Mixing Porcelain Paint

Video Transcript

"I'd like to tell you a little bit about about the porcelain paint itself. There are several companies all throughout the country that sell the paint. It basically consists of different kinds of minerals and dyes and you mix it to make your paste into a form like this. Let me show you something here. This is what it ends up being. In a paste like form about the consistency of toothpaste or cold cream. I'd like to show you how you get from this, we use a fine powder. This is called a delphinium blue. But as you can see it's a real fine powder so you don't want to sneeze when you're doing this. The paints usually cost anywhere from about $2.80 for a vial this size. They also come in this size. And it can be up to $12 or $15 for the bright pinks because they actually have gold in them. And that's how they get the brilliant colors of the fuchsia, the real bright violet pinks almost. So it can be an expensive hobby but it's also a very fun one. Alright to get to the paint from the powder form we use a heavy pure mineral oil. It's better to use a heavy mineral oil but if you can't find it just the regular mineral oil you buy off of the shelf at any drug store or any grocery store will work. We usually keep our mineral oil in things like this where we can flip the top and squeeze out a few drops at a time. And then you get your paint together and you dip your palette knife into the oil and you mix it carefully because it's very fine, almost like a flour and it can just blow away. You don't want to get too much oil because then you have to keep adding paint so you take a little bit at a time until you get it mixed. And when you're mixing you actually press down and grind it so that you get all of those little mineral particles crushed down so that it makes a smooth paint. Which is what I find very fascinating about it. And when you're finished it's actually an oil based paint. So to clean up you have to use the same things you would for oil paint. You get it mixed up. Keep working it in together so you get all of your little dry pieces and that's about the consistency right there. Once that's done you gather it up and move it to your palette. Get as much paint off as you can because it actually goes a very long way. Then you just wipe your knife off. I'm going to put some of this color back on. And as you can see by my palette I like to start out with the white and I move to some yellows and golds and these fine sometimes a little bit different color than they look here. This is actually a yellow brown which is a real warm color. And then I go to the reds and the oranges. I move into the pinks. This are all different colors of reds and pinks. You always want to do them kind of like a rainbow so that you know where your paints are and when you add paints or clean your palette you want to put them back in that same order because when you get to painting you know right where to reach for your color. Take the extra mineral oil and you just wipe off your tile. This is just a ceramic tile. And you will use that later for your painting. And you would go through and mix all of your colors in that way until you have your palette ready for painting."