Safari Episode 2

Spraying underglazes on a budget. 

I have always brushed my underglazes onto bisque fired objects. Glazing has been, depending of the size, a dipping action or also a brush-on manoeuvre. But with the blotched animals (Episode 1) a new approach is necessary: spraying underglaze.

My studio partner Ion, has been wanting to do some spraying for …. ever! So, time to give it a go but without breaking the bank.

The spray booth is very cheap: a camping “seat dome”. Not a two meter deep tent.  The smallest I could find, has just two poles to glide into the nylon to get a front/entrance arch and one to get the depth of just over 1 meter.

The idea being that when finished, a spray from a water hose would make for easy clean up, and when not in use, a minimal space occupancy. It fits into a sausage type of bag that is even smaller than a loaf of bread. These things come for under €25, brand-new with no holes or tears ;-).

The actual spray equipment is the smallest compressor there is on the market (to blow up bike tires and has been useless for years), to which is attached a hand pump for glazing that we “converted” for compressor use.  We used plastic tubes as small paint containers. After all, these animals fit in your hand and only need very small amounts of underglaze.

The plan was to see how all of this goes and then eventually upgrade to a “nice” spray gun, maybe a better compressor with “reservoir” etc. 

Spraying underglaze is a fast process and color switches have therefore to be swift.

So, each animal species had its own “tray” with color samples and actual under glaze, ready to go.

Well… to our surprise everything worked according to plan!

After 1 (!) attempt only, we found the right nozzle, and very soon we set into a rhythm of Ion handling the spray gun, me switching on and of the compressor on his command, moving fast and clean between all the colors, etc.We were done in no-time, we could see the nice even spray of color on the bisque fired animals and the whole clean-up was a breeze.

We were kind of happy and proud of our try-out.

Not being very patient, I dipped the animals into a transparent glossy glaze the next day.

They will go into the kiln at the end of the week.

Can’t wait to see the result.