Piggy banks stage 6: first layer gold linework

With all the lustres set, I took a few hours to design the inner pattern for the white areas. Since my friend who was expecting the girl was due first, I concentrated on finishing the Lotus pig up first so, hopefully, I would know the gender/name of the second baby before I had finished the final firing.

 I toyed with multiple ideas for the top of the Lotus Pig (if you click on the picture, you can see each petal has different designs). In the end, I kind of free-handed some lotuses for the wrap-around, and did bubbles in the top lotus petals, which softened up the rigid design a little, and a ring of seeds in the centre around the coin slot.

...time to crack open the Liquid Bright Gold...


Because my arm was giving me major problem (shaking so bad I was trying to eat with my left hand instead of my right), I thought it might be easier to use this strange sort of pen instead of a brush as, after all the work so far, I didn't want to ruin it all with shaky/messy linework.

The pen is really cool, you can see it below. It's like an open ink-pot where you put a couple drops of gold in the top of the little brass(?) head, and it feeds down through the bottom. You can use nib-type pens as well, but even after practicing with them, I couldn't get a consistent flow, which was both frustrating, and the lines were ugly.

Because this particular Liquid Bright Gold went on gold/yellow coloured, I switched to a red micron pen so I would be able to see better than if I had used a black pen.

The process went reasonably well. Yes, all the red are the lines I drew on first with the micron pen to make sure everything was lined up/even.

I also did the Sleepy Pig, but somehow forgot to take pictures...

...then I fired it overnight, the day before I had to leave to go home.

...and what was the result?

BOOOOOOOOO! The gold was contaminated! It ended up black, and smeared/rubbed off when you ran your finger over it.

Now, either the gold in the bottle was contaminated, or the pen I used had some kind of residue... I did clean it thoroughly with turpentine first... but, y'never know.

So, an entire day wasted, and I had to go home. At this point, it was late October, and the first baby was due end of October...

I was rather upset... and my arm was in pretty bad shape.