Testing Non-Fired Finishing Techniques on Porcelain or Ceramic Clay

I have always been drawn to painting.

Was never encouraged to peruse it or take classes ever.

So when this girl - that worked 3 jobs while going to University Full time decided to say - forget this path that everyone from family to college advisors says you should go on:

good school for education to get a good paying job, married, kids, white picket fence...

yadda… yadda… blah, blah…

I'm going to do what I want to do in my heart - well…

It becomes a blissful mess!

Marsha Neal Studio Drying Acrylic and Oil Painted layering on ceramic.

When I started taking ceramics classes in school (going on to get my MA in Ceramics) everything just seemed to focus on glazed surfaces.

Not to go into boring details (which I do LOVE the science of glazes!) but basically a glaze is glass that has colorants and binders and water added to it, applied to a ceramic piece, then fired in a kiln - in my case - to over 2230 degrees F.

Layering of ceramic glazes fired in kiln to 2232 F.

But sometimes there is that painter in me that wants to make pieces that are just sculptural and not functional in the "food safe" and simply usable sense of the word.

So this is where I'm busting out the paints: water color, acrylic, oil.

I want to try renaissance wax, alcohol inks, colored pencils…

Left are glazed. Right three are water color painted onto pieces already covered in gauche and sealed.

Watercolors directly onto clay (no gauche under-layer. just a black underglaze).

Lana Wilson layered underglazes and glazes (fired ceramic techniques)

Marsha Neal Studio Slab Roller/Painting Table.

There is SO much to test out and fiddle with.

And to try these on ceramic is a bit different than on Polymer Clay surface or a Metal surface.

With a 5 day weekend upon us (thanks for the 12-14" of snow we are going to be receiving 2/13/14 I sure hope to get a log more testing done.

Any suggestions to other materials I could try out?

And any links to tutorials or information about painting on things other than canvas would be awesome in the comments below as well.

Let's hope I get some great results!