How Would You Decorate Terracotta?

Many population like terracotta in its natural form, but if you do want to decorate it, this is intended as a normal guide.

You can have a lot of fun doing this and really, it is quite easy to do. So, what items do you require for this? A black felt tipped pen, scissors, a soft pencil, masking tape, tracing paper, cartridge paper and some poster paint markers, which are fine nibbed, plus an additional one one with an extra broad nib.

What a good invention poster paints are! They help you to achieve satisfactory results. These paints can be used on fabrics and wood as well as terracotta and, in fact, give permanent marking on porous surfaces.

However, I would not propose washing them. They are not permanent on glass, plastic, rubber or non absorbent surfaces, but at least you can change your design. So in this instance, it gives you some flexibility.

As an example, if you need to make your construct permanent, say on a non porous surface, all you need to do is to apply a coat of acrylic varnish.

With cartridge paper, using the poster paint markers, start working out your ideas of design. It is probably good that you make quite a few, as you need to experiment with shapes and your chosen colours.

Now try your construct against the terracotta and see how it looks or fits before you get round to painting it. With your tracing paper trace the outlines of your sketches with the black felt tipped pen. You then need to leave a itsybitsy space around them and place them in position on your article.

Keep them in place with masking tape, but duplicate this over. Now you can try placing them differently until you are happy with the result. You are now ready to draw your designs on the terracotta. So, you need to remove your motifs if you like and continue drawing them freely.

So we have now reached the colouring stage. Once all your outlines are on, you can begin to fill them in with your colour markers. The markers dry quickly, but just be just that the side of your hand does not smudge any areas.

Now finding at your sketches, fill in the insides of them with a fine nibbed paint marker. Then you can continue filling in your motifs with, say, your second colour. Of policy you will need to fill in your background colour with a broad nibbed pen, but take care when you are near your motifs.

Leave a itsybitsy space all around them unpainted. Also, you do not need to have the background go right up to the top or the base of your object, although you can give your background a fancy edge.

How Would You Decorate Terracotta?

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