All language subtitles for 1-1

well hello and welcome everybody

um I'm Jilly 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 a few years ago

and is now available as an epub

and all the information in here is about

on glaze enameling

now on glaze enameling

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 percent lead

and some precious metals to give them the

brightest look of all

so I've got a recommended palette

which is mainly sunshine colors

and then there are some saradel colors

so I've put these in long

tubes just to distinguish them

there are three saradels

the reason being that I've been using these on glaze

sunshine colors since 1990

but over the years

three of the enamels have lost their clarity to me

so I found saradel as a website

and I've substituted three of them

but just to introduce you to the basic colors

the sunshine ones are mainly the blues

and the Browns and a couple of yellows

and then there's a

Blue Claire which is the French Saradel

and this used to be cobalt like a sort of Google

Sky blue but they

took that color out and they only give us Azure

so I've introduced the saradel Blue 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

Saradel Bluenwe is much richer

so that's the one I recommend

and then there are three colors which are

cadmium colors

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 saradel it's the Rouge Defer

which is a lovely rich scarlet

can be Poppy equivalent in sunshine

but the Rouge Defer just gives that pure color

and the cadmium colors 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 a purple mix

you really need to use these pure purple colors

now when you

mix these colors onto your palette

you have a basic set

here's the palette layout

and you really only need those colors

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 colors

so here's my palette

on the table there amongst these little pots of color

and on the top of each pot

I have a little button of color

which is a copper enamel

which I've then painted with the pure tone

rich tone of that color

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 colors are wet

or Blossy 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 color mix that you choose

that's going to determine the color that you get

and I mentioned about how cadmium oxides give you these

lovely Browns in this area

so the color mix is one thing

for determining the final color

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 millimeter 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 millimeter 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 colors that work for the paints

if you choose a white

that isn't compatible with the paints

then you're gonna get some odd colors

and the fugitive red this purple red is the one that

will

really complain

and turn out brown rather than this rich color

so it's very important to get the base right

and if you're making a beautiful

opalescent in Amalon 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 colors

for example rather than using these

these steel tiles

now the other factor so we've got the mix of color

we've got the base that you use

and the third fracture 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 color

so you've got the brightest here with Unimedia

and Pinel

I've used more paint there so it's a bit brighter

Unimedia 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 base these two

water base 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 I'm

wiping away any powders

or to ever say they're not on your skin

it's 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 that

something about that that 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 odorless

or you can get a citric smell which is quite nice

and you can also use

alcohol has from the pharmacy or from the

supermarket to use with preserving fruit

it's nowadays it's about 70 percent 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 hocasai

I'm great fan of Hocasai

Japanese printmaker from the late 19th century

and here we've got cranes and his beautiful

work with the

pen and then wash

now possible 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

lacca 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 colors from the palette

here one is Oka

there sunshine color

and then I'm going to use the Rouge Defer

the Saradale color

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 put the only needs about that much

quite a lot goes into the sponge

but you wipe the palette knife and then

take some of the rouge to fur

which will be about that much I think

just depending on your taste

for colors and then add

a good proportion of the white

a bit like that

I'm wiping the palette knife

each time is really important

because you don't want to contaminate the colors

if you've taken too much

don't be tempted to put them back into the pot

because these pots are pure warehouse colors

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 whites gone off

in some way

now these colors are

very very dense in pigment

they're also very finely ground

they're bit like Telcom powder there

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 color

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 should be showing you how to work with glycerol

which is another water based medium

or any of the oils

uh like sangshine 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 um 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 Unimedia

