How to Paint on Clay

Over the past few months I’ve been lucky enough to paint all over my neighbor, and wildly talented ceramist, Sarah Mitchell’s pottery. (Her company’s name is Arc Ceramics.) It’s always intimidating to try and add my own touch to the hours/days/weeks of work she puts in to everything she makes. But then again, the clear and present danger of fucking all that up makes the whole process THRILLING. Here’s how I make a piece like this:

First, per the name of this Substack, I start with a legit messy palette:

I never really get it that clean, but there is something meditative in cleaning it (somewhat) before diving into painting.

One of the tricky parts of painting on the long and curved walls of the bowls is that these brookies are generally double the size I normally paint them. “Normally” being 8” - 10” AKA lifesize. For the bowls I want them more around 15-20”.

That shouldn’t make a huge difference, but it really does. Painting on clay means you don’t get a brushstroke twice. I need to really know the shapes, how much to load the brush with paint/glaze, even how to angle my brush for the fins.

The best way to nail that? Well, practice. These are the two fish I planned to paint on the bowl. Painting them first in watercolor puts into my head and muscle memory things like the arch of their noses, the flick of their tails, constellation of their dots...

Haha and also sometimes they remind me NOT to tilt the watercolor page before it’s all dry!

That’s what happened with that yellow near the face. There’s even more drip on the whole sheet of paper… but what’s painting without happy accidents?

(BTW both of these are available on my online shop here and here.)

Of course colored glazes are VERY different from watercolor. I’m not mixing. I’ve boiled down the essence of these fish into a few colors.

So you know, every brushstroke counts. No pressure at all. Just time to paint on clay…

Which yeah, on a large bowl is a little awkward. (Cartoon me would have lots of nervous sweat coming from my GIANT forehead here! ) Eventually Sarah will dip the whole bowl in a black glaze. To make sure she can protectively wax over the fish I need to then paint black outlines around the brookies. Though this is just yet another way I can ruin Sarah’s work, it does really make them pop.

(You can see a video of all this—minus the cartoon sweat—on my Instagram here.)

And then… well I wait for Sarah to paint the rest black and fire it! Eventually it’ll look a little like the last one we made:

Then the new bowl (plus a bunch of new platters too) will be ready JUST IN TIME for the show me, Arc Ceramics, Jamie Kennard are having at West Kill Brewing as part of Upstate Art Weekend on July 22nd and 23rd from noon to six.

And finally, like most days, I return to yet another messy palette…