= Dragon

I'm working on repairing/ improving a piece of ceramic art I made, probably in middle school. This cute dragon sculpture!

The whole thing was too heavy and when it was fired, the head and one or two of the limbs broke off. It wasn't too hard to fix at the time, but at the suggestion of my instructor, I didn't glaze it (so as to avoid any further damage during firing), and opted for just painting it instead. Over time, that paint has worn off, and some pieces have broken off as well.

So, I've decided not just to glue the pieces back together haphazardly, but also to improve on the original by doing a more detailed (and hopefully longer lasting) paint job on it.

First, removing the current paint! As it seems it was painted with latex paint, and I appear not to have used any kind of gesso on the surprisingly smooth surface of the ceramic, the paint was already peeling, so for a first pass, I've just pulled it off.

That's all I've managed to get done so far, I think I'm going to try taking atoothbrush or something to it to get the last pieces of paint off of it, and then I'm going to do a little research on painting on ceramics. My guess is I'll end up possibly sanding it, definitely gessoing it, and then painting!

What method I'll use to reaffix the pieces is still up in the air. The glue that had been used to attach one of the arms came off along with the paint! I'd rather not experience that again down the line. If anyone reading this has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them!

update: 2021.09.11 Well, I finished this project, so I should probably fill you all in on how it went!!

I ended up deciding on sanding the rest of the old paint off, and then using a 2 part epoxy to put the pieces back together.

I took my time and reattached each piece individually, giving plenty of time for the epoxy to cure before handling the piece again.

I had one particularly problematic arm, as it was missing some pieces. I decided to fill the space with some brown paper, and epoxied that together. It turned out a bit sloppy, and required multiple coats of epoxy, but I am pretty happy with the results.

Unfortunately, while it was sitting, the tail was also broken off by a missjudged step, but that also epoxied back on without any significant issues, as it managed a clean break.

Once the dragon was back in one piece, I gave it several coats of gesso. I kept adding coats untill it became difficult to see the epoxy lines, since I didn't want to depend on the paint itself to cover that.

I'm extraordinarily happy that I did so, because, while I had intended on doing a basic painting job, which would have ended up with multiple coats of paint, What I actually ended up doing was a gradual colour shift back and forth from red to blue. I used a very small brush and dabbed the paint on so that it looked a bit like scales (although I've since thought multiple times that it looks a bit like a sweater too) The white paint gesso really lit up the colours by showing through just the tiniest bit, and I decided against adding any additional coats, since I liked how it turned out so much!

Some sealer that claims to be "matte" later (I'd call it a semi-gloss myself) and here is the final result!