Original subtitles

Well hello and welcome everybody. I'm Gillie Hoyt-Byram and this set of workshops is going

to be introducing enamel painting to you. I'm going to be going through this book that

I wrote two years ago and is now available as an e-pub and all the information in here

is about on-glaze enamelling. Now on-glaze enamelling, another word for it, is over-glaze

and the paints contain metal oxide pigments and silica which is ground glass and the ones

that I recommend have 5% lead and some precious metals to give them the brightest look of

all. So I've got a recommended palette which is mainly sunshine colours and then there

are some ceradal colours. So I've put these in long tubes just to distinguish them. There

are three ceradals, the reason being that I've been using these on-glaze sunshine colours

since 1990 but over the years three of the enamels have lost their clarity to me. So

I found ceradal as a website and I've substituted three of them. But just to introduce you to

the basic colours, the sunshine ones are mainly the blues and the browns and a couple of yellows

and then there's a bleu clair which is the French ceradal and this used to be cobalt

like a sort of Google sky blue but they took that colour out and they only give us azure

so I've introduced the ceradal bleu clair. Then there are some gold bearing products

which are four times more expensive than the basic ones but absolutely beautiful to use

because you've got a rich purple, a purple red and then there used to be a, there is

still a dark cobalt in sunshine but I think that the ceradal bleu nuis is much richer

so that's the one I recommend. And then there are three colours which are cadmium colours,

so it's cadmium oxide that's used in the mix and these are the orange and the cardinal

red in sunshine and then in ceradal it's the ruch de fure which is a lovely rich scarlet,

can be poppy equivalent in sunshine but the ruch de fure just gives that pure colour and

the cadmium colours behave in an unexpected way because when you mix red with blue you

don't get purple you get a brown which is a lovely brown but a bit of a surprise so

in order to get purple mix you really need to use these pure purple colours. Now when

you mix these colours onto your palette you have a basic set, here's the palette layout

and you really only need those colours because from these you can mix all of these by just

mixing two together and just imagine how many you could mix if it was three together and

that's the maximum that I'd recommend to get the clarity and brightness in the colours.

So here's my palette on the table there amongst these little pots of colour and on the top

of each pot I've got a little button of colour which is a copper enamel which I've then painted

with the pure tone, rich tone of that colour and then the half tone, just a thin wash just

to show what it would look like at half strength. So it's worth doing that because when the

colours are wet or glossy as in the kiln then it's how they're going to look when they're

fired so when you're working away on your painting as you lay the paint down that's

what it's going to look like when it's fired but it will dry and look pastel like in the

meantime. So that's talking about the palette now obviously the colour mix that you choose

that's going to determine the colour that you get and I mentioned about how cadmium

oxides give you these lovely browns in this area so the colour mix is one thing for determining

the final colour but also you need to be aware of the base that you use. If it's a piece

of whiteboard chopped up with a guillotine like this sample then that's only half a

millimetre thick and it's just had a brief coating of liquid enamel processed in a factory

so it's been sprayed on as is this tile and this is also on steel but a lot thicker it's

over a millimetre thick and that's how it keeps its shape and it doesn't distort. So

for test pieces or even little paintings the steel is really adequate but of course you

may want to make your own copper shapes. So talking about the steel there are particular

white colours that work for the paints. If you choose a white that isn't compatible with

the paints then you're going to get some odd colours and the fugitive red this purple red

is the one that will really complain and turn out brown rather than this rich colour. So

it's very important to get the base right and if you're making a beautiful opalescent

enamel on copper then it's a silky surface and the brush will just glide over that surface

beautifully. On steel it will tend to drag a bit because it's obviously a much cheaper

base but here making your own copper bases you can choose to add gold flux first onto

the copper and then three layers of opalescent and stone it back and then you've got your

lovely base. But for beginners I would suggest you work with steel and these little samples

if you can get a piece of A4 A3 whiteboard and chop it up then you can make all the

samples that you want to test your colours for example rather than using these steel

tiles. Now the other factor so we've got the mix of colour we've got the base that you

use and the third factor is the medium that you use and you can see testing this fugitive

purple red with different media it shows a slightly different change of colour. So you've

got the brightest here with Uni Media and pine oil I've used more paint there so it's

a bit brighter. Uni Media is a water-based cellulose product and it's safe being water-based

that's why I've chosen it. I'm going to be demonstrating with that today. Pine oil is

something that I use for my painting but you could equally well use paraffin liquid paraffin

oil or you can use glycerol which is something I'm going to be demonstrating in a future

workshop that's water-based. These two water-based makes them really safe to use but do be aware

that you're using metal oxides and they are poisonous so never lick the brush and be very

careful about cleanliness on the bench and wiping away any powders or whatever so they're

not on your skin. It's a very good idea to work cleanly anyway because you want a dust-free

atmosphere. Any dust will fall on wet paint and clog it and I'll be showing you something

about that at the kiln later. The solvent obviously for the water-based Uni Media and

the glycerol you're going to be using water itself but when you use oil-based media you're

going to use something like Zest-It which is a much calmer version of White Spirit which

is a horrible smell but Zest-It is odourless or you can get a citric smell which is quite

nice and you can also use alcohol as from the pharmacy or from the supermarket to use

with preserving fruit. Nowadays it's about 70% alcohol. It used to be about 97% when

I first started and in Ireland they add meths into it to make it smell dreadful so that

no alcoholics are going to be drinking it by the bottle.

I'm going to demonstrate the sponge painting technique that I've been talking about using

this image by Hokusai. I'm a great fan of Hokusai, a Japanese printmaker from the late

19th century and here we've got Cranes and his beautiful work with the pen and then wash.

Now first of all make your tracing and then shade on the background there then transfer

the image onto a plaque and then you'd be making an outline with pen ink which I'm going

to show you in a minute for the butterfly but to lay this down I've put some areas in lack

of resist which have dried now and I'm going to demonstrate paint over the top and removing

that while the butterfly is drying. So I'm going to take a palette knife and choose a

couple of colours from the palette here. One is ochre, there, sunshine colour and then

I'm going to use the roche de fure, the ceradel colour and mix those two together with some

white. Now you'll find you get through much more white than anything else so you probably

need double the quantity of that. First of all take the lid off and just put, it probably

only needs about that much, quite a lot goes into the sponge but you wipe the palette knife

and then take some of the roche de fure which will be about that much I think just depending

on your taste for colours and then add a good proportion of the white, a bit like that.

And wiping the palette knife each time is really important because you don't want to

contaminate the colours. If you've taken too much don't be tempted to put them back into

the pot because these pots are pure warehouse colours and you may actually contaminate the

original pot and it would be such a shame to chuck all that away if you find it's just

the white's gone off in some way. Now these colours are very very dense in pigment, they're

also very finely ground, they're a bit like talcum powder, they're 325 mesh which means

325 little holes in one square inch and that's much finer than the average sort of enamel

that you're using which is about 80 mesh granular but nevertheless under a microscope you can

still see tiny little chips of glass and so it's very important to grind it well to blend

the colour and break down all these little balls of powder because if you leave any tiny

balls of powder it will transfer to your painting and you may not see it when you've sponged

it on but it will develop in the kiln. So I'm going to be using Uni Media and it's a quick

drying water based medium which is ideal for this purpose and people love to use it if

they're doing quick paintings but it's a closed, what we call a closed medium in that it will

dry quite quickly so there isn't very long to work with it. If you're wanting a more open

medium then later I shall be showing you how to work with glycerol which is another water

based medium or any of the oils like sewing machine oil is the most open of all meaning

that you can work it for a very long time like months and it still won't have dried

so that's just perfect for doing a very fine portrait and so is, let me see, we've got

paraffin oil which is an open medium and painting medium which I like which has pine oil in

it that takes probably about a day and a half to dry. Now when you've mixed the medium into

the paint you've got to use it straight away if it's Uni Media because it's going to dry

and if it's dried, if any of your paints have completely dried you've got to chuck them

so you can keep them refreshed every day by grinding in a little bit more medium into

each of the paints on the palette and that way they'll stay wet. If they've dried you've

got to actually discard them. So here we've got a lovely peachy colour, I clean up the

palette knife and just dip it in water to make sure it's clean and then I'm going to

take a sponge. Now these are ready prepared on sticks which are quite good but what I've

also used are these upholstery sponges so if you've got a friendly upholsterer who would

give you offcuts then cut them up into finger sized pieces and that will work just as well

for transferring the paint to the enamel. So try a little bit there and you can see

a million dots already are transferred onto the tile. So I'm going to go over this lacquer

resist that I actually prepared earlier so it's nice and dry. Never go over it if the

lacquer resist is wet because it will just get all over your sponge and ruin it. So there

for the purpose of the demo I'm now just going to peel back a little corner here with the

tweezers and peel it off and as good as your painting was with the lacquer resist then

you've got the image back and you've got the white if you wanted to paint that in detail

and look at the way it just comes off so beautifully. So there's one that I did earlier and I actually

put a little border around that so I used some electrician's tape or you could use masking

tape to make the border before I did this sponging. Not so easy to clear it afterwards

but you could so anything that you've put on with the sponge you can remove with a brush.

