Using Wipe Out Tools for Porcelain Painting

Video Transcript

"I'm going to show you in the porcelain painting another tool that we use called the wipe out tool. And you have harder wipe out tools, like this, and you have softer ones, like this. You have a little more control with the hard ones, but all of them have their use. This one has the wedged point, very, very soft. This one has the harder, sharp point. And this one and this one are very similar except the blue is much firmer than this one. So you can kind of see the difference there. And then we also have some that are like a foam rubber. And you can do a different technique with that. So I'll show you quickly how we use the wipe out tools. For instance on this, to shape flower petals or leaves, and you can also make designs like this. And then you come back with your brush and you start at that and you can wipe out like that. It can give you a nice, clear edge to start with. The thing you need to know about porcelain painting is it is similar to watercolor painting. It is very important to have the highlights that you want in before you fire because you cannot get them back. So, generally on the first fire, you concentrate on getting the shape of your painting in, and the most important thing is to have all the highlights where you want them and the lightness that you want them, because you cannot go back and add paint on top to lighten them like you do with oil paint or acrylic paint. So it's just almost reversed from any type of oil painting you may have ever done. And that's what you use the wipe out tools, and I'm going to show you how to blend this. And the synthetic brush is to create these. So that gives you an example. Another thing that we can use as a wipe out tool is silk. This looks really bad because it has a lot of paint on it, but it still works great. And you can use it wrapped around your finger for a real sharp wipe out like this. We also use the Poly-fil. This is what's used in pillows, you just get it in any sewing shop or craft shops. You wrap it in the silk, like this, and you can use it to clean around your painting. You can also use it for wipe outs to create things that you want in a different manner. So it's another very good tool. And usually when we are finished with a painting, we will go around and clean up all the excess paint around it, because if the paint's there, it's going to be fired in the glaze. And so that is some of the wipe out tools that we use. "