Spin art on ceramic bathroom tiles

I have already experimented with spin art on clay and paper so using what i had learned from doing those, I decided i would try this again but this time i could try using ordinary bathroom tiles. This was a good idea and they were suitable to work on because bathroom tiles have a nice smooth surface already.

I was to use e-ware glazes on these rather than slips because they are really thin and would fly across the surface of my tiles. I had a big box of tiles and they were really cheap so they were perfect to work on. 

I decided to work on just two tiles to begin with to see what happens. I chose a selection of coloured glazes such as bronze, black magic, turquoise and light blue. I would start off with putting on the darkest colour first and then the lightest colours over the top, I found that was the best way to get the best results.
Using the same method as before i squirted the glazes onto the tile.

 

 

This is what they looked like before going into the kiln. Andy the technician has told me that he's not sure how well they will fire in the kiln so we will just have to hope for the best.

 

I have done another set just in case the others don't survive.

 

These are my final set and this time i have changed the colours i have used and I think that they have been the most successful.

 

 

 



Painting

I'm going to try a different way of painting. I can try using some batik dyes and spread the dye across the paper by blowing it around with a straw. This will give me a completely different effect.

I'm blowing the dyes around to get them to blend and spread together, I'm also adding some bleach to take out some of the colour. I found that the bleach creates lighter shades of colours and makes the dye more interesting.

 

 

 

 

I also found that the colours had to be built up in layers to achieve a really good pattern. The next thing i did was add washing up liquid to the dye and mixed it together in the pot and then it would become soapy and then i made a bubble blower out of some wire and then dipped it in the pot and blew a really big bubble onto the page. The bubble turned into a nice planet like shape and left a really nice blob on the paper. I was already familiar with this because I had already tried doing this before. I also found that it only works best with dark coloured dyes.

Spin art

My next idea was to try some spin art, which i researched on the internet and i found a selection of artists who have experimented with this way of painting.

Here are a few artists and links:

annick gendron biography

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_art

Damien hirsts website

alfons schilling

Walter robinson

 

Taking inspiration from these artists and their spin paintings I decided to give it a try myself, it seemed really interesting to me. I decided to use the spinning wheel in our ceramics room to try and get a similair effect.

 

My first attempts were done on small pieces of paper, i used poster paint and added water to it so that it was very liquid and would fly around on the paper. To drop the paint onto the paper I used what are called slip trailers and sucked up the paints out of the jugs I had put them in. I can then squeeze them and the paint will come out in a controled way.

 

I thought that my first efforts were really good and they turned out better than i had expected them to be. The good thing about using the wheel is that it has a pedal so i can adjust the speed and control the speed to get different effects. I'm now going to think about using other materials and try different paints.