Bring down the border like that but probably better to use the masking tape first. You

can also use Scraffito to go into this, get a bit of detail. So that gives you the idea

and finally it could look like this where you've got two layers of sponging so you'd

have to cover the cranes twice over and then the second layer I've actually done this

Scraffito through the second layer of paint where I've put bands of colour on with the

sponge rather than just one colour overall. The initial layer was one colour and then

I did lacquer resist second time, sponged over for the second time and then worked into

the top layer of paint to reveal the painted layer below. So all sorts of possibilities

there. So I'm going to be using the Uni Media today, water-based Uni Media. So for this

demonstration I'm going to be showing how to make a design using about six or seven

techniques. So it's a very basic design and it follows on from the PowerPoint where I

showed the quotes about a butterfly so choose your own or do something completely different

as an exercise but here I've chosen to use these six or seven techniques and I'm going

to be showing this now from start to finish. I have a little design that I made in watercolour

and then the first thing that I did was to trace over and the next thing just like your

geography lessons you want to transfer the image so on the back of the tracing just go

over it with an HB pencil. Anything darker than that is going to leave a little bit too

much carbon on the enamel but I found a very good way of transferring the image and the

traditional way of putting pencil onto enamel was to grind back the enamel plaque and then

use pencil all over it and fire it in the kiln but I thought that that was quite a sort

of abusive thing to do to enamel and when I found this from reading books on ceramics

I thought that's it I wonder if that works for enamel and it does. So what you need is

some modelling clay and this is a bit like plasticine but it's not the kids plasticine

it's a lovely it's got a good smell this one and another one is made very near where I

live where they dig clay out and there are a lot of potters in the area that use the

clay so you've got your plaque and you roll the modelling clay over the top and what you're

doing is getting a matte key to the surface so what it was was a glossy shiny surface

that just wouldn't take pencil very well at all but once you've got that key there then

it's going to receive the pencil and it will burn out in the kiln so that's very effective.

Just going to anchor the plaque a little bit stop it bouncing around and then put the tracing

down there and I've got registered corners so that I know where I want it to go. So I've

got the tracing registered over the top of the enamel plaque now using these little corner

marks that I put on earlier and I'm going to just trace over the silhouettes of each

of the butterflies. Go around with your pencil as carefully as you can and transferring the

pencil shading onto the actual plaque so that you've got guidelines for the painting. In

the photo I've also got visual aid here which is what we're aiming for so you may like to

look at that in the meantime while I just hastily go around here. I'm going to be introducing

a technique called sponge painting which again I borrowed from the ceramics industry and

it's the ceramics industry that uses these on glaze over glaze paints and you know they

are made for the ceramics industry and we enamel painters just ride on the back of that

and that's how they're available to us. If you're mixing your colours you can choose

any colours that are leaded and they will mix together but don't mix unleaded colours

together with them just keep to the leaded and that will be fine. So there's an enormous

number of colours out there but I've just reduced the palette to a manageable number

and those are the ones that you just need to grind every day. Right revealing the pencil

line which has come out really fine. Apart from I just forgot that little bit but that's

good because I can show you that you can just draw freehand with pencil over the top and

that could be fired in the kiln now to secure the pencil and you fire it at 750 degrees

centigrade 1382 Fahrenheit and then the pencil line just drops into the base and all of this

greasy modelling clay disappears that burns out and you've got a silvery line left which

is your guide if you're not confident about doing a painting. Say you started the painting

and you've got your pencil line you weren't happy with the painting you just wipe it off

and that's the beauty of this medium. It's unusual in that you test your art in the kiln

you've you put it into the flame into the fire and also your really every brush stroke

is a spontaneous one. So I'm going to put the pencil line down pencil and pick up red

resist. Now this is lacquer resist again used in the ceramics industry and it's very gloopy

stuff it's a bit like rubbery nail varnish so you want to use a different sort of brush

for it not any of your lovely sable brushes that you might have. I'm just going to make

sure that's clean and what I'm going to be doing is just covering over each of these

butterfly silhouettes so that I'm resisting the paint that I'm going to add and when I

peel this off it's going to reveal the white background for each of the butterflies so

it's really protecting the white at the moment a bit like batik. It's quite good if you put

your piece on a piece of card like this because then you can turn the card instead of having

to turn the enamel and grip it at the corners that's particularly useful when you're painting

so make sure that this is quite gloopy and dark a bit like the lacquer resist in the

pot. If you make it too thin it's going to be too brittle to get off when you peel it

and if it's about this sort of thickness it will all come off in one beautifully. So this

is going to be done and then left to dry so I'll demonstrate something else in the meantime.

Here's the butterfly's body coming around here. Now any image will do as long as you

use the techniques that I'm teaching in this demo. There. You can draw this resist out

so you can put a blob down and then just draw it around so that it's inside the area of

the pencil that you've drawn on. By the way with pencil you could just make a lovely pencil

drawing with shading and provided you've got this key laid down it will receive it and

it will fire beautifully and some people would make a shaded pencil drawing and then just

tint it up with colour afterwards and if they're not happy with the colour they could just

wipe it off and reveal the pencil again which has already been fired and start again. So

it's very forgiving in that way. It's only when it's fired enamel is absolutely permanent

it doesn't fade in sunlight and it will last for generations and the only thing that you

have to be wary of because it's glass is that it might break if you dropped it on the floor

especially if it's a concrete floor. So I'm just roughly going around here. I went to

the Emma Bridgewater factory in Stoke-on-Trent in UK the year that it was their 25th anniversary

it was 2010 I believe and it was at the end of the day because I'd had some meetings

in Stoke-on-Trent and I just wanted to have a look in and they were about half an hour

to closing and somebody very kindly took me around and they were doing sponge painting

there for sets of mugs and beautiful pieces bowls and so on and as I was going round I

was beginning to think I wonder if you can do that with enamelling. So I experimented

and to my delight I found it was possible and this is a very good introduction to people

who are scared of using a paintbrush but even then using these techniques myself I

actually incorporate them into portrait painting because I'll use sponge painting to cover

a background to a portrait in order to get rid of all the white quite quickly. So I would

make the portrait silhouette in white by this method of covering over the white with the

lacquer resist and then sponge over as I'm going to show you in a minute and then reveal

the white again and that would be then the portrait painting. So I'm going to put the

lid back on so that it doesn't dry out. I wipe off any excess lacquer resist there and

then wash the brush in water and you can see the water doesn't even turn red which means

you don't have to ditch your water all the time but you would as soon as it has a colour

in it in your painting just keep changing the water. So we're going to put this on one

side to let it dry while I show you some other techniques. Here's a colour wheel that I made

showing the paint palette that I like to work with the sunshine colours and the ceradel

colours. In the pots here we've got 17 basic colours and my palette is 19 because I make

up two mixes which I'll show you later. I've got all of these in little pots ready to use.

