Blog

My coffee maker overflowed this morning, so it took me a few minutes to get into the studio.  Gary is cleaning it out now.  WHAT A MESS!!!   I am still watering my garden because of no rain.  I'll take some photos for you later.

I am sharing the process of porcelain painting with you, a medium that I dearly love.  I think in this area you can paint functional pieces or paint the tiles that can be framed and hung on the wall.   Any subject matter can be painted in any style preferred, just as any other medium.   Being similar to watercolors, the process is from lights to darks and the paints are very translucent.  The paints are oil based and fired in a kiln each time an application is applied.  On each application, if you are not satisfied with your painting (before you fire it, of course) you may wipe it off and start again.

I shared last week 2 pieces I am working on and here are my drawings.  For the tile, I had some photos of lilies in my reference materials, cropped the area of the photo I wanted to paint, then enlarged it to size.  I traced the parts I wanted to include, left out the garbage, and added some shapes.  The back flower I drew in myself, since they were not clear in the photo.  I also decided to put a decorative border and have some of the shaped come out over the border.   This is very  planned just like in my watercolors.   Here are my final drawings.  Let me add, though, that when painting functional pieces or subjects that are more unstructured,  I do not use a drawing and trace but I always have a plan.  The familiar phrase I think of is "We never plan to fail, but fail to plan".

 This box has an area in the middle where I will do some design( not yet decided).  I couldn't work out the heart shape for the trailing flowers down the side (not enough room).  The design is a mirror image of the other.  I will not tranfer my design on this because it is small and very simple but I will pencil in my borders to have a starting point.

This is my drawing, which I most always do on tracing paper because it is easier to add or subtract shapes in my design.  As my flowers in the background were drawn on a separate piece of paper, then transferred to my tracing paper. I will transfer this design because I want to be more precise. 

Ok, let me get started.   Lots of work to do.