How to Blend Enamel Pottery Glaze

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Jenn from Clay Cafe and Ill be showing you how to take your ceramic piece from start to finish. In this clip I'm going to show you a little bit how to blend glazes. It?s a very common question I'm asked all the time. Today I'm going to be blending a night sky with some trees. What we start off with, I'm using the square brush, which is generally used for a large area. But today I'm actually going to use this as my blender. So what I'm going to start, I have two colors; I have a light, which is going to be like the sunset, and a darker that will be the night sky. What I'm going to do first, I'm going to dip my paintbrush into the lighter color. Almost pick a random spot on the tile, but I want to leave room for the bottom sharp line which will eventually be my horizon. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to start just a bit here and I'm going to start to apply the glaze fairly thickly. I'm being pretty generous with the amount of paint I'm putting on my brush. I'm going to leave that blank. That will eventually be the bottom, the ground. This will be the sky up here. So I generally want about two coats on there. Then I'm going to start to blend in my other color. When I start to blend in my other color, the easiest way I find to do it is if actually double dip my brush and start to blend that way. So to double dip your brush, all you need to do is dunk it in one half and dunk it in the other half of the glaze. So it ends up looking like that. It looks a little mad, but roll with me it will work. All we are going to do is, then, where ever you want to two colors to start blending I'm simply going to go in the middle of the line and start. So what will happen it will start to blend immediately, but I really want to work it a lot more. Because I want to add a lot more depth and bring it down a little bit more. After, I'm going to double dip my brush again. Half in the light, half in the darker. So, half, half. I'm going to start to blend again. Really just want to work it back and forth. You can really see on the tile what it?s going to look like after its fired. Even though colors before they are fired look pastel you can really get a good idea of what it?s going to look like after it?s fired. Now what I'm going to do is I want to concentrate on more of my sky, so I'm going to dip my brush totally into the darker glaze and I'm going to concentrate on doing my sky now. I'm going to dunk it in, grab more dark blue and keep brushing. I'm going to brush down to bring it down a little bit more. But I really do want to concentrate on getting a really nice dark solid color on the top. I'm going to bring it down a little bit more. I'm going to go and dip it in my lighter color. Just going to bring that down a little bit. Then slowly fade when we get to the top. Bring it back down. Add a little bit more of the lighter color. Sort of until your happy with the way its blended and the gradient from the dark to the light."