Simplicity Is Your Friend, Too

I spent most of yesterday glazing some of the  pieces I got out of a bisque firing on Sunday.

These flowers will be lavender, orange, red, and yellow. Now they look white because they're covered with a glaze that goes on opaque but fires clear. After I took this picture, I glazed the skull with an "ice blue" glaze. It really looks like glacial blue ice, a very pale blue that looks brittle even though it's not. I used the same glaze here, on the edge of this colibri retablo:

I'm a little bit fascinated by this ice blue glaze. Something about it seems old fashioned to me. The color maybe? The way it fades, maybe?

Glazing and painting work is one of my least favorite parts of finishing work. First of all, it's painstaking to paint glazes onto such small spaces. Some glazes are so thick that it's like trying to be very accurate while painting with gravy.  (I started painting with glazes after hearing the old potters canards about how it just never works out. After that, I decided that I would always paint on my glazes. That's how The Brain works.) The other reason I find painting and glazing difficult is because I'm terrible with color. No joke.  I'm just not that big into color. As a result, many of my finished pieces look like this:

Simplicity is my friend.

That piece has an application of iron oxide rubbed off the high spots. That's it. Because look at it. If I were to paint it, what color would I paint it? See, I don't even know where to begin answering that question.