I've got two others which are mandarin and iron red which I just happen to have but they're

not really essential for your basic palette. These are pure colours and you won't need

to add any more to that. Just work with those. I've done all the portraits that I've done

maybe 600 over my career of about 30 years using these. So the colours that we're going

to mix up today for the background are going to be a bluey colour. This azure is incredibly

strong so it just needs a little of that compared with the white to use. So lay down some of

that and then I'll need a lot of white, put that there and then I'm going to use the bleu

clair as well. But into the bleu clair I'm going to add some turquoise so you can mix

your paints and blend them. Turquoise there. The uni media can get out of the bottle using

a spill like this, like a coffee spill but notice that I'm putting the medium next to

the paint, not actually dumping it in the middle because if you did that those little

balls of colour would just roll everywhere. And just put about as much as you've got paint

down there, just put the uni media down as a blob and it just sits there like a mound.

And then a bit like any preparation for cooking you just start to blend colour with medium

and this applies to whatever medium you're using. Just blend that in and never ever use

the solvent with the paint like this, only add medium if you want to let it down a bit.

More medium means that it's going to be quite diffuse when you lay it down, it's going to

just blur and blend. If you've got less medium you'll see more dots like when I was demonstrating

the Hokusai I had a stickier liquid. Now this enamel paint is called thixotropic, it behaves

in a thixotropic way, that's T-H-I-X-O, Tropic, T-R-O-P-I-C. And so it behaves like toothpaste

that you can squeeze it out of a tube say, but it holds its shape. This one is a little

bit too watery to do that but when you've dumped it, it shouldn't spread too far so

that's very useful in a palette where you can lay out your colours. So there's one mixed

up. I don't need to wash the palette knife for this, I'm not going to mix all the uni

major in because then I can show you how it can become stickier. So here, grinding away,

it's a bit like silkscreen painting. It's got that lovely glossy look to it but it behaves

more like watercolour painting but of course you could be using oil in the mix and it can

behave like gouache if you add white. So the white which is opaque will, when you're laying

down paint after paint layer, the white will to a certain extent block out what you've

got beneath. And again I can just not clean the palette but to the palette knife and just

blend in the white to have that as a mix. That's getting nice and rich. Breaking down

all those little balls of powder that I can see. And the trick is to gather it up on the

palette knife and then dump it down again and just give it a good slapping. There. I'm just

feeling my way with how much I need here because I'm just going to grade the colour upwards.

So just put a bit more of the blue-clear tutcoise mix in there. A little bit more again. And

a touch more. I've got it about right. So I'm going to clean off the palette knife and

into water as well. And now take a sponge on a stick or you could be using the upholstery

sponge and just get any sort of dust off the sponge first and then dab into the paint.

And because this is mounted it just needs a little bit of tack underneath to stop it

bouncing when you apply the sponging. And then coming upwards like this. Just covering the

lower area. Blending that down. Then into this one. Coming down the way and blending

to there. And then finally the darkest colour of all which is the pure azure and come from

the top and down to about there. And that's really intense. Okay so now the fun bit where

with the tweezers I remove these pieces of lacquer resist. But first, oh yeah that's

right I'm going to do this first and then I'm going to do a tiny bit of scraffito. So

there we go. Just have the piece of paper nearby so that you can just dump the lacquer

resist on there. It's a really quick process here. I meant to say that when you're sponging

over don't go over for too long because otherwise you'll begin to dissolve the lacquer resist

and it will start to come away on the sponge. So there we've got five butterflies and then

with the scraffito tool which is just a cocktail stick, dental stick, toothpick depending on

which country you're in, you can go over this and there put the little antennae on while

the paint's wet. Now you could wait until it's dry but the paint might tend to flake

a bit if you do that. There's another one. And if the paint floods back in then you just

need to go over it a little bit more. And if you are really tidy you get a brush and just

take that out with the paint brush to remove it. And if any of the paint from the lacquer

resist has fallen into the butterfly making a mark don't worry because you can just use

a damp paint brush to pick it up and get rid of it. So tidying everything up before the

firing is really worthwhile. After the firing it's fixed. Now I spot here, and you might

find this, that there's a little bit of dust or something so just lift that up with the

tip of the brush and then you can patch in later with the sponge. There. Or you could

do this with a paint brush if it's a bit fiddly. So that's ready to fire. Now because I've

got the enamel on this piece of cardboard supported there it's a lot better than trying

to pick it up now because you can imagine that pinching the edges you get lots of little

marks down the side revealing the white again. But picking it up like this and taking it

across to the kiln is ideal. So it just needs a little bit of cardboard there. So it's here

that I take it off the cardboard and I know that there's the tack underneath and I get

that onto this titanium mesh that I'm using because it doesn't leave any oxide specks.

And then on the back I'm just going to remove that little bit of tack so that I'm not touching

the plaque at all. But if you've got a really gentle sort of grip, like hardly gripping

at all, then it will be fine just taking it at the edges. But I'm just showing what usual

people would be doing. So here, first thing is that the piece needs drying in the kiln

before you fire it because if you put it straight in now, it would spit off the paint. The fact

that the uni media would be producing steam and that would spit off the paint. So whatever

the medium you're using, you have to dry the enamel first at the mouth of the kiln and

you have to keep it absolutely horizontal. I normally use the ceramic fibre boards that

are covered with clay slip and once it's on there, it's really steady. It doesn't slide

about. I think most of you have some mesh of some sort or another, but it's not a good

idea to use these ones because the stainless steel produces so much metal oxide, it's just

not worth it that any of that may come on top of the painting and spoil the paint during

the firing. So I think having shown you the titanium mesh, I'm going to go back to my

tried and tested method, which is to use the ceramic fibre board. It takes a little bit

longer to heat up because it's thicker. The titanium mesh will give you a quick result

and the ceramic fibre board, it will stick to the back for a little bit, but after about

a minute and a half it pings away and then it cools down and you can help the cooling

by putting it onto a steel block. I've got the kiln set at about 770 there and the firing

temperature is going to be 750, 1382, but it's good if it's a little bit higher because

in taking something out of the kiln, it drops temperature, opening the door and so on. Now

I've put a piece of ceramic fibre board in there, it's quite good if you leave it in

there because it's lovely and hot and what you can do is transfer your painting across

to the piece of heated ceramic fibre board and that will quicken the firing. So there

it is and I'm going to show you this unimedia steaming shortly, drying off. I've got asbestos

fingers here, so use the butter knives, these are really good for supporting. Now I'm shifting

it around. So here you can see the steam rising, I hope you can against the black, just last

bit coming off there and it goes pastel in shade so it's no longer glossy like the paint

was. I'm going to put it in the kiln now because there's no risk of any of the paint being

spat off and I'm using a cake slice here to put it to the back of the kiln where it's

hottest and shut the door quickly. So it's got down to about 703 and it's going to drop

a bit more, so you want it in the top 690s roughly and after a while it begins to climb

again. And it's a case of watching the digital pyrometer rather than watching your watch

and definitely don't look into the kiln because that's got infrared rays and that's where

I'm wearing the blue glasses to protect my eyes. It makes it a little bit more difficult

to see whether the piece has fired or not, so if you really don't like wearing the blue

glasses you can just glimpse, kind of like that, just to see. But when you reach that

magic figure of 750 that's when to open the kiln door and check is it shiny, glossy all

over. So while we're waiting for that to climb I'm just going to show you the first of a

series of tiles. I might be able to manage the whole thing. So these are little test

pieces on copper and I just put on a basic white like dial white which is a hard one

and I painted up the four primary colours and you can see that this is the best result

because it's glossy and the paint has just sunk into the enamel. That's the beauty of

it, painting in enamel. But here the paint sits proud on the surface and it's matte.

So what's happened here is that it hasn't fired completely, hasn't been in the kiln

for long enough and the good thing is you can put it back in and it will go glossy.

Now here the problem is that the enamel was in the kiln far too long and what's happened

is it's gone lacy. The paint has dropped into the white far too far and it can't be recovered.

