you might not believe me,

you might not believe me, but in my five years of being a full time ceramist, this is the very first cup I've ever made. and not only is it my first cup, but this is also my first time using this little underglaze pencil. on a cute little design, I got it put in the kiln for its first fire and so that way we could see what it actually looks like. I'm left handed and it looked like this yesterday before I put it in the kiln and it cleaned up a bit. now I'm not gonna leave this piece in black and white, at least this one. I might do other ones in black and white, I wanted to go with the primary colours and give it a kind of watercolour effect. so I took the tops of my underglazes, sprayed some water in so that way they were very watered down, and then started filling in the shapes. typically with underglazes you need three coats of each colour to become opaque. but for this piece I'm only doing one coat of each colour. so again, hopefully we end up with something watercolour adjacent. had I not made this next decision, this would have been a very easy paint job. but then I decided to paint stars on the inside to match the ones on the outside with a little more glaze than I did on the outside, so that way they may be a bit brighter. and let me tell you, while it's no Sistine chapel, painting on the inside of a cup is not as fun as you would think it might be. that being said, I always enjoy under glazing when it's in a primary palette, so I had a lot of fun doing this. and once all of the primary colours it was time to add the finishing touches, which to me was just adding white to the eyes. now for the results of the first test, I will say confidently that I love the way the underglaze pencil came out. I feel like the texture is so stinking cute, and I'm really excited to see how this piece looks after it's glazed. but before we can do that, I need to take it outside, load it up in the kiln, and tomorrow we will do that.