Colors below the black are dry - black is starting to dry from the middle outward.This is the finished piece I left behind tonight to be firedat my local
Color Me Mine shop. Color Me Mine is one of those places where you go in, select a piece of pottery, paint it and then go back and pick it up once it's been fired. I had been wanting to try this for forever and a day.
A billion years ago, I used to paint ceramics when I was a member at the local Girl's Club. I remember that you had two painting options. Paint it with one kind of paint where you had to wait for it to be fired, or paint it with a different kind of paint (I think it was acrylic) where you could take it home right away. I remember the "right away" paint as being incredibly vibrant and that's the look I was hoping for when I stepped into the shop.
Colors in this picture are still drying. I sped up the process by using a hairdryer.Unfortunately, these paints didn't work like I had imagined. You had to paint from light to dark, and you had to do at least three coats if you wanted the colors to be somewhat opaque. The paints were thick and chalky and were difficult to apply. They would go on thick and you couldn't work them too long or they would start to dry. To avoid showing the brush marks, I sloppily slathered on coat after coat of this paint and to be quite honest, I was a little frustrated at how long it took. And the colors? They are close to impossible to tell what they will look like until they are fired. They had samples of the finished colors, but I still had to do my best to guess at how this will turn out. I used my "typical" palette of pinks, oranges, reds & burgundy. That purple in the image? It will be burgundy, not purple. My favorite part was adding the black, which was applied using a little squeeze bottle with a needle tip. In fact, I liked doing that part so much that once the above piece was finished, I selected a smaller plain plate and just did a simple black design.

The total cost? About $30. The sitting fee was $10 (and you can sit there and paint all day if you like...) the large plate $12 and the small $8.25. It will take 7-14 days for my pieces to be fired because the kilns are off site.
I was lucky to pop in on a Thursday night - I was the only one there and I appreciated the solitude. Will I do it again? Not sure. It depends on how that top piece turns out. if it's spectacular, I might do it again. If not, maybe I'll buy some acrylic paint and paint on some of my old record albums instead.