The Mermaid and the Sea Turtle

I've been working on my painting techniques on slabs. I've been using thin coats of acrylic paint to get some of the effects here. I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out.

Here's what it looked like before the paint.


And here's the Phoenix that was carved before. I applied acrylic paint to this one too.

Why the acrylic paint instead of underglaze? Well, with these two, I fired both slabs to cone 10 because they are made of Southern Ice. Yellows and pinks tend to burn out at that temperature, so I wasn't sure how to finish the slabs. After experimenting with watered down underglaze, I decided to try it out with acrylic paint. (Originally, I tried a dry brushing technique on the phoenix, but it just did not turn out right. So, I refired the phoenix to 1800 degrees or so to get the paint off. Surprisingly, the yellow stayed (all that lovely cadmium). Then, I was able to add the color the way I like.

Tonight, I probably will do more work on my Gandalf sculpture. AND I get to unload a kiln to see how my other slabs turned out!