Here’s a good example of why I love painting ceramics with overglazes.
This week I’m painting a “Desperado” bone china sculpture by equine artist Stacey Tumlinson. To paint this highly detailed mane with overglazes on the glossy finish, I can apply the paint and do all the blending of color without worrying at all how well I “stayed within the lines” of the sculpted mane.

This is because the pigment is carried in an oily medium, and when I have the color the way I want it all I have to do is take a dampened paintbrush and remove/wipe away the paint in places it shouldn’t be. The oily paint can be moved around so smoothly on the gloss finish and it holds edges and draws ultra fine lines with amazing precision! (So precise, that I now paint details wearing reading glasses so that I can see the area under better magnification.)

I also use a range of specialty paint brushes like this feathered brush above, which is a very flat brush with an uneven toothy edge. I just drag it across the edge of a painted area (like this crest of the mane) and it feathers the paint out exactly the way mixed colors of mane hairs would blend into the body. Instead of drawing in the individual hairs (which I could also do if I want; I’m limited only by the fineness of the brushes available) I can get a very fine crest of blended hairs with with just a few strokes of a brush in a few minutes.

The overglaze paints don’t dry, so I can blend and work them as long as I want. (Or start completely over by washing it off if I don’t like the way something looks.) And then just pop the piece into the kiln to forever fire it into the china!

There have been some production delays on my own bone china sculptures from England, and I’ve had to place some commissions on indefinite hold. Instead this month I’m glazing some chinas made by others (like the Desperado). I’m also overglazing two re-issued Hagen-Renaker china Arabians, which will be for sale when finished, so watch this blog for sales news on those!

I finished a black tobiano “Meribel” filly bone china in matte finish last week, for Kim Geelan of Oregon. Isn’t she cute?

This afternoon I pushed aside my little Morgan sculpture on my main work counter to make way for the other sculpture in the works this winter, and as I stepped back I realized that gee, it looks like things are actually happening around here! And they are!

In my November post-vacation blog entry when I got back from Budapest, I mentioned an idea for a new sculpture that came to me one sleepless night in the hotel. Well, you can see it there. I’m sculpting a winged horse. I know… that doesn’t sound very earth-shattering compared to how enthusiastically I described this mystery project. But here is how I see it:

Winged horses are a fantasy, a myth, which means that there are no rules for them. How liberating for a sculptor! Just the perfect thing for me to break out of a realistic sculpture rut yet not give up on horses all the way. The enchanting part (for me anyway) is that I want to make it believable. In fact my idea is not to sculpt just another heroic, grandly depicted winged horse or Pegasus. This one is going to be just standing there, hipshot and weight off the one hind leg, eyes half closed, idly preening the feathers of one wing. That is what I am going for anyway.

The other enchanting part of a winged horse for me as a ceramics finisher, is there are again no rules about color!! Just imagine all the art-glaze colors and real horse combinations just waiting to be played with on this piece. I mean, who says a winged horse has to be white? Mine won’t be. Mine are going to be… dappled black-bay with an incredible array of russets and browns and reds in the wings. Cobalt blue tobiano pinto with black points… palomino, with subtle purple in the wings and shadings… sea-aqua teal blanket appaloosa… oh BABY what fun this will be in the kiln! I want it in my hands RIGHT NOW!

Oh, drat, I still have to sculpt it first. That is how I felt that night in Budapest: I wanted it in my hands right THEN! My working name for the sculpture is “Imre” which is a name that pops up a lot in Hungarian history. (I might re-spell it “Imri” after a favorite fantasy-fiction book character of mine…)

I have been studying wings a lot lately, of course. That is going to be the hard part!! I’m still in denial about it; just working on the horse part for now. I do know that I am going to use Heron wings as my starting point of reference. I built-in wires for the wings on the armature, but I haven’t decided yet whether having even just the wires there is going to impede getting the horse sculpture right. They might just get in the way. I have a real need/desire to do this sculpture all in one piece to really get it to be one work, rather than finish the horse and cast that in resin and then add the wings I sculpt in epoxy or some other material. So, I am just feeling my way along at this point. I have a feeling this is going to really test my mold-maker over in England, though! Wheee!

Anyone who knows me or has been reading my blog, knows that I have been spending a lot of time in the last year or two flailing about trying to “find” my artistic self. Or I’m in a pre-retirement midlife crisis. Or, pre-menopause. Or, who knows what??? Anyway, I’ve been about as changeable as the winter winds in Boulder about my art work and whether it is work or play or…

Recently I read a horoscope that really resonated with me. Basically it said that I shouldn’t turn away from what I do best just because something I can’t control affects how I do it. (That would be for me: marketplace and work life changes). Which got me to this:

I love horse figurines, I always have. I don’t love tiles, pins, medallions, boxes, dogs, or anything like that, in the way I love figurines. Of horses. I shouldn’t listen to anything or anyone but my inner voice that has been saying (for my entire life): Karen, make horses.

So yesterday between kiln glaze firings I started another horse. It is small (only 5″) and that means when it becomes a ceramic horse it will be even smaller due to the mold and slip shrinkage. But maybe someday it will be my next horse sculpture, a little walking Morgan stallion.

I’m not promising anything! Next week, it may be dog tiles again!!

I finished glazing the matte Boreas, and here are a few of my favorite photos:

I thought I was a dedicated glossy finish fan, but after working on this matte bone china I am so enchanted with the results I may have to change my loyalties! This piece was commissioned by Jeanene Bernardin of California, and it will be on the way to her this week.