Thursday, February 23, 2012

Some work in progress

            My current experiment is using rutile as an overglaze on tenmoku. I have read that this produces an orange or yellow color, which would stand out well on the dark brown of the tenmoku. I jumped right in and painted dragons over the tenmoku on a vase and on a cup. It may run a bit and make the image look smudged, or it may not.



            Anyway, I need to practice using a brush, so if the images get smudgy I won’t be that put out over it. I have always been a fan of markers, colored pencils, and charcoal, but never spent much time painting. So this is a new adventure in several ways! An added difficulty is that if I mess up, it’s hard to fix without rubbing off both the glaze and the overglaze. I expect that skill will come with practice, as with all things. 



            I've also made a mug with a dragon on wheels chasing a mouse on wheels. It is now glazed and waiting to be fired. It will be green.



2 comments:

  1. Can't wait to see how this turns out. I have never tried to paint over a glaze before.

    You made a comment on my blog and I got it in my email but it never showed up on my blog, blogger sometimes does strange things, I don't know where it is, but anyway thanks for the comment about my green leaf platter with the red tomatoes.

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  2. Thank you so much for commenting! I've tried overglaze painting with cobalt over a matte dark green glaze before, and it produced a shiny metallic surface, very dark. I'm trying the rutile and tenmoku combination in particular because in the images I've seen (ancient Chinese pots) the rutile did not leave a metallic sheen and also had an excellent orange-yellow color. The kiln was fired today, so I'll find out on Wednesday! And yes, there will be pictures, probably on Thursday.

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