I'm gonna share with you a couple of
tips and tricks for painting your clay
shaker so here we have a clay shaker
that you've seen before that I have has
been made and fired as sound so the
first thing you're gonna do is you have
your color palette here and you should
have a water with brushes and also a
paper towel over here so in order to use
the water color you're going to need to
dip your brush into the water and you're
going to have to moisten the block's
most of you are very familiar with this
the more water you put in there the more
diluted it's going to be if you put
water in there and you keep mixing the
stronger the color will be so if I take
this I've been mixing for a little bit
there's water in there I can add more
make sure I have enough and I'm going to
paint the bowtie a violet and what
you're gonna notice is that this is
gonna dry very quickly now when you're
painting your clay you want to be pretty
precise about where the paint is going
and take your time don't rush this paint
is going to absorb very quickly because
the paint is porous normally when you
use a glaze the glaze is like glass and
so it hardens and creates like a glassy
surface and so it that's what allows the
water not to go into the clay body but
because we're not glazing and we're just
using watercolors the moisture of the
watercolor is just being absorbed right
into the clay base itself so you want to
be really careful if I touch you can see
it or I touched right down here you
gotta add some purple right there but
that can be covered up so I'm gonna go
in and I'm gonna paint like I said my
bowtie purple the next thing I'm going
to do after I paint my bowtie purple is
I'm going to add another color I'm going
to put some dots on top
so I'll just I can finish that in a
little bit but I'm gonna show you what
I'm doing here okay so there we go
remember when you are painting if you're
changing colors you need to make sure
you rinse off your brush bring your
brush all the way down to the bottom
pretend you're painting the bottom of
the bucket make sure it's nice and clean
and then if you want your to have more
of a dry brush you can use your paper
towel and just kind of dry your pick
your brush off on the paper towel I
think I'm gonna do some green polka dots
on the tie here the bow tie
so I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna take a
nice strong green so there's very little
water and I'm really kind of mixing that
around so I have a nice nice strong
color on my brush and the nice thing
about working with watercolor on clay is
that you can overlap normally when your
glazing I tell you not to overlap colors
because you never know what's gonna
happen but because this is purple or
violet and it's soaked into the clay I
can put a polka dot on top of this and
it will turn that color the purple where
I want it to be green green so I could
go in and I could create different
layers on top of this and I'll show you
what I mean in a minute so this is where
you can really have some fun with how
this comes out now remember you have
spent all this time oops I'm sorry you
have spent all this time creating your
clay shaker the last thing you want to
do is go really quickly on the paint job
and then have it not come out looking
nice okay so there's my green dots I'm
gonna let that dry for just a minute
you can blow on that a little bit let
that dry and now if I wanted to go back
in and I wanted to add another color on
top it's not dry yet so I think what
I'll do is I'll go back in while this is
drying I'm going to add a little bit of
green right here just to kind of make
that tie stand out a little bit you have
to be careful and I'll see I just had a
little bit too much water on that brush
and it kind of just kind of takes off on
you so you have to be careful don't use
too much water no if I go in and I could
take another color and I can even put a
dot on top of this so I could go in with
red and I could go in with a tiny little
pin on top of that green and that will
absorb so you can see where you could
have a lot of fun just kind of layering
the color I don't know if I made these
green circles big enough for you to see
but you can see how there's a slight
green ring around them and so you need
to let that kind of absorb and dry
that's another thing too if you're doing
a lot of painting and you have a lot of
water and I tip this up the paint might
run down so we want to be careful so you
might want to just hold on that and kind
of fan it a little bit for it to dry if
you plan on doing any mixing of colors
you're mixing should not happen in here
we don't ever want these to get dirty we
want them to be nice and pure so if
you're trying to mix a color let's say
you're trying to make a Bluegreen you
can go ahead and take your blue bring it
up hopefully to a clean top here if you
create the blue up there again rinse
your brush off in between grab a little
bit of the green and then you can mix
and so there's your Bluegreen and then
you might decide that you might use that
Bluegreen maybe as part of the hair
and just kind of really taking your time
so if you want to do any mixing of
colors the mixing should happen up in
the top of the tray not in these colors
now here's another little trick if you
happen to go in here and you're like
oops I just accidentally mixed color
okay this is not what you want you
really want a yellow so if you want to
fix this one of the things that you can
do is you can take your paper towel and
just take the dry paper towel not a wet
one take a dry paper towel and press the
paper towel into that area allow that
color and water to absorb and now you
can see that you're kind of back to that
yellow again and now all of that color
that you had that you accidentally mixed
has been picked up another thing when
you are completely done painting you
should take a paper towel any mixing
you've done at the top you can dip a
little paper towel into the water and go
in here take the paper towel and just
clean this up so that the next person to
come and use such the painting tray is
going to come back to a nice clean area
for mixing okay so I hope you have a
really great time painting I hope some
of you will hold on to your shakers and
show them to me when you're done
painting because I won't see the
finished product but certainly would
love to see some finished pieces so if
you'd like to hold on to them and bring
them down and show me or send me a
picture email that would be awesome as
well okay have fun painting everybody
and have a fabulous summer