So I'm afraid that laciness will shine through every subsequent layer. Here the paint was

too thick in different areas, it wasn't dried properly, it came off and same with this one

for various reasons the paint just came off in the firing. And this one there was a little

hair that actually acted like a sponge and it took all the paint into it and it wasn't

noticeable in the painting but when it was fired the hair disappeared, it burnt out but

it left that clog of paint. So we're now going to take this out, just seeing that it has

risen to 753 and just see is it fired. It's pretty good, it's got that glossy look and

that's just right for the next layer. So I'm going to lay that down and let it cool and

if you've got a light over that's the best way to check whether the enamel is fired because

under the light you can see that it's glossy. So you could just have a little lamp if you

haven't got an overhead light. It's good to have an extractor fan or have the windows

open so that any odours are just taken away because these are slightly poisonous gases

and you just want to protect yourself as much as possible. So I've got the extractor fan

off at the moment but we've got the windows wide open. The last two tiles in the troubleshooting

section which I've got at the back of the book show a piece of this metal oxide that

you get when you use stainless steel trivets and it spoiled the work by landing on the

red there and the only thing that would take that out would be a diamond point. So this

is a little bit of steel that's got diamond stuck on the end. That means just grit of

diamond not real diamond but well it is real diamond but grit of diamond so inexpensive

and the only way is to scratch that out and then you reveal the white base and oh it's

such a fiddle and a mess so try and avoid any impurities by firing on something like this

ceramic fibre board. And the final one is where the tile has discoloured slightly so

the red isn't pure any longer and that was because either the solvent, the water or the

zest it or whatever you've used wasn't clean and it wasn't changed regularly and the paint

ended up murky or the paint itself had got impurities in it and changed colour slightly.

So some people ask about this ceramic fibre board I mentioned that the enamel sticks to

it to start with and then it comes away of its own accord as the metal and glass contract

and then you can lay it down onto a cooling block like a block of steel or onto the marble

there but the ceramic fibre board it gives it longer life if you paint it up with something

like kiln wash or clay slip I've used here so I get clay slip from Potter, Pottery Friend

and then I mix up with some water until it looks like a very thick double cream and then

paint it on with a pastry brush and that will lengthen the life of it and on the back it's

got some little marks where the clay slip has broken down we just need to touch that

up and then put that onto the kiln to dry and then in the kiln to cure and then I've

got a long lasting piece of fibre board which is about that thick.

The next phase is to do some pen work it's another technique that I learnt from ceramicists

and this is where you use a different medium called well it's called pen oil obviously

but it's a mix of capaba oil and aniseed oil three parts to one so three parts capaba to

one part aniseed smells absolutely gorgeous if you like the smell of aniseed yep that's

it and you'll take a little bit of oil and put it down there and then to that you can

mix any of your paints or a paint mix so virtually all of these colours and more if you were

to mix three colours together can be achieved as a pen line but for this I'm going to show

you one of my favourite colours which is mixed from purple and linois so it's the darkest

colours and reed green and these three colours make a purple black better than real black

which is really quite deadening for things so you can mix it like this or in a separate

little pot if it's your favourite colour you could mix up enough for future use so I'm

going to put in a load like that and this pot is going to be great black so you'll mix them

in equal proportions so a little bit of the blue nooie just and if you want you can make

it more blue or you could make it more green depending on how much of each colour you add

but it's roughly three separate parts a third a third and a third and then the reed green

so a little touch here and little balls of colour that need grinding just get it about

the same as the others there and then a dump of it there so these paints are available

as professional colours as well and you've got a much much bigger range but what they

tend to do to create a baby blue or something they mix say four parts white to one part

as you're and as I'm doing here you can mix your own so you put the lid on and just give

it a good shake and there it is in the dry form this is going to be the great black so

I'm going to mix up some ink now I've got the capoeira oil here just going to introduce

it and different from the paint it's got to flow more so it's got to be able to run down

the nib of a pen so it needs more oil just use a little spill or a stick or something

mix that in and again blend it really well so that you're breaking down the balls of

paint otherwise they are not going to flow down the paint nib there we are if it's too

runny it will blob we'll try that and just see this is a nico pen which I really recommend

and I bought this one in Japan and you can find it online or jewellery with gems supply

them in USA that's a very good website for enamel painting supplies and that's with Zineb

Harvey so you've loaded it up to the split in the pen and then just practice a little

bit there and it just comes off the pen beautifully so that's ready to go but first of all you

need to prepare the plaque and it's only going to be the upper part for this detailed butterfly

so I'm going to roll the clay on the upper part here and transfer the image and just

get the little detailed decoration here and I just need this it's personal preference

just how much you go around with pen line and I'm just using this particular colour

because I love it so much in portraits it's just great to use it for dark hair if you

use black for eyelashes it looks like makeup on a child so much better to use this great

black instead and it makes a fantastic background as well rather than deadening black so that

should have transferred there now if you're not confident you could fire that pencil in

the kiln and then go over the pencil line with the pen knowing that if you make a mistake

you could go back over it but because the clay is greasy and because the oil is oily

they're compatible and you can actually just draw like that and get the detail in

just like the old pens of the past the dip pens it will go for so long and then you'll

have to load it again using the spatula and again it's on this card so that you can turn

the card to work and pull the pen towards you to get the lines if something blobs then

there are two ways of removing it either while it's wet but that may smear so that wouldn't

be a good idea or wait until it's dried and then just scratch it off like scraffito

pretty well did nearly the whole thing so just load a bit more try it on here first

because the first one is going to blob because there's rather a lot of ink there I think

I've lost the symmetry a bit there so just pop that one in and then I think I'll do the

body as well there now you're aware of how many firings it's going to take on this piece

so I've got pen line for the detail there but I've also got pen for doing some handwriting

and that's the beauty of this pen oil it's very versatile and you could write a poem

or something but I've got my little phrase your wings already exist all you have to do

is fly which I think applies to most things in life now for this I'm going to use a ruler

and I'm just going to lay down some pencil lines without using the clay because I don't

want the lines to fire them I don't want to fire them on I just want them to be a guide

for the moment so let's get the ruler level and just run through there so that my eye

can see it and this should burn out in the kiln so that's to there try the pen here first

yep just get it flowing again it's obviously going to dry these paints whatever your ambient

temperature if you're working in hottest Australia or up in the Arctic it's going to be varying

rates of evaporation and you can also put the paints into the fridge to just slow down

evaporation that's a good idea so I'm just going to do some freehand you could have mapped

it out in pencil

and

being a perfectionist I should have perhaps allowed a little bit more space there but

let's press on

and if you get it all wrong you're not happy with it just wipe it off this lower part with

a piece of kitchen roll or something cotton hanky and just start again

and it's just run out just at that point but never mind load it up get it flowing again

okay so if anything's a bit thin go back over it now yep and so I've got the two together

and I could have turned it around if I hadn't on the butterfly now I could turn it around

and do it like that but it was easier this way round so ready to fire

look at the kiln now with the piece it's possible to handle it at the sides because it's not

wet paint this area is the bit to stay clear of and this time I'm going to use the titanium

mesh so it's not going to wobble it's just going to be a perfect firing now for this

you need the kiln fork and it's good if it will cover the width and the depth so just

gently go underneath there keep the piece away from the door as you open it because

there may be dust come off dry it in front of the kiln so into there like that and you

will get not steam rising but oil vapor rising as it drives off the capabra and aniseed oil

so it's got to be completely dry before it goes into the kiln I'll settle it down there

and it's gone matte so now I'm just going to present it put it at the back and need

a spatula just to keep it in position and restore the fork and it's gone down quite

a bit so it's got a bit of a climb and I wish I'd had a kiln glove on because that was really

hot so it's got to go back up to 750 1382 for the pen oil because it's got the paint

in there and that's what you're firing while waiting for the kiln temperature to rise it's

got to come up to 750 1382 I thought it would be interesting to point out the poster that

