[Clayart] Toxic chemicals and china paints

[sumi]

Paul

I teach at the Washington Heights Art Center in Lakewood Colorado. The 
china painting class there is taught by a lady named Rita Moore. They do 
more or less traditional work, a lot of flowers and adorable children on 
china dishes, although Rita is actually a very accomplished painter and 
prefers to refer to herself as doing "oil painting on porcelain". She 
likes to push the students beyond the flowers and Christmas ornaments 
and baby booties but they still do plenty of those things. They are 
mostly quite elderly ladies. I myself really don't do much with china 
paints, just occasional accents or painting a name on a mug or 
something, but I like to make sure my students know they exist. Rita 
prefers the oil-based media, I presume because they give a longer 
working time, like the difference between oils and acrylics. Many of her 
students have been at it for many years - Rita took over a couple of 
years ago after the previous teacher retired at the age of 85. I have a 
student who sometimes takes my class who studied with Kurt Weiser, and 
likes to do china painting on some of her work, and she prefers the oil 
based media. I order a water based medium called Josephine Water Medium 
from thegoodstuff.com. I have a student who teaches refugees at a 
refugee center and she sometimes takes donated china dishes and my 
collection of china paints for the refugees to paint. They love it.

Sumi
>
> On Aug 22, 2019, at 8:07 PM, sumi <sumi at herwheel.com> wrote:
>
>   Paul
>
> What bothers me about china paints is the smelly oil-based medium! We have a china painting class at my art center and sometimes the whole building smells. When I use china paints I always use the water based medium even though the working qualities are not so good. That's okay, as my china painting skills are also not so good.
>
> I’m really delighted to hear you have a china painting class at your art center!  Where is that?
> Yes, that smell bothers a lot of people, and some of the oil based mediums and solvents are also allergenic.  I use nothing but water-based mediums and I use a number of different ones.  What are you using?  And when you say the working qualities are not as good, exactly what do you mean?  It’s true that there are some effects that water based mediums will not do (or at least I have not been able to duplicate) but virtually everything I want to so with china paints I can do with water based mediums of some kind.
>
>
> Paul Lewing
> www.paullewingtile.com <http://www.paullewingtile.com/>
> www.paullewingart.com <http://www.paullewingart.com/>
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