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 color

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 off cuts

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

a 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 purposes 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

say there's one that I did earlier

and I actually put a little border around that

so I used some electricians 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 scrafito 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 graffiti

through the second layer of paint

where I put bands of color on with the sponge

rather than just one color overall

the initial layer was one color

and then I did lacquerasist 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 Unimedia

so for this demonstration

I'm going to be showing how to make a design using

about 6 or 7 techniques

so it's a very basic design

and it follows on from the Powerpoint

where I showed the quits 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 watercolor

and then the first thing that I did was to trace over

and the next thing

just like your dography 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 modeling play

and this is a bit like plasticine

but it's not the kid's 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

to use the clay

so you've got your plaque

and you roll the modeling 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 round with your pencil as careful 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

well I just hastily go round 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 colors you can choose any colors that are

leaded and they will mix together

but don't mix unleaded colors together with them

just keep to the leaded and that will be fine

so there's enormous number of colors 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

free hand with pencil

over the top

and that could be fired in the Kiln

now to secure the pencil

and you fire it at 750

degree centigrade 1382 Fahrenheit

and then the pencil line just drops into the base

and all of this greasy modeling 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 start it

the painting and you've got the 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 put it into the flight

into the fire

and also your

really every brush stroke is a spontaneous one

so I need 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 glue pea 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 glue pea

and dark a bit like the latter 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

butterflies body

come around here now

any image will do

as long as you use the techniques that I'm teaching

in this demo

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

provided you've got this key labe down

it will receive it and it will far beautifully

and some people would make a shaded pencil drawing

and then just tint it up with color afterwards

and if they're not happy with the color

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 there's any winning

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 weary of

because its glass

is that it might break if you dropped it on the floor

especially if it's a concrete floor

so just roughly going around here

I went to the Emma

Bridgewater factory and Stoke on Trent in UK

the year that it was there 25th anniversary

it was 2010 I believe

and I was at

it was at the end of the day

cause I'd had some meeting since their contramp

and I just wanted to have a look in

and they were about to

well half an out of closing

and somebody very kindly took me around

and they were doing um

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 enameling

so I experimented

and 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 fry out

I've wiped 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 color in it and 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 color wheel that I made

showing the paint palette that I like to work with

the sunshine colors and the saradel colors

in the

pots here we've got 17 basic colors 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 colors

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 colors that we're going to mix up

today for the background are going to be

a bluey color

and this as your 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

blue clap as well

but into the blue Clare I'm going to add some turquoise

so you can mix your paints and blend them

that's a choice that

the uni media

can get up to 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 color would just roll everywhere

and just put about

as much as you've got paint down there

just put the Unimedia 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 color 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 Hawker side I had

a stickier liquid

now this is enamel paint is called thixotropic

it behaves in a thixotropic way

that's thixo tropic tro P IC

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 colors

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 unimeater in

because then I can show you

how it can become stickier

to here

grinding away

it's a bit like silks green painting

it's got that lovely lovely gossie look to it

but it behaves more like watercolor painting

but of course you could be using oil

in the mix

and it can behave like gourch 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

palette knife and just blend in

the white to have that as a mix

on it that's getting nice and rich

breaking down all these

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 grate the color upwards

so just put a bit more

of the blue Clair tuck coise mix in there

a little bit more again

and touch more

and I've got it to that right

so I'm gonna 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 applied a sponging

and then coming upwards like this

just covering the lower area

mending that town

then into this one

coming down the way

and blending to the hair

and then finally the darkest color of all

which is the pure Asia

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 scruvito

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 scrafito 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 sweat

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 were

really tidy you get a brush and

just take that out with the paintbrush

to remove it

a little bit bigger

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 paintbrush

to pick it up

and get rid of it

so tidying everything up before the firing

it's really well 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 paintbrush

if it's a bit fiddly

so that's ready to file

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 pick it up like this and taking across to the Kiln

it's 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

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'll 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 Unimedia 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 kill

and you have to keep it absolutely horizontal

I normally use these

ceramic fiberboards 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

these ones because the stainless steel

produces so much metal oxide

is 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 fiber board

takes a little bit longer to heat up

because it's thicker

the titanium mesh will give you a quick result

and the ceramic fiber board

it will stick to the back for a little bit

but after about minute and a half it pins 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 out about 770

there and the firing temperature is going to be 7

50 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 sell on

now I've put a piece of ceramic fiber 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 fiber 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 s vessels fingers here

that use the butter knives

these are really good for supporting

and now I'm shifting it around

so here you can see the steam rising

I hope you can against the black

just lost it coming off there

and it goes pastel in shade

so it's no longer glossy like the paint was

I'm gonna put it in the Kiln now

because there's no risk of any of the paint being

spacked off

and I'm using

a cape 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

6 90s 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 pieces 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 7 50

