Crafti musings..: Painted pots and vases

Hi all,

Pottery is the emblem of any civilization/race and has always been associated with the human's sense of art and ingenuity. Painting of pots and vases is an age-old art form and a very popular way to give any pot or earthen vase a brand new makeover.

Mexican pottery Repinned from http://marlenepatterndesigns.blogspot.in

Some methods are traditional and can be quite demanding requiring mastery over the brush, but then even novices can attempt and create dramatic effects with simple easily available terracotta pots and vases.

It is highly satisfying when one has "dirtied" their hands (with a spot or two on the nose too;), and transformed a drab dull brown pot into a bright eye-catching centerpiece for a shadowy corner in the living room, or as an attractive pot holder for a colorful plant!

I tried out 3 different techniques on small pots and vases lying at home, and here are the results. I used enamel paints from Asian paints in four colors only i.e. black,red, white and yellow to create different effects.

Check out this small pot with a raised edge, where I painted the base background with black color paint.

I then dipped the brush in one color and holding it at the rim, let the paint slide down the length of the pot in a streak.

I then let another color of paint streak down from the neck to the base, and so on with all the 3 colors alternating. Make sure you have old newspapers at the base since all the excess paint tends to accumulate at the bottom.

When dry, I painted the rim and the base on the outside with black color to highlight the streaks only in the middle.

My second one was a simple motif painting effort.

I coated the entire vase with a white background and when dry, used 2 different brush widths to give the 4 black rings and the alternating red and yellow bands down the neck. At the base, I painted a zigzag pattern.

For the middle part, I twisted the wider brush first with red color and then the other brush with yellow on top of this.

For the empty areas in the middle on the white background, I used a round bottle cap and dipped it in yellow and pressed it onto the vase. When this coat dried, I tried another bottle cap which was hollow and dipping it in red, pressed it onto the yellow rounds to give a nice red circle on each.

The third pot got a different look when I painted the base a bright red. Then I made a small bag with thin muslin cloth and filled it with gold dust powder.

While the red paint was still wet, and this is the important part, I sprinkled the gold dust by gently pressing the cloth bag evenly all over the pot's surface. This gives it a nice golden sheen.

You can of course try this with a different background too, like black, dark green, dark blue, brown etc. Similarly, try out with silver dust or copper dust to achieve fantastic results.

I would like to try out something like this too, as my next project, which looks simple but requires some fine detailing too..