Really cool reflective cups/saucers

Since Alcar, my longest writing buddy, sent me this link (watch the video, seriously), I'm sort of taking it as a challenge... (even though I'm positive those geometric designs are decals, not hand-painted)...

...to make my own...

(ignore the hideous tablecloth -> it's simply to protect the table)

Step #1:

...we'll see how step #2 goes tomorrow...

I haven't decided whether to paint the saucer with lustres or with regular paint... hmmmm... will sleep on it. Measuring and drawing on the design took about 2 hours because, like the piggy bank that I painted a 10 point lotus on, measuring for a 14 point design is pretty darn hard.

I need to stop quadrupling the work, especially when I'm only playing around/experimenting with something new.

...my life would be easier if I wasn't my own worst enemy...

Piggy banks stage 5: second lustre coat

So, I left the piggies with my mentor to be fired, and didn't have a chance to go back until several weeks later.

Now, here's why I should have red-resisted the opposite area first on the Sleepy Pig:

 Painting red resist over a dark blue lustre... oh my goodness... I could NOT tell if there were gaps in the red resist at all, it was so hard to see! In this picture the red resist is dried, so it' shinier/redder, but while painting it on, it was impossible to tell if I was laying it on evenly, and thick enough (since if it's too thin, peeling it off is super hard and you don't want to put it in the kiln with any bits 'cause it makes a big mess).

You can see in the background the Lotus Pig has been red resisted for a second coat of the same transparent blue colour.

 Here's the Sleepy Pig after the second firing, I freaking LOVE how the orange clouds turned out!

The Lotus pig didn't really need a second layer of blue, but because I had such a hard time running the lustre on the first coating (I did the Lotus Pig first, so I was experimenting with it), there were a bunch of missing gaps... including around the mouth... so it looked like the pig was drooling/foaming at the mouth. Don't really want to give a rabid-piggy-bank to a newborn, right?

Also, the second coating of blue gave it more depth, and since I wanted the reflective/flowing look to be reminiscent of water (since, duh, 'Lotus Pig').

At this stage, I was pretty happy with the way things were looking.

Oh, in the background, you can see the Sleepy Pig after it had the coating of orange lustre, after I had peeled the red resist off, but before I had fired it.


...now, time for the part I hadn't given much thought to... designing what I was going to do with the white areas...

Piggy banks stage 4: first lustre coat

Since I am pretty much a newby painter, I know you can use lustres in different ways, but since my mentor likes to drip lustres because you get very interesting results, that's the only technique I have used, which is fine, because I quite like how you're always surprised by how it ends up.

Also, since I went with technical precision on the designs, I wanted the free flowing nature of dripped lustres to counter-balance the rigidity and soften the overall result.

How do you drop lustres? Well, on a flat surface it's incredibly easy. On a shape like these piggy banks... quite difficult.

First you need the lustres, and a high-grade clean turpentine:

Essentially, you drip several drops of lustre on the piece, then drizzle turpentine on top, and smear it around with your fingers. If you put on too little turpentine, it doesn't mix well and the lustre is too heavy and will burn off in the kiln. If you put too much turpentine on, it pretty much just runs off the piece and the lustre will be super thin or non-existent.

Earlier, I made a lustre test plate because I had a whole bunch of lustres, and I didn't know what they looked like, or whether any of them were contaminated.

On a relatively flat surface, dripping lustres is an easy task.

Quite the difference, eh? I waited to decide which lustres I was going to use on the pigs until after the test plate was fired.

On a pig-shaped piece... freaking hard. One word: gravity. Everything runs down so fast I didn't have time to mix the turpentine with the lustres before 99% of it had already run off onto the table. So I kept adding more. And more. And couldn't tell how thick the lustre was, or if there were any bare areas, and since I could only touch the red-resisted areas, I had to hold the pig in one hand, and drip/mix/touch-up with the other.

Also, the lustres are sticky... and as they started to dry, they made the red-resist sticky... which then wanted to pull off when I needed to readjust the pig in my holding hand.

Long story short, I managed. Here's what they look like just before the first fire. You have to let the red-resist dry thoroughly before you can put the lustre on, and then you have to let the lustre dry completely before you can fire it. By the end of my fourth day, I had only gotten this far and had to leave before they were fired, so I didn't see the result until several weeks later.