Monarch glazes

Painting a butterfly (or two).  I've looked at actual photos this time, and sketched the different butterflies with pencil.

Following the pencil design with a brush for larger black glaze areas

 This should be a commercial for Mayco, because the brushed glaze work is all with their Stroke and Coat (which matures at cone 5-6)

Adding detailed black glaze with Mayco Designer Liner.

It's not easy to see the orange glaze in my photos, but I put on 2-3 coats, which covers some of the black line work.  I've found so far, that the designer liner black is strong enough to come through lighter color glazes on top of it.

Then 2-3 coats of yellow go onto the bisqued pottery, because this color tends to fade very easily.

I add some green touches with green Designer Liner to pop out the flowers.  You can see here how messy the orange is, going over the edges of the black glaze.  I don't have any way to clean it up easily, because it will take off black as well if I try to scrape or sponge it off.  I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that it will fade a bit and look natural.

 Then little white dots around each wing for that Monarch touch...with white Designer Liner.

Final step, once everything is dry, I cover the whole surface with a Matt Clear glaze, which helps the lighter colors not fade as much.  And the stoneware will become a greyish matt color which helps show off the butterfly, I hope.

These are being left in the kiln room to be glaze fired at the BMCA studio, I hope by the end of the week, because there weren't many pieces in there when I went by.  I've got a platter that's sat there for 3 weeks now.

Anyway, the 4 little disc plates with ripple edges took an hour to paint these butterflies on them.