I've got here of 18th century miniaturists enamelers working and then they had to use

a muffle kiln so it was fueled by charcoal and they put the enamel into a box which was

a metal box that they then put into the kiln and they didn't know what was happening during

the firing they couldn't glimpse at it or anything and it's just a miracle how they

knew from the glow of the charcoal that it was just right so this is now hit just above

slightly above 750 and that's fine so you just take it out really steadily keeping it horizontal

and with the kiln glove then I'm not feeling the heat like I did before so it's changed

color and not so dramatically as you'd find with reds and oranges and the fugitive colors

like the purple red they change dramatically and they go very black but the blues and the

greens stay roughly bluey greeny so after a while it will come away from the titanium

I'm not going to force it because what happens if you force it off then it leaves a little

bit of enamel behind on the trivet and that's not so good so you could hear little little

pinging noises then and if I get the spatula underneath there and just give it a little

tap to help it on it comes away and I can put it on to the steel slab and leave it to

cool and that will just hasten the cooling a little bit here I've got a little tile that

I did earlier and it shows the pen line which is actually made from you could either use

orange and chestnut mixed together or you could use one of the enamels I just discarded

from my general palette but it's available from sunshine and it's called iron red and

it's a rather nice color for outlining so you would fire the pen as I did before and

then when you've got the pen outline then you can just fill it in with wash so you can

see it's quite thinly applied and then that's just had one firing and then you could have

several more to build up the depth of color but the main thing is to work quite thinly

so that would be the sort of depth that you want and okay that's satisfactory in itself

but the thinner it is the better quality if it's a miniature so when you're painting a

portrait miniature it would have about seven layers like seven layers of skin and you can

get much more three-dimensional look to it that way so I'm going to demonstrate some

painting using another of these little tiles which is on steel and it's been counter enameled

as well so factory process they spray this on probably using all the colors together

to make the backing and they'll then flip it over and they'll spray on the white as

well and you could set up a spray booth at home but it would be rather expensive I think

so it's probably better to buy these pre-enameled so it's got a film of plastic over it which

prevents it from being scratched take that off first and then you've got a lovely glossy

shiny surface but even so I would take some kitchen towel and just spit on it and wipe

over because spit is a wonderful degreaser and then the paint will go on easily if you've

got any finger marks or whatever it means that it's going to resist any water-based

paint like glycerol or unimedia it'll probably be okay for the oil-based ones but it's best

to make sure it's completely clean so I'm just anchoring it there without pressing down

in the middle and then I've got a selection of sable brushes here which I love the Kalinsky

finest sable by Windsor and Newton but you can find cheaper versions or you can use synthetic

brushes if you prefer but as long as they reach a fine point because these Kalinsky

sable absolutely beautiful at reaching a fine point whereas sometimes the synthetic brush

might split and that would be really annoying for painting I've got one here that I just

use for lack of resist and so you can see the split in it it's probably because I've

used it for lack of resist it's a lovely brush to use with the grip but I just use it for

lack of resist so with this I've got a number a zero a one and a two and really that's quite

adequate you might add a zero zero as well I use the zero mainly when I'm doing miniaturist

work but for this I'll use the number two brush it doesn't get much work so it's going

to work now I'm going to use uni media because it's quick drying and we've been using it

so far I'll be using glycerol later on so I'll put some uni media down there ready to

mix with the four fugitive colors so I've got cardinal red in the sunshine range put

a little bit doesn't take a lot down there and then the orange another cadmium color

then the ceradel color the beautiful scarlet rouge de fure put the top back on straightaway

and then this purple red which is the one that I used when I was testing the different

mediums so this is the one that tells you whether the base is right for and whether

the medium is right because it should go a beautiful purple red if it goes brown no

that base or that medium won't work so I'm going to mix in a little bit of the purple

purple red this is and it's blending well and it's actually the idea is to mix the

paint by getting rid of all the little balls of paint and get it into a position where

it will be a pile of paint like that you don't want it flooding everywhere you can always

add medium to it with your brush so there we are and mix mixing means removing the paint

from there and to prepare the next one so this time it's going to be a little bit of

the lovely rouge de fure such a pure color that you couldn't mix from anything else now

because these fugitive colors behave strangely it can be a good idea to add a little bit

of white into them and then that supports the firing because they've got a lower firing

temperature or spot-on 750 whereas the blues are very very stable and the blues and the

blacks take slightly longer to fire like white does if you add a tiny touch of white it will

support the firing because white is a higher firing within the margin of you know only

up to a sort of 860 I think these colors can go to but I find for paintings it's better

to stick at the 750 some people do a high firing but my nerves wouldn't stand it I think

it's better to hit your target and then know that you haven't over fired so a little bit

more uni-mediate into the orange and blend that down so that that will make a little

pile of color and then I'll do this test piece using these it's going to get clear of the

purple red put it down there and it's dragging a bit so I'm just going to add a touch more

of the uni-mediate and now it's flowing well so you don't want your paintbrush dragging

so that's the orange I think some of these colors they used to have mercury in and as

I was saying in the PowerPoint presentation very very poisonous oxides which obviously

the factories are gradually removing and changing the recipes so they may be not quite so bright

as they were in the 18th century they did have a beautiful pink in the 18th century

which you can't achieve today all right the final one is the cadmium red

I hardly use this at all really I can't use it in flesh tones I tend to use the brighter

one the Ruchter for that's for later right all the colors down clean up the palette get

the uni-mediate off and this is just a basic ceramic tile which you could find any size

okay so I've got my number two brush here it's quite nice to have the kitchen towel

handy so I instinctively wash the brush to start with and then roll it into the medium

and I normally put the solvent first and then the medium because you're washing your brush

first and then you go into the so this has got uni-media in it and I'm going to gather

up rolling the brush into the purple red and then at this end I'm just going to lay down

some brushstrokes and first of all I'm just dragging it if you can imagine these little

polystyrene balls in there steel balls and it's like the brush is like a feather and

you're just rolling these tiny balls of glass along and if you have a gentle touch that's

the way to get the thinnest sort of paint and then the smoothest so I'm just stroking

the paint here into place and once I've got an even base there then I can introduce more

paint at the top and it's like floating decoration onto a cake icing so you've got the base there

of the paint and just adding more colour and drawing that in and it's very good if you

can draw the paint towards you it'd be hopeless if you were trying to go across like that

so again a piece of card really helps that so pulling the paint towards you is much more

relaxing and it's just the very tip of the brush that's working for me here and I'm drawing

it right down so from this I've got the tone and the half tone and if I kept going then

it will be thinner and thinner until you hardly saw anything so wash the brush make sure there's

no red coming off purple red and then put it into the unimedia wipe it again so there's

a damp brush and I'm going to roll it into this Ruch de Feu the scarlet colour and do

the same thing again just again stroking the colour into place making it quite thin down

there and once I've got that laid then going into the top and adding a bit more paint until

it's super saturated and you wouldn't want to go any thicker than that any darker because

you remember from troubleshooting I showed how some of the paint could be could just

ping off because it's too thick so there's another one just make it a little bit thicker

there actually it will take it just to show the tone and the half tone that's good wipe

that off and wash it into the unimedia or whatever medium you're using and then just

begin to stroke this down so that I'm thinning it this time now you're adding paint with

the brush but you can also remove it so with a damp brush use it like a mop and come down

this side here and follow it around and the brush does the mopping coming down to there

so it's just instinct now to go into the solvent clean it and then into the medium damp brush

and then do a bit of tidying never ever put the solvent into the paint or anywhere near

it just mix medium with paint and you won't spoil the work so this time it's orange and

you see how the paints are holding their shape on the palette so they're not going to flood

and go everywhere that would be really annoying if they started to flood into one another

and just pulling this around and a little bit more at the top and then I'll draw it

down to make it thinner at the bottom wiping off into the medium damp brush and then bring

this down so that I've got the half tone more obviously there and then with the damp brush

into the medium just work around so if I were to put a water brush there it would just flood

the paint and it would go into the water and spoil it so that's why it has to be damp

medium on the brush okay so that's come well and now it's finally the cadmium this lovely

deep colour here and I'm doing this so that in the firing you can see dramatic colour

change so I'm working more paint into the top so that it's super saturated I've got

enough there and then drawing down the rest to make it the half tone

so just remember the feather analogy and I think steady hand good eye and perseverance

and you'll get faster as time goes on but just get it correctly done to start with okay

so we'll fire this in the kiln now here's the piece still wet so the colours are really

going to look like that when it's fired glossy I take it off the cardboard base leaving behind

a little bit of tacky stuff and choose the kiln fork and for a fast firing back on to

the titanium mesh right still got to be dried but because it's uni media it's fast drying

and the evaporation is happening almost instantaneously water being driven off now this is cellulose

based and I have taught a group where somebody put it straight in the kiln and all the uni

media actually caught fire and he opened the kiln door and flames were coming out and it

wasn't from the elements or anything it was from the paint itself so we quickly switched

off shut the door and waited for the bonfire to subside so that's pretty well ready and

it's going to go into the kiln just supporting it there and leaving that until it gets to

