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Hello! I’ve been hanging around the forum a while and I’ve recently become addicted to painting PYOs. However I am not a very good painter. I was wondering if anybody might have advice, particularly on stripes. I would dearly love to do stripes. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!
I would say, practice before, either on paper or a dollar store sculpt or something. Stripes can be a pain in the butt, particularly on the PYOs with heavy creases/details.
Try the muse too, since it has a number of different PYO surfaces.
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http://www.sarahjestin.com/feedbacklists.htmAnother option is to work your design in layers using thinned paint. I haven’t done a piece in tiger stripes yet, but I’ve done several with banded feathers or edging on the scales. It is always a big leap of faith to hold a loaded brush over your basecoated piece and say, “OK, here goes, gonna do some edging!” The nice thing about using thinned paint is that you can develop the look gradually, and if it starts doing something you don’t like it’s a lot easier to fix it. Once you’ve got the stripes the way you want, you can tidy up any bobbles on the edges of things using thicker paint.
Or if you want stripes with really clean edges, you can plot out where you want the stripes to go using thinned paint, and when you like what you see, use thicker paint to “ink in” the design. I don’t have a steady enough hand for this technique; I can’t get past the habit of “sketching”! But this is where practice, practice, practice would probably fix that problem I have.
Practice helps with everything. The Muse makes a great practice piece, especially for dry-brushing. I’ve looked for little figurines to practice-paint, but haven’t had much luck finding anything other than poorly-detailed bunny rabbits and lopsided doves. –But then again, maybe they’d look cool in stripes? :~
I can’t find anything decent to practice on either! I’ve checked out PYO ceramic shops, but most of those pieces have very little detail and are, for the most part, smooth. I read someone suggested repainting resin pieces, but I haven’t done that yet. Wondering if I need to base coat first….
Bayoudragon did the most wonderful repaint of a resin dragon that’s wound around a clock face. It looks AMAZING! Here’s the page: http://windstoneeditions.com/forum/show-your-colletion-thread-6?page=6
The piece was originally one of those black-and-gray resin items. According to the post, it was painted using Golden fluid acrylics and a dry-brushing technique. I am thinking that it might also be possible to repaint something like this using glazes over the original with no basecoat, or possibly some antiquing and highlights of pale gray first to accentuate the shadows and highlights of the piece before glazing.
The nicest thing about those resin pieces is that they’re relatively cheap and highly detailed, so they’re very good for dry-brushing practice. Some of the dragons are just plug-ugly, though, and it can be difficult to find one that looks nice. The one Bayou chose for repainting is one of the finest I’ve seen. There are some nice resin dragon lamp sconces out there, and a handsome mantelpiece clock with a dragon wrapped around it. There are also some great dragon bookends; I’m gearing up to try repainting a set sometime this month.
If you can’t find resin dragons in stores, or if they’re too expensive, try looking on Amazon under “dragon statue” (search All categories). You’ll get about three thousand hits, but the gray resin dragons will be in the first hundred or so. You can also check eBay. I’ve had good luck on both sites when looking for these.
You’re very welcome! I’m glad that you’re looking into painting. I agonized over my first PYO (a Muse) for days, then spent a couple of weeks painting her, and to my surprise she actually turned out pretty good. It was hard to take the plunge on the next PYO, though, and I would have been a lot happier if I could have done more practicing. I still have two started griffins that are in the “oh my gosh this is ugly” stage that I haven’t gotten back to yet! But one of these days I’ll figure out how to continue them. (Griffins can be a tricky piece to paint. I recommend the small dragon for a starter, after the Muse.)
The trial and error thing really does work, with painting. My inner critic is a real picky-pants, but I’m learning how to put a muzzle on her. Every PYO I’ve done so far is like a baby parrot: it goes through the “AAAGH UGLY!” stage, and eventually it grows through it and starts looking nice. Despite the “growing pains,” I really enjoy painting PYOs. I hope you do too! 🙂
lol – I’m agonizing over my own Muse!!! I’m going around the house looking at things like prey…found a couple of old, ugly resin PINK dragons we’ve had for years, but can’t get rid of, cuz, you know, someone special gave ’em to us. (They’re PINK for cryin’ out loud!) Considering practicing on those and if they become worse in the process, they’ll just mysteriously disappear. If they become better looking, everyone wins!
(love the parrot analogy – very fitting)
:jawdrop: PINK dragons? Oh, by all means practice on them! They can only benefit from some different colors. I know there are folks on the Forum who love pink, and even pink on dragons, but for me pink has always been the color of That Horrible Dress my mom spent years trying to guilt me into wearing. It was the color of Pepto-Bismol, hung like a sack, and made the wearer look like a giant naked mole-rat. Geh. 😐
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