Moisten a clean sponge and wipe your bisque to remove any dust or dirt.Create a beginner’s Gray Scale worksheet with a five-value scale. To do this, create five boxes that are adjacent to each other on one line. Label the boxes, left to right, 5, 4, 3, 2,1 with Five being the darkest color and one being the lightest. Using a pencil, shade in each square leaving the lightest completely white and gradually getting darker as they move to the black square.
Once you’ve completed the gray scale worksheet, look at the dolphin image. Have the children value the image (i.e. What colors in the image are a 5? Which color is a 4?, etc.) To do this, squint and look at the image. The dark and light colors will stand out more than the middle values. The color does not have to be gray to assign a value to it. The value will be assigned according to how light or dark it is.
Next, select colors based on the values assigned. In our sample the following colors were assigned as follows (5 being the darkest value)5: SC-15 Tuxedo (5); SC-8 Just Froggy (4), SC-33 Fruit of the Vine (4), SC-40 Blueberry Hill (4); SC-18 Rosey Rosey (3), SC-39 Army Surplus (3), SC-51 Poo Bear (3), SC-52 Toadily Green (3); SC-7 Leapin’ Lizard (2), SC-23 Jack O-Lantern (2), SC-52 Toad-ily Green (2), SC-53 Purple Haze (2), SC-70 Pink-A-Dot (2); SC-16 Cotton Tail (1).
Using tracing paper, trace the image onto the plate or platter of your choosing.
Using your original image as a guide along with the scale values you assigned each color, begin applying the background color to your piece. Keep in mind that you may want to make a wash to further lighten a color and decrease its value.
Once you have finished applying solid backgrounds, you will begin working in a pointillist style of painting meaning you will paint with dots. While the dots are not necessarily connected, your eye will automatically group the colors and like-values together.
Using the tip of a round brush, begin applying dots to your piece. The colors you assigned a dark value to will be applied to the areas that are dark values in the original image. Likewise, the colors you assigned light values to will be applied to the areas of light value in the original image. You will notice that dark values tend to recede while light values press towards you.
Fire to cone 06.
Supplies
Form
MB-890 Asian Flair 11″ Square Plate (discontinued)
