Finishing stacked torso form

I was happy with how the piece had fired and although the pieces were not exactly aligned due to drying/shrinkage issues they were stacking. I wasn’t sure on the exact finish  l wanted but knew I didn’t  want any colour so I opted for black but wanted to suggest an almost metallic image, with a heaviness to the look of it which would reflect how am feeling about my life right now. So I opted to combine Black Iron Oxide, Manganese Dioxide and some Black copper oxide together, I played about with getting a heavy coating and settled on using an underglaze medium to hold the metal powders in suspension, this made them so much easier to apply evenly.

I was concerned about the potential for them to stick to the kiln shelf and was advised by Cath and Rob that a good coating of alumina on the shelf should be fine.  Frustratingly the alumina was forgotten and all three pieces stuck to the kiln shelves resulting in the work having to be chiselled off, each piece is now cracked and damaged. 

I had chosen to seal the piece with wax so the whole piece needed a light sanding to remove any rough areas left by the oxide coating. This sanding (Under extraction) resulted in a really interesting hammered looking metallic surface which I really liked. 

Below are images of the pieces before and after firing