Pendant progress

I have a dear friend from back home who recently asked me if I'd be willing to create some jewelry to sell in her Aunt's shop. I had been toying with the idea of making some porcelain jewelry, but I wasn't sure how to go about it. I wasn't sure what kind of things she'd want for the shop, but happily she asked me to run with it and make things similar to my drawings and sculptures and things.

 I decided to start simple, just to get my feet wet. I made 4 little circles to use as mini canvases, and painted some faces on them. I was really inspired by a video on Ceramic Arts Daily about monoprint transfer on clay. Even though it's meant to be a process for clay slabs, it was a really good painting tutorial too, because you get to see her build up her colors and highlights. She started with a red and a yellow color background, and I loved seeing the way the painting build-up was affected by the different colored base. Definitely worth a watch. I started each of my four faces with a different color to build up from, and then played with color based on the background.

I had a lot of fun with these, and I'm really happy with how they turned out. Making mini paintings lets me play with design and color on a small scale, and fully develop the painting in a short amount of time (like a couple of baby naps!) It's really lovely to sit down in the morning and have a cup of coffee and paint. I'll definitely be experimenting more with jewelry designs, and figuring out ways to make cool things that still look like something I would make. I hope you enjoyed seeing the painting process on these. To be continued!