750 now this is on such a thin piece of steel enamel that it's going to fire more quickly

at the temperature the 750 1382 it may even fire just below that temperature so it needs

careful watching and I'm going to warm it to dry off the uni media as before so it just

presented into the kiln about three times the temperature drops that's no bad thing

because you want to go just below 700 ready for firing and then it climbs back up again

so it's on the titanium mesh and it's just going in now I have to support it a bit and

use that kitchen slice to get it off gently and then shut the kiln down and it's going

to take about a minute and a half I reckon to climb back up it started climbing already

because that piece is going to warm up very very quickly being thin steel such a good

piece for a test piece but when it gets to about 730 I'm going to take a look at it because

I don't want to overfire it I want pure colors these are the fugitive colors the purple red

very fugitive and that means unstable and the scarlet which is the rooster fur seradel

color the orange and the cardinal red fugitive means that they're they're just going to change

wildly if you use the wrong medium use the wrong base and fire them and the wrong way

so it's climbing back up and another 15 degrees or so and then we'll take a look I've got

the overhead light to just check when it comes out if it's shiny or not if it's under fired

it goes straight back in but I'm going to take a look now now it's got that sort of

orange glow about it and it is actually fired and it's a beautiful firing so that's what

you want I'm going to put it down there and let it cool down so it's fired quickly because

it's very thin if it's a large plaque very thick it's going to take longer in the kiln

but don't let the kiln go above say 800 because the paint will be over fired if you go that

far you can see it's cooling down and the colors are coming back and they're pretty

faithful to what I what I actually painted on so that's good I just touched it a little

bit there to get the counter enamel off the titanium mesh and there it is cooling beautifully

so purple red the rooster fur the orange and the cardinal red lovely range there and what

a gorgeous glow now this is what happens if you overfire the piece you see how the colors

have burned out and where I've painted strong color at the base but slightly thinner it's

just burnt out all together and it hasn't gone gray but it has rather spoiled it and

that was because that was fired at 750 just following the rule but not checking and not

taking into account that this is a small piece so always test colors it's a good idea now

I'm going to mix up two more colors for the butterfly one is the yellow little touch of

that and this is not a cadmium color it's just a basic color there is a cadmium yellow

and it's called mandarin but I can avoid it it it's okay to use without have a palette

without it so mix that up and the other one is going to be the purple black which I have

in powder form in this little pot here so I just dumped the yellow there and it holds

its shape because I haven't added too much unimedium just enough clean up ready to put

some of this great black here so here's the lovely mix I wouldn't take the pot lid off

straight away because it's all a whole lot of powder floating around if you're going

to actually be using large quantities of these which you can with screen printing and so

on then it's a good idea to wear a mask I don't really want to get involved in supplying

paint for the reason of just thinking about your health and not wanting to decant them

so I can see the purple the red and the green there and they're just blending together okay

that's all ready to go now so I am I haven't got the square with me right now that's at

the kiln part we can just press on because I can grip the outer edges without any worry

so I'm just going to dip into the orange and it's a good strong color and just lay that

down just coming into here as well so you'll just feel the silkiness of the paint on the

brush it's a really nice medium to use and again if you make any errors you can wipe

it off and I'm working quite quickly with uni media because you find that with a palette

of mixed colors they will have dried after about two and a half hours of working if you've

got them out in the open especially on a warm day so they would need regrinding people make

bowls vases decorate tables in Iran with these paints these same paints are used around the

world they're made in Germany by a company that is called ferro fe double r o but if

you buy them direct from the factory you buy five kilos at a time and of course there are

lots of middlemen that break down the color into first one kilo and then into 250 grams

and so on so I've just got a damp brush and I'm working backwards to get the half tone

up off the excess and get back to there so sometimes there's a shortage in supply of

the purples because the person who has to buy a kilo or five kilos can't afford it quite

yet and their stocks run down and then they run out and that can be a bit of a nuisance

so make sure your stock is quite high

right you're removing to get fine lines if you're doing hairs on a cat or something this

brush is wonderful to just draw down either side and there you've got the fine hair and

I'm just going to put a little bit more intense color up at the top so I've got the brush

super saturated with orange and I'm just putting it back into the top part there and already

I can feel the paint just beginning to drag a bit on the on the palette because it's been

sitting out and it's a warm day so coming around the other side I'm blending with the brush

to try and remove some of the brush strokes but here I quite like to see the brush strokes

in this design but if you're doing a portrait you'd be really mashing those strokes down

or any sort of delicate shading or on the other hand you could use the brush strokes

to get the veining on a leaf or on a flower petal so that's about right there so I wash

the excess paint off onto the cloth and then that goes out in the bin and what I do when

I'm throwing water away that's got paint in it is just put it into another bowl and then

pour away the water next day and I've got the paint sitting at the bottom and I wipe

that away and that's just so that these paints don't go into the water system so now it's

a little touch of yellow coming around here and this isn't shaded it's just blocking it

in and there I'll just put another one there always make changes never do the same thing

twice and there right the next part is the purple black the great black I mean and again

I'm just going to take this up and put a little bit blocked in here as much as I dare without

it being too thick because I didn't want it taking longer to fire than the other paint

so they've all got to be about the same sort of level and to there

okay I'm going to put the body in as well and I'm going to use Scraffito to just show

the shape I'm going to go over that pen line a little bit up to the top

that's it wipe off the excess there into the water and into the medium and then with the

Scraffito you can just work into the paint just get a bit of texture

and this is ready to fire again oh little bit of orange on the antennae I just spotted

that so we'll just put these little dots there it just brightens it doesn't it that's good

the enamel looks shiny still because the paint's wet and I'm going to offer it up to dry it

so I'm driving off the unimedia which is water-based so you'll see steam rising but it's such a

small bit of painting may not show

okay under the lamp it's gone nice and pastel so that's the time to put it into the kiln

and it goes to the back of the kiln shut the door down and wait for the whole thing to

climb up to 750 again 1382 so I'm just going to talk about another butterfly here that

was made and you can probably read this now that this was made with the sponge painting

in the background with the margin around first using the tape just to protect it and then

the next thing was the pen line to get all of this outlining on the butterfly and the

antennae and so on and then that was the second firing and the third firing was adding the

paint and that was done with sponging but you could use it use a brush here but it just

