Painting Stoneware Sculpture

[winifredweiss]

I am doing figurative sculpture with cone 6 stoneware. I would like to paint them with oil or acrylic paint. to what temperature should I fire them to have the greatest strength and still retain some porosity so the paint will stick?

[bciskepottery]

Do you know how absorbent your clay body is when fired to cone ^6?  Could range anywhere from 1% (well vitrified) to 5% (not so vitrified).  Also, what is your normal bisque temperature? 

[Marcia Selsor]

Cone 6. The oil will stick just fine.

Marcia

[Frederik-W]

Acrylic paint will stick to any any fired clay unless it is glazed.

However if you expose the painted sculpture to temperature shocks (e.g. take it from in-house to bright & warm sun) it might develop cracks.

[Marcia Selsor]

Good point. But then the clay would also need to be weather proof.

[perkolator]

you'll be fine at pretty much any temp.  these days you can get paints to stick to almost any surface, even glass/glaze.  we have had students choose to acrylic paint their work in the past - work was fired to both earthenware/^04 and mid-range/^6 and have been displayed outdoors for several years.  the pieces with high paint details took around 6yrs in full-sun on a south-facing part of the yard before the paint started to deteriorate from UV damage -- I think he also used latex "oops" house paint and oil paints on the piece.  spray paints and enamels, even fingernail polish hold up great as a "cold surface treatment"

 

i say go for it.  you can always make more art if it's unsuccessful.