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

might be able to manage the whole thing

so this 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 colors

and you can see that this is a 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 match

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 Lacey

the paint has dropped into the white far too far

and it can't be recovered

so I'm afraid that laceiness 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

actually 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 7 53

and just see it isn't fired

some pretty good

it's got that glossy look

and that's just right for the next

next layer so I'm going to lay that down unless 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 odors 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 extractive farm off at the moment

but we've got the windows wide open

there are 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 tributes

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

diamonds stuck on the end

that means just

grit of diamond

not real diamond

but it is real diamond but grish of diamond

so inexpensive

and the anyway 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 fiber board

and the final one

is where the tile

has discolored 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 paintended up murky

or the paint itself had got impurities in it

and changed color slightly

so some people ask about this

ceramic fiberboard

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 fiber 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

where I 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 cyberboard

which is about that thick

the next phase is to do some pen work

it's another technique that I Learned from ceramicists

and this is where you use a different medium called

well it's called pen oil obviously

but it's a mix or cupaba oil and an a seed oil

three parts to one

so three parts could paper to one part

an a seed smells absolutely gorgeous

if you like the smell of an a seed

yep that's it

and you'll take

a little 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 colors

and more if you were to mix three colors together

can be achieved as a pen line

but for this

I'm going to show you one of my favorite colors

which is mixed from purple

and linui so it's the darkest colors and reed green

and these three colors 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 favorite color

you could mix up

enough for future use

so I'm gonna 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

just there and if you want you can make it more blue

or you could make it more green depending on

how much of each color you add

but it's roughly

three separate parts

a third a third and a third

and then the reed green

a little touch here and

there's a little balls of color 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 colors 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

else you're and as I'm doing here you can mix your own

so you put the lid on

and let's 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 capable 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 lip

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

jewelry with gems supply them in USA

that's a very good website for enable painting supplies

and that's with Zinep 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

then you're 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 round with pen line

and I'm just using this particular color

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 said 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 scrafito

pretty well did nearly the whole thing

so just load a bit more

try it on here first

because the first one is gonna 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 be 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

say 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 free hand

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

slowed 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

back 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 a bit 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 talk

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 then maybe 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 capaboronana seed oil

so it's got to be completely dry

before it goes into the Kiln

let's settle it down there and it's gone matte

say now I'm just gonna present it put it at the back

and need a spatula

just to keep it in position and restore the pork

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 7

50 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 7:50 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

if it was just right

so this is now hit just above slightly above 7 50

and that's fine

so we 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 in the green 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 trivot

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 onto

the steel slab and leave it too cool

and that will just hasten the cooling a little bit

here I 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 mix together

or you could use

one of the enamels I've 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 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

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 all 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 winter in 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 lacca resist

and so you can see the split in it

it's probably because I've used it for lacca resist

it's a lovely brush to use with the grip

but I just use it for lacca resist

so with this I've got a number

0

a 1 and a 2

and really that's quite adequate

you might add a 00 as well

I use the zero mainly when I'm doing miniturous work

but for this I'll use the No. 2 brush

it doesn't get much work so it's going to work now

I'm going to use Unimedia because it's quick drying

and we've been using it so far

I'll be using Bliss Roll later on

so I'll put some Unimedia down there

ready to mix with the four

fugitive colors

so I've got

Cardinal Red in the Sunshine Range

and put a little bit doesn't take a lot

down there

and then the orange

another cabomium color

then the saradal color the beautiful scarlet rouge

defer

put the top back on straight away

and then this Pupple 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

note that base or that medium won't work

so I'm gonna mix in

little bit of the purple

couple 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 have medium to it with your brush

so there we are

and mix

mixing means removing the paint from there

to prepare the next one

so this time it's going to be

the slippers of the

properly rooster fur

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 takes slightly longer

too far 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 the paintings it's better to stick at the

