It was grey and rainy (and impossible to find a cab) this morning, so instead of heading out to the studio I decided to stay in and get more painting done. Five hours later, I can happily report that my batch of little greenware knick knacks are finally all embellished in qinghua paint!

I feel as if I just finished a mini qinghua paint-a-thon. In trying to complete the decoration on a bunch of small hand-shaped porcelain pieces, I’ve spent the past day and a half painting, painting, taking a break, painting, taking a break, painting, painting, painting… you get the idea. Of course, I also wanted each piece to have its own unique detail, so I spent half the time figuring out what to paint on each piece. One painful lesson that I learned is that painting on tiny things can be a lot harder and more time-consuming than painting on large ones. I will say, however, that it was great practice for honing technique with those equally tiny brush heads.

The workhorses were my trusty brushes. I’m still getting to know each of their idiosyncrasies, as I keep acquiring them when I go to Jingdezhen — there’s this “brush lady” that I like to visit; she hand-makes a variety of brushes in her store and always takes the time to explain them to me.

Here are the brushes I used for my last Jingdezhen project (not all from the “brush lady”), all lined up, being dried for packing…

Unfortunately there was a little accident with the peach gum used to mix the paint… I lost a whole pot of it and a bunch of my brushes got “gummed.” Needless to say, clean up was not so fun.

Now I just have to figure out how to get all the pieces bisque fired without smudging the details.

CATEGORY: Insider
POSTED by blue bean	February 19, 2013