I don't know it takes away the brush strokes which is quite good to have a sort of blocking

enough color and yet it's thin enough so that was that tile another idea is to have a little

poem or a saying and in two fire three firings that was a backwash there then the magpies

were put on in a more bold way and finally the handwriting in the purple red so that

was quite effective I talk about those because they like student work I was training somebody

for six months it came to me here this shows the sequence for lacquer resist and sponging

so down here you've got the first stages where you've got lacquer resist and some scrafito

scratching out these fine little twigs and so on sponging on two colors the green and

the blue and then again it's been a lacquer resisted so that you've got the twigs with

the blue background and when the next sponging layer was put on I scrafitoed back to the

original green or into the blue and here you can read it that I've put more lacquer resist

on and this time put on a black sort of strong really that is the lamp black and then scrafitoed

back to reveal just a little bit and this final one here you can see the sequence where

lacquer resist to show the white there but bit of scrafito if it's too fiddly then protect

it again with dots of lacquer resist and then you're just protecting some of this lovely

turquoise and sponge over with a darker turquoise peel off your lack of resist and then the

third firing would be protecting it all the white and the turquoise and then sponging

over the grape black and the fourth firing is where I've just added touches of paint

with a brush and these are fun because you'll use the lacquer resist like this drawing it

down and then the final little bits are used scrafito work and little dots and so on and

then protect it again with lacquer resist and add in another darker colour for sponging

and the final bit is little touches of paint there and here you've got some broad bands

of colour which are only revealed when you put the sponging over and then scrafito back

to get those colours so the kiln's now up to 750 put the glove on and take it out and

it's lovely and it's gone changed colour and I can see the paint shining there and I'm

just going to put it straight down onto here I'm always worried in case the marble top

might crack or something I don't think it would but I'm just going to settle it there

and you can see what it's like those bright colours the cadmium colours and the yellow

have changed colour dramatically so the orange has gone more like the cadmium red and the

yellow has gone a really dark yolk yellow and the great black hasn't changed at all

the enamel is now cool and I've mounted it again on a piece of card with some of the

blue tack and it makes it easier to move the card rather than touch the enamel as I said

before so I'm going to take some lacquer resist and this time I'm going to paint around the

butterfly so that there's a well here where you see white that's going to become this

ochre colour and this is really doing something in reverse from what I did before when I was

actually making white silhouettes this time you've reserved some white which you then

paint with pure colour because if it had the blue over it it wouldn't give the required

colour because the paint acts like layers of tissue paper one colour shining through

another so I'm just going to go carefully around here and it's just so that I can put

the sponging in the centre covering the white and of course I've got to cover the parts

that I've painted because I don't want them to go ochre as well so it will go over here

and around there and you may think oh well you may as well do this as a painting as well

that's your judgement to paint the white area ochre with a brush but following through

with the sponge work gives it that speckly effect as if you've put a million dots like

Pantalism in miniature painting so it gives it a certain sort of style and you don't see

any streakiness that you might get with brush painting so while I'm doing this which is

a little bit laborious I'm just going to show you a painting here and this has several techniques

which you'll be able to identify line work with pen and ink using the iron red actually

which is not part of my palette but it does give a wonderful terracotta colour similar

to the miniatures that were made many many centuries ago and they were using Minium which

was a mercury oxide which gave this gave this sort of orange colour and that's where we

think the word miniature comes from from Minium so after firing on the line work I then used

some sponging to make the block in the background colours and then you can see with this particular

one there's a yellow base and I put orange over the top with a brush and then scraffitoed

back to the yellow so you'll be able to read the painting to understand the stages there's

probably about six firings there and there's also some scraffito in the background as well

not quite so noticeable and then another painting more boldly a sponge painting and it's got

some gold work on it as well you can see with the bells and you can understand the sequence

there three layers of paint sponged on using lacquer resist to build up that density so

I think planning your own work it's quite good to just turn it over in your mind it's

good mental gymnastics to think what you're going to be doing first and what effect you

want to achieve lots of things are possible if you just think it through and just going

over the dots and I'm leaving a little bit of white as well because that might be quite

attractive it's quite difficult if you put a dark colour over the top of this red it's

difficult then to see the red shining through and you may miss some areas and then they

get fired in the kiln and it the lacquer resist then goes gray and I'm afraid it's fired on

and there's nothing you can do except scrape it off with a diamond point so it's best to

find all of them right we're going to just leave that to dry now and come back to it

later to sponge on the ochre I'm going to go back to the piece that I demonstrated earlier

with brush painting and I've got that over at the kiln ready to fire right the sponging

is going to be done with uni media and ochre so I'll take the ochre paint and I just need

just enough to cover that surface but knowing that the sponge takes up quite a lot you need

to just put in maybe double what you thought never put it back in the pot and then take

some uni media put it beside it and then just work it in so that you've got a lovely silky

paint and make sure you mash down all the balls of powder so it's all blended don't want any

fierce dots of color in the middle of it so you just gather it I haven't used all the

uni media there so I'm just going to wipe that off and that's about the right consistency

and then you want to finally gather it up clean that off and then ready to sponge over now

you can get varieties of sponge and this sort of thing from craft hobbyists and that would

be about the right size to use or on chopsticks you can mount your own bit of upholstery sponge

or you may get makeup sponges which could work quite well so I'll use a couple of these one

on one side and one on the other to just show how it works we're just coming in the middle

here doesn't match if you go over a bit because you can always wipe that off afterwards main

thing is it to make it even if that's what you want and then with this little upholstery

sponge try it there first yep it's working and then go over this bit and it's just the

dabbing motion and I'll even them up now so that they look symmetrical now the fun bit

getting the tweezers and just wiping off that excess paint there straight onto the blue

and then lifting a corner and the body may come away as well that's rather satisfying

isn't it so just put that down there and then tidy up the rest and that's leaving a little

bit of white which I intended if this lacquer resist gets a bit wet then it starts to dissolve

and it makes it more difficult to peel off so that's why it's best not to keep sponging

over but to do it quite confidently having done some testing on the tile that's getting

that bit off and that bit that has gone wet so I'm going to use something else to get

that off right I'm going to just go around here make sure all the ochre that had strayed

off has come off there grab that bit there and then use a brush that I wet just to dissolve

that a bit further and lift it off there it's coming off on the paintbrush and that's all

fired so no worry about going over this area but don't stray into the ochre part so I'm

sure you'll work out more complicated designs as I have with many of my sponge paintings

but this is just to show simply how to put together six or seven techniques and make

it work so having removed all the lacquer resist I now go around it with scrafito just

to outline a little bit more because the white really does bring out color and there and

just a little bit there there okay I need to wipe this off and this one will now be

fired at 750 1382 take the blue tack off the back don't want that firing on and we'll

go across to the kiln again now for this firing I've got a tile already in the kiln this is

a ceramic fiberboard support so it's lucky and hot and as soon as I put the butter on

it you'll probably see the steam coming off because it will be drying this unimedia very

quickly so put it there and then use the spatula now this is just an alternative method and

present it at the mouth of the kiln and it's going to go that pastel shade it's already

gone so just heated up the plaque very quickly put it to the back of the kiln where it's

hottest and shut the door and then watch it climb back up and this will go up to full

firing 750 because it's a normal sized thick piece of steel about one and a half millimeters

I think compared to this one being probably a third of a millimeter I think so thin but

the wonderful thing about steel is it keeps its flat shape so that's great to work with

because copper would need doming in order to keep the shape if you had a piece of copper

flat like that it would go saucer shaped in the kiln so the only way to counteract that

is to dome it the other way or what you can do when you bring it out of the kiln very

carefully not when the enamel is still very very toffee like but just afterwards you just

flatten it at the edges like that with a pair of butter knives and that will rescue the

copper or you can get a flat iron old-fashioned flat iron or a pot or a piece of steel block

which is really hot and lay that on top and flatten it but be careful it's got to be done

just after it's gone not the toffee stage otherwise you'll mark the enamel just a couple

of seconds after and then press not too long otherwise it will crack being glass so this

is climbing up again now and when it gets to 750 it'll be ready to take out and then there's

just one more firing which is applying some navy blue the the great blue and also the

the gold which is an interesting piece right with gold you lay it on too thickly and it

won't fire properly so you may think that adding a rich coating of gold would be best but it

isn't make it too thin and it just goes like a sort of lacquer smear of a lavender color

so just right which I'll demonstrate in a moment and you'll get this lovely glint and

these lusters are available in all sorts of colors there's gold and there's platinum

and silver and interestingly it's the platinum that gives a better silver than silver itself

there's a copper luster there's carmine there's green there's all sorts of colors that you

can play with a bit like ceramics and majolica and I'm going to show you in a minute how