7 50 some people do a high firing

but my nubs wouldn't stand it

I think it's better to hit your target

and then know that you haven't overfired

so a little bit more unimedict 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

just gonna 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 Unimedia

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 Mercurian

and as I was seeing in the Powerpoint presentation

very very poisonous oxides which

obviously the factories are gradually

removing and changing the recipes

so there 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

alright the final one is the Cabineum red

I hardly use this a tall really

I can't use it in flesh tones

I tend to use the brighter one

the rooster

but that's for later

right got all the colors down

clean up the palette

get the Union Media off

and this is just a basic

ceramic tile which you could find any size

okay so I've got my No. 2 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 brush strokes

and first of all

I'm just dragging it

if you can imagine these little

poly starring balls in there

little 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 color 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 union media

wipe it again so this is a damp brush

and I'm going to roll it into this rooster fur

the scarlet color

and do the same thing again

just again stroking the color 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 uni media 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 cabmium

this lovely deep color here

and I'm doing this so that in the firing

you can see dramatic color 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 halftone

so just remember the feather analogy

and I think steady hand good eye

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 kill now

here's the piece still wet

so the colors 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 a Pillon fork

and for a fast firing back onto the titanium mesh

all right still got to be dried

but because it's Union 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 Unimedia 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 painter 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 the second 50

now this is on such a thin piece of steel enamel

that it's going to fire more quickly

at the temperature the 7 50 30 802

it may even far just below that temperature

so it needs careful watching

and I'm going to warm it to dry off

the Unimedia 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

7

30 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 rouge defer saradel color

the orange and the cardinal red

um fugitive means that they're

they're just gonna change wildly if you

um use the wrong

use the wrong base

and fire them in the wrong way

so it's climbing back up

on another

15 degrees also 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 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 overfired 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 actually painted on so that's good

I just touched it a little bit there

to get the counter enamel off

the entertainium mesh

and there is cooling beautifully

so purple red

the rouge defer 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 burnt out

and where I

painted strong color at the base but slightly thinner

it's just burnt out altogether

and it hasn't gone gray but it has rather spoiled it

and that was because that was fired at 7:50

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's okay to use without

have a palette without it

so I'll 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 it shape

because I haven't added too much uni medium just enough

clean up ready to put some of this

grape black here

so here's the lovely mix

I wouldn't take the pot lid off straight away

because it's 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 didn'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 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 the only media

because you find that with a palette of mixed colors

they will have dried

after about two and a/2 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

varsis 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 Pharaoh 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

wipe 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 5 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 cattle 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 flour 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

I'll just put my 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 paints

so they will got to be about the same sort of level

okay I'm going to put the body in as well

and I'm going to use scrafito

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 scrafito

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 his little dots there

it just brightens it listens it

that's good

the enamel looks shiny still because the paints 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 the back of the Kiln

shut the door down

and wait for the whole thing to climb up to 7 50 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 a brush here but it just

I didn't know it takes away the brush strokes

um which is quite good to have a sort of blocking

and of 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 detective

I talk about those because that 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 lacca 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

lacca resisted so that you've got

the twigs with the blue background

and when the next bunging layer was put on

ice graffitied 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 lacquer resist

and then the third firing would be protecting it all

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 laccha resist like this drawing it down

and then the final little bits are used

scraphita work and little dots and so on

and then protect it again with laccha resist

and add in another darker color for sponging

and the final bit is little touches of paint there

and here you've got some broadbands of color which

only revealed when you put the sponging over

and then scrafito back to get those colors

so the kilns now up to 7:50

put the glove on

and take it out and it's lovely and it's gone

changed color 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 colors the cabinean colors

and the yellow have changed color dramatically

so the orange has gone more like the cadmium red

and the yellows gone

a really dark yoke 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

but you see white

that's going to become this ochre color

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 color

because if it had the blue over it

it wouldn't give the required color

because the paint acts like layers of tissue paper

one color 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 center 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 opera as well

so it will go over here

and around there

and you may think oh

well you must all do this as a painting as well

that's your judgment

to paint the white area Oka with a brush

but following through with the sponge work

gives it that specularly effect

as if you've put a million dots

like plantalism 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

a 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 color

similar to the miniatures that were made

many many centuries ago

and they were using Minim which was

a mercury oxide which gave this

gave these sort of orange color

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 scruffy toed 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 scrafito in the background as well

not quite so noticeable

and then another painting more boldly a sponge painting

and it's got some goldwear cornished 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

