
after that, much of my time was used
detailing individual feather. While
doing this, I made some small changes to
the wing shape, from completely closed to
sightly open. Once I was finished with
building the Kingfisher, I had to wait a
couple of days to allow the clay to dry
out before I could start to paint. When it
was dry, I began painting. Using my
earlier bird test for reference, I
painted the Kingfisher, and made some
slight changes. This included trying to
add more detail to the feathers and soften
the edges of the feathers, as I found the
paint job on the chick-a-dee to be too
harsh for a feather. The painting only
took two days, and was ready to go in the
kiln. The Kingfisher was fired at cone 6.
Once in the kiln, the Kingfisher was
complete. Here is the finished product,
and I hope you enjoyed!