you brush it on you semi-fire it and as soon as the bright gold comes up then you've got

a chance to scrafito into it because it's not fully fired and you can refine all the

gold that you've laid down and then fire it fully and that fixes it so it's not going

to come off at all so this is the same gold that's used in the ceramics industry to go

around the edging of plates and cups and saucers and so on so getting ready to take the piece

out when it reaches 750 just about now there it is always has that lovely orange glow about

it and with the overhead light I can see that it's fired and then pop that down and then

as soon as it's cooled enough after about a minute on there it begins to pull away from

the ceramic fiberboard which has this clay wash over it if I were to lift it now it would

tear some of the clay wash off so I'm going to leave it for a couple of minutes and then

put it on to perhaps the titanium mesh to cool it more rapidly so it's changing color

which gives me an idea of the temperature but you can see it's still stuck because the glass

is contracting and it will be just worth waiting a little bit before putting it on there it's

quite nice sometimes to work two paintings at once because while you're waiting for

one to cool down you can be applying the sponging to the other one I've often done that there

it's come away it hasn't torn any of that so I'm just going to leave it there to cool

and then we'll add the next layer right for this I'm going to apply the great black I've

got some mixed up here so I'll take a little portion and use unimedia again I'm going to

apply this with a brush this time and then use some scrafito so we want some unimedia

to add put a blob beside it about the same size you can see the color haven't quite mixed

so there's the green and I can see purple but blending it now is making something slightly

more on the green side so there must be a little bit more of the reed green going to

take a number two brush and I need the unimedia open so just dry that off and then only have

unimedia damp in the brush and roll the brush into the paint and then just paint down the

side here roughly and both sides and come up around and there making it symmetrical

okay now into this paint you can either use your scrafito tool

make some lines like that that works quite well for refining things it just depends how

blunt you make this tool by rubbing it on sandpaper because if it's really pointy the

lines might be so fine that the paint falls back on itself then another tool that you

could get from ceramics suppliers is this wipe out tool and using the blade here or

this you can actually work into it like that or with the blade which gives the same sort

of effect really the rubberiness is rather nice to press down on and this is turning

it more into a moth than a butterfly but it would be very difficult to paint these lines

in as fine lines so this is a good technique there and the last thing it's pretty I've

got rather a lot of paint there there's nothing you can do with waste paint you can't reuse

it just chuck it into the bin there rather than into the water system now the gold you

may have bought gold one gram this size or you may get the gold from held of Holland

they are now and that's the bright gold whichever one you buy it's got to be about 12% gold

content it's a very expensive bottle so hopefully you can get a smaller one but if it's gone

a little bit cloggy dried up a bit then you will need to let that down with some zest

it so that's the solvent that use for oil painting and I've got a designated paintbrush

here that I just labeled gold luster because if I use one of my beautiful sable brushes

that I use for painting it's going to spoil it and there may be some gold in there still

because it's a rather heavy sort of lacquer but just dipping in there lay a bit down here

that's probably twenty dollars worth all in one go and as I said don't make it too thick

just going to make a little border here so you don't want to see dark brown but more

of a chestnutty color then you know you've got about the right thickness

and if you make a mistake then actually wiping it off with a cloth it may smear and leave

some gold left behind which you can't quite see but it will develop into a lacquer a sort

of lavender color smear so you don't want to do that you want to scratch it off wipe

it off when it's semi-fired that would be the best way

it's quite difficult to see against the blue but when it develops it will come up glossy

bright shiny

it's not got a very nice smell it's a bit like burnt hair so do have the windows open

or an extractor fan on

and then we're ready to fire some of these I'm just going to refine it I think just to

demonstrate that so let's just fill these in and then you I can show you how that works

up at the kiln use the remaining gold as well because again you can't really put that back

in the pot just a little border so the brush needs cleaning straight away but what I tend

to do is not put the brush into the zest it because it will contaminate it I just put

a bit of zest it on me on this kitchen towel and then wipe the brush on there until it

comes clean it really does get into the brushwork I'll just repeat that and that's coming clean

now that's good it pops back on

and then we'll go over to the kiln to fire this and I'm taking this Graffito tool but

because that's wood it's going to actually catch fire when this is too hot so I'm going

to take this stylus it's quite a sharp point but I can demonstrate the effect of working

into the gold semi-fired so off this comes and we're going to the kiln so here's the

plaque on titanium mesh because I want to be able to take it off quickly and put it

on there to work the gold work so I'm going to present it here and just warm it so it's

not a big shock and then place it at the back of the kiln carefully and then shut the door

just to conserve the heat and to a certain extent you can look through the window to

see that gold come up shiny because as soon as it brightens that's when you take it out

it darkens first and then it goes shiny so let's have a look now

would be more like 700 but it's best to check that's in between it's gone really black but

actually interestingly the bit at the back where it's hottest has already changed and

that's gone to the glossy gold and we'll just turn it around just to fire the other end

where it's hottest for about 30 seconds I imagine

I'll take that out now there it's come up shiny we'll just let the kiln warm up again for

the final fixing of the gold but at the moment it's just sitting on the surface and you could

scratch that off I don't think it's even caught on the titanium mesh because it hasn't reached

that temperature but I'm going to put it on there for support and it will cool it a little

bit bring it around here and then with this tool start to scratch into it and you can

see the blue background coming already I'm scratching back Scraffito going through the

gold layer and back to the blue I'm just doing it roughly but you could make any sort of

crisscross pattern you wanted at this stage and you can also refine the lines that you've

made just make that bit more curved get rid of any telltale bits sign your initials in

the last one perhaps that's a bit too fine actually do your crisscross

whatever you like just to refine that gold pattern and then have a look at the other

end check you're happy with that and again just tidy up anything you like I could spend

a long time on this but I think we're going to just fix it now and it's sitting on this

it's cooled down so we'll just put it on the titanium mesh for a good firing and put it

this way around this time so if you're firing multiple firings it's quite good to remember

which way around you put it the previous time and then turn it so that that bit gets the

the hottest part of the kiln there we are and this time it's 750 or 1382 which is the

maximum to fix the gold if you go on further than that the gold is going to burn out and

you're going to have to start again you can put gold over gold because it's opaque and

it covers it but you wouldn't get the scruffy toe lines below necessarily so we'll just

wait for that to build up and this is the method I've used for miniatures when I've

painted jewelry on a figure and I've refined the lines and then fully fired it and then

when you put a flux very very thinly ground flux over the top it actually brings up a

sparkle in the gold a bit like tinsel and that's a lovely effect because when you photograph

gold it looks black it's very strange by eye you're looking at it this way and that and

you see the gold shine but when you're actually photographing something precious metals they're

terrible for photographing so I find that when I put finely ground flux just a few grains

maybe just one grain thick over the top of this gold it just lifts it and it's the grains

that are catching the light and make the gold sparkle so it's taking a while to creep up

but it's only when it reaches 750 that it's fully fired and in the ceramics industry it's

the gold that's the last firing and same with enamelling really we're also firing the blue

and that fires at 750 the great black rather so that's a two in one so when you're planning

your firings you can think how many of the particular processes that you're using can

be done in one firing because the fewer firings the better more firings is going to put the

piece under stress more often

and put the blue specks on no point looking at the infrared

and it's ready to come out and I've got the wrong instrument it should be the fork so

bring that out door and just lay it on there to cool down you can see it's stuck to the

titanium mesh but just leave it for a minute or so and it should pull away naturally again

if you take it away now it's going to leave some enamel on the titanium mesh make a mess

of it the only thing that would scratch away the gold now is a diamond point so that could

be used but it will tear the enamel as well and that means that it's prone to any sort

of impurities going into it so it's best to have a glossy enamel sometimes there's

a little ping there just heard which means it's released and we'll just knock that away

and put it on the steel block to cool fast so because the gold's at an angle you can

see it but if you stand right over it it's rather black so that completes this this little

plaque just to show you six or seven techniques to then apply to your own designs and wish

you well and look forward to seeing what you do see you for part two

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