I'm just going over the dots

and I'm leaving a little bit of whiter as well

because that might be quite attractive

it's quite difficult if you put a dark color

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 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 spongeing is going to be done with Unimedia

and Oka so I'll take the Oka 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 Unimedia 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 bowls 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 union media there

so I'm just gonna 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

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 afterward

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 dubbing 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 why the 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

it's getting that bit off

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

OK that had straight off has come off there

grab that bit there

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 from the paintbrush

and that's all fired

so no worry about going over this area

but don't stray into the Oka 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 6 or 7 techniques

and make it work

so having removed all the Lacker resist

I now go round it with scrafito just to

outflying a little bit more

because the white really does bring out color

and there

and

just a little bit there

okay

to wipe this off

and this one will now be fired at 7:50 1382

take the blue Tac off the back

doesn'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 butterfly on it

you'll probably see the seam 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 presents it 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 its hottest

and shut the door

and then watch it climb back up

and this will go up to fullfowering

750 because it's a normal sized thick piece of steel

about one and a/2 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 toughy 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 7 50

it'll be ready to take out

and then there's just one more firing

which is applying some navy blue

the great blue and also the the gold

which is an interesting

piece

all 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 a 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 scraffeto 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

some cups and sauces and so on

so getting ready to take the piece out when it reaches

7 50

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

I'm going to 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 fiber board

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 glasses 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 Scravito

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 No. 2 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

on both sides and come up around

and

hit 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

from another tool that you could get from ceramics

suppliers is this wipeout tool

and using the blade here or this

you can actually work into it like that

or with the blade

it gives the same sort of effect really

the rubbererness 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 1 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 percent

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 fried up a bit

then you will need to let that down with some zest it

so that's the solvent that used for oil painting

and I've got a designated paintbrush here

that I've 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 $20 worth

all in one go

and as I said don't make it too thick

I'm just going to make a little border here

so you don't want to see

dark brown but more of a chestnutty

color

than you know you've got about the right thickness

this one to the end

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 set me 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 extractive 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 obsessed it on me

on this kitchen towel

and then wipe the brush on there until it comes clean

it really does get into the brush work

now just repeat that

and that's coming clean now

that's good

it pops back on

and then we gave to the Kiln to fire this

and I'm taking

the scrapito tool

but because that's wood it's going to actually

catch bar 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

I'm going to shut the door just to conserve the heat

until some 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 is 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

we'll just turn it around

just a far the other end where its hottest

put that in

really will just be for about 30 seconds I imagine

yep 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 is 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 scrafito

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 tail tail bits

sign your initials in the last one

perhaps it's a bit too fine actually

do your criss cross

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 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 round you put it the previous time

and then turn it

so that that bit gets

the hottest part of the Kiln

there we are

and this time it's 7 50 or 1382

which is the maximum to fix the gold

if you go on further than that

the gold's 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

Scriffito 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 that 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

it's taking a while to creep up

but it's only when it reaches

7 50 that it's fully fired

and in the ceramics industry

it's the gold that's the last firing

and same with enameling really

we're also firing the blue and that fires at 7 50

the great black brother

so that's a 2 in 1

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 few firings the better

more firings is going to put the piece

under stress more often

and put the blue specs on the point

looking at the infrared red

it's ready to come out

and I've got the wrong instrument it should be the fork

so bring that out

shut the 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 also

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 that it's released

and we're just knocked right away

and put it on the steel block to cool fast

so because the gold is 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

6 or 7 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