6 Ways to Use Wax...and Why I Hate it!

hi everybody today we're going to experiment with one substance that i don't use often and it's actually banned from my studio wax it's one of those things that even though i'm not a big fan of it it can be useful in some instances and it can be used for really cool decorative techniques for our experiment today i purchased aftosa liquid wax emulsion why have i banned it from my studio you ask just opening the lid i already got a drop of it on my finger if i pick up the pot now i'll contaminate the surface when the wax gets on a bisque fired piece it's difficult to remