Neon-Cat on wed 16 dec 09
Hi all -- how about helping me think about something...
It is a popular technique in my area to paint ware, especially
non-functional ware, and these painted works are highly praised and
rewarded, the implication for me being to go and do likewise. I find
painted ware disenchanting and this way of working would be, for me, a
personal cheat. But until I become very, very good at glazing and
other traditional ceramic decorating techniques I feel somewhat at a
disadvantage out there in the marketplace. I=3D92m actually a very good
painter, too, with good color, hue, and texture matching skills so I
could be good at painting ware. But I love the subtle color changes
and magic afforded by working with natural clay bodies and
glaze-decorating materials. In modern environments, color optics are
increasingly hard to bring out or appreciate as windows are absent or
when present, formulated or treated to tame the energy of natural
light and indoor lighting methods are created to output light at
specified uniform, constant spectrums. At my (old) house over a course
of a day and night I love the play of the variable color and energy of
natural materials as they absorb and emit light. Good and carefully
formulated paints can reproduce many of these same effects today, but
to the average consumer or ceramic fancier out at the show-sale such
subtleties seem to be lost or, worse yet (for me) pieces I love in
natural light lose a bit of their charm when displayed under constant
uniform light that is now the norm. In this day and age my aesthetics
are taking a hit and I feel disillusioned and pissy. However, I have
been thinking a lot about what it is I like to make, what I =3D93should=3D9=
4
make, where work might end up or where I should send what I make
should I enter shows or be able to get stuff out for display or sale =3D96
a gal=3D92s gotta eat. So talk to me of happy compromises (if any exist)
between painted and glazed ware or part-glazed/part-painted ware.
Painted ware just bothers me (a lot), but should it? Or perhaps talk
to me about the right venues and permanent homes for the type of work
I love and would love to make well.
Marian
Neon-Cat
Neon-Cat on thu 17 dec 09
Sorry I was unclear - paint, as in non-ceramic, as in acrylic, spray
enamels, etc.
I'd be happy if pieces were labeled when non-ceramic decoration is used.
Some of you all do wonderful ceramic painting & decorating, China
painting, etc.
I'm not even sure I can paint -- maybe one day I'll get there...
Thanks for the feedback so far!
Marian
Paul Herman on thu 17 dec 09
Hello Marian,
Count me solidly in the camp of not compromising. There are no happy =3D20
compromises between paint and fired pigments. Paint will fall off =3D20
after a few years, and fired ceramic pigments last for thousands of =3D20
years.
One of the reasons we humans love our ceramics so much is that they =3D20
are so darn durable, passing down through the generations and =3D20
centuries, and keeping the spirit their makers put into them. =3D20
Paintings, wood, leather etc. all rot away under the pressure of deep =3D20=
=3D
time, but our pots and figures live on, beyond almost every other =3D20
material. Ancient civilizations are revealed and known through their =3D20
ceramics. It will be difficult for people to know the work if the =3D20
colors have fallen off the surface.
best wishes,
Paul Herman
Great Basin Pottery
Doyle, California US
www.greatbasinpottery.com/
On Dec 16, 2009, at 8:01 AM, Neon-Cat wrote:
> Hi all -- how about helping me think about something...
>
> It is a popular technique in my area to paint ware, especially
> non-functional ware, and these painted works are highly praised and
> rewarded, the implication for me being to go and do likewise. I find
> painted ware disenchanting and this way of working would be, for me, a
> personal cheat. But until I become very, very good at glazing and
> other traditional ceramic decorating techniques I feel somewhat at a
> disadvantage out there in the marketplace. I=3D92m actually a very good
> painter, too, with good color, hue, and texture matching skills so I
> could be good at painting ware. But I love the subtle color changes
> and magic afforded by working with natural clay bodies and
> glaze-decorating materials. In modern environments, color optics are
> increasingly hard to bring out or appreciate as windows are absent or
> when present, formulated or treated to tame the energy of natural
> light and indoor lighting methods are created to output light at
> specified uniform, constant spectrums. At my (old) house over a course
> of a day and night I love the play of the variable color and energy of
> natural materials as they absorb and emit light. Good and carefully
> formulated paints can reproduce many of these same effects today, but
> to the average consumer or ceramic fancier out at the show-sale such
> subtleties seem to be lost or, worse yet (for me) pieces I love in
> natural light lose a bit of their charm when displayed under constant
> uniform light that is now the norm. In this day and age my aesthetics
> are taking a hit and I feel disillusioned and pissy. However, I have
> been thinking a lot about what it is I like to make, what I =3D93should=
=3D94=3D
> make, where work might end up or where I should send what I make
> should I enter shows or be able to get stuff out for display or sale =3D9=
6=3D
> a gal=3D92s gotta eat. So talk to me of happy compromises (if any =3D
exist)
> between painted and glazed ware or part-glazed/part-painted ware.
> Painted ware just bothers me (a lot), but should it? Or perhaps talk
> to me about the right venues and permanent homes for the type of work
> I love and would love to make well.
>
> Marian
> Neon-Cat
Lis Allison on thu 17 dec 09
On Wednesday 16 December 2009, Neon-Cat wrote:
> Hi all -- how about helping me think about something...
>
> It is a popular technique in my area to paint ware, especially
> non-functional ware, and these painted works are highly praised and
> rewarded, ....
The ceramics hobby industry often uses acrylic and other paints to finish
ware. Much easier, and cheaper, for the unskilled hobbyist. Given that I
don't consider what they do to be pottery anyway, I don't have an issue
with it.
But so-called Ceramic Art finished with paint really bothers me. Is that
valid? Is it still pottery? Or is it a 3-D painting on an unusual
substrate?
One of the problems with giclee prints is that the customer cannot tell
that it is a giclee and not a watercolour. I think clay ware finished with
acrylic paint is somewhat the same. Perhaps if it were stamped 'finish is
a non-fired painted surface' then I wouldn't mind. As it is, I sort of
resent it when something painted gets accepted into shows. I always wonder
if the juror knew.
Lis
--
Elisabeth Allison
Pine Ridge Studio
www.Pine-Ridge-Studio.blogspot.com
Paul Lewing on thu 17 dec 09
Unlike what another poster has said, there is a happy compromise
between glaze and paint. It's called china paint. IF yu're really a
painter at heart and you want to do ceramics, it's the medium you've
been looking for. I get at least one person in every workshop on
china painting I do tell me it's what they've been looking for for
years, and it sounds like it would be for you too. Except for the
fact that it's fired, it's a whole lot more like paint than glaze, and
there are very few of those unexpected reactions where you get a
completely different color that what you expected. It's the most
WYSIWYG of all ceramic materials, and you can get everything from the
brightest boldest colors to the most subtle gradations. Anything you
can do with any kind of paint or ink, you can do with china paint.
And it's a whole lot more durable than acrylic paint.
Paul Lewing
www.paullewingtile.com
www.paullewingart.com
Elizabeth Priddy on fri 18 dec 09
If you look at my website, you can see one way to approach painterly effect=
s on clay. It is ALL cone 7 stoneware.
I teach how to do it now and have people painting in one day.
I only use the basic color mixing palette plus green.
I do not china paint, though. I paint all in one step and fire one time.
So I know it can be done and done well. And what one man can do, another c=
an do. That is the approach I take in workshops. I will be teaching them =
here in Beaufort, Washington-NC, and Austin-TX in the upcoming months.
My one quibble with china painting is the toxicity of the materials used. =
I do not use any of that material to get my effects. It is due to better c=
urrent technology. They have lustres that I do not, though.
- ePriddy
Elizabeth Priddy
Beaufort, NC - USA
http://www.elizabethpriddy.com
Paul Lewing on fri 18 dec 09
On Dec 17, 2009, at 9:50 PM, Neon-Cat wrote:
I'm not even sure I can paint --
Of course you can. Everyone can. Painting and drawing is simple
making marks. Anyone can make marks. Sometimes those marks go
together to make a recognizable image, sometimes they don't.
Sometimes that image is accurate, sometimes it's not. There is an
infinite number of combinations of marks that can be beautiful, and
there's no reason for anyone to think they can't produce some of those
arrangements of marks.
And if you can do glazes and underglazes, believe me, you can do
paint, or even china paint. China paint is a little harder than
paint, but not much.
Paul Lewing
www.paullewingtile.com
www.paullewingart.com
Steve Slatin on fri 18 dec 09
Paul --
You say ... "
> there's no reason for anyone to think they can't produce
> some of those arrangements of marks.
As far as reasons go, how about having tried and never
gotten anything beautiful? Vine and Snail and I have
disputed this in the past; it is interesting that people
who draw and paint really, really well often conclude
that anyone can draw or paint.
-- Steve ("I dip, I pour, and I don't wax no stinking bottoms") Slatin
Paul Lewing on fri 18 dec 09
On Dec 18, 2009, at 1:03 PM, Steve Slatin wrote:
As far as reasons go, how about having tried and never
gotten anything beautiful?
I think that if you know about basic design principles, you can put
together a series of marks that is pleasing. And anyone can learn
those design principles.
Vine and Snail and I have
disputed this in the past; it is interesting that people
who draw and paint really, really well often conclude
that anyone can draw or paint.
You may have a point there, I admit. Learning to draw was, for me,
easier than learning to write. It's just something I've always been
able to do. It may be like spelling: those who are good at it think
it's important, those who are not think it's not.
Paul Lewing
www.paullewingtile.com
www.paullewingart.com
Snail Scott on fri 18 dec 09
On Dec 16, 2009, at 10:01 AM, Neon-Cat wrote:
> ...talk to me of happy compromises (if any exist)
> between painted and glazed ware or part-glazed/part-painted ware.
> Painted ware just bothers me (a lot), but should it? Or perhaps talk
> to me about the right venues and permanent homes for the type of work
> I love and would love to make well.
Paint is paint, and it does paint-stuff
well; better than glaze can. Glaze does
glaze-stuff better than paint can.
If the job calls for glaze, better glaze it.
If it needs paint, then paint it. Paint on
functional pottery is trouble waiting to
happen, and seldom satisfactory; paint
should never be used as a substitute for
glaze. For the depth, flow, hardness,
etc, archival properties, etc, glaze rocks.
But it makes a poor substitute for paint.
Especially for representational sculpture,
glaze inevitably, even in the hands of an
expert, looks tacky and awkward when a
painted effect is called for. There are
permutations, of course - engobes and
china paint, which allow some of the
control and nuance of painting. But they
are still different. If it needs to be painted,
then paint it! Why should paint on clay
be less effective than paint on canvas?
My nutshell: If it's going outdoors or will
hold food, glaze it. if not, who cares? It'll
get judged by the same standards as all
works of art, i.e. subjective and variable.
I'm just rambling from here on:
There's a beginner state of mind that
comes from using paint and crayons that
says, 'I'm representing water, so I will use
the blue glaze, and I will use the green
glaze for the tree, and well we don't have
a brown glaze so I will use the black and
I will do the figure's skin in the bubblegum
pink glaze. It always looks nasty, but it's a
hard mindset to fight. People, in my
perception, get stuck at whenever level
their last art training occurred, so I get
college students who when asked to draw
will make lollipop trees and a yellow sun
in the top corner of the paper and show
the sky as a blue line across the top.
They come to glaze with the same icon-
based way of thinking about color. I start
by suggesting that they think abstractly
about color and form both: not what color
or shape is the thing you represent, but
what will make the art look good?
Some of the same thinking affects paint:
but why does it need to be the thing we
resort to when representation is the intent?
Because it's good at that, yeah. But it's
good for other things as well. There is
no particular honor in being able to say
you did it all in glaze, unless the piece
benefits from being glazed. otherwise
it's just a technical stunt: "Wow, you did
all that with glaze?" (Substitute "Wow,
you did all that with chewing gum and
dryer lint?") That's just BB-stacking for the
cognoscenti. But if it needs to be glazed,
whether for aesthetics, or function, or to
maintain its historical reference, or to
survive outdoors for generations, or carry
some abstruse conceptual meaning, or
something else entirely, you'd better
glaze that sucka!
-Snail
Paul Lewing on fri 18 dec 09
On Dec 18, 2009, at 2:00 PM, Snail Scott wrote:
There are
permutations, of course - engobes and
china paint, which allow some of the
control and nuance of painting.
No, china paint allows ALL of the control and nuance of painting.
Paul Lewing
www.paullewingtile.com
www.paullewingart.com
Paul Lewing on sat 19 dec 09
On Dec 18, 2009, at 11:12 PM, Elizabeth Priddy wrote:
My one quibble with china painting is the toxicity of the materials
used.
It is true that china paints contain lead. However, there are several
reasons why china paints are, in practice, far less dangerous than
lead glazes.
Paul Lewing
www.paullewingtile.com
www.paullewingart.com
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