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Parent Category: Technical Articles from Journal Back Copies

Category: Technical Articles 2001

Eileen Schneegas

"Don't panic, it will be all right" and similar sentiments were the bywords of the day from our tutor, Dayna White. If you are unfamiliar with the peculiarities of painting enamel, the reason for the reassurances will become clear (one hopes) by the end of this article!

Dayna is an exquisite artist in the painting technique. Examples of her work were on show at our conference. Dayna is also a lovely person, kind and willing to share her knowledge.

On receipt of my equipment list, I rang up Sarah at Vitrum Signum. I ordered the set of Sunshine painting enamels, a high firing white (Blythe T6) & Latham 232 silver flux. At present, Sunshine has no pink or lilac colours for skin tones. Sarah has promised to research further for more colours.

There was research done after Dayna's first tutorial, at the Leicester conference. The old painting enamels (PPE) & other various brands are no longer being made. And neither is the white ground colour, hence a switch to something available. Students were advised to enamel with the ground white at home on copper or silver of around 2 or 3 inches in size.

Of the 2 pieces I attempted in class, one of them developed a crack. This was probably because I managed to fumble it whilst it was hot & drop it. But the white undercoat is important. Too hard a white will likely develop cracks and crazes after repeated firing of the painting enamel layers. I found that I needed to fire the T6 at 1500 ºF/l000+ºC to get an even coat. I did 2 coats, sifted, and stoned in between. So long as you are planning to paint over most of the ground colour, a few specks will not show once you are finished. If you choose to keep the white background free of any other colours, then you would need to be very sure of clean colour. Any pits should certainly be mended before applying the layers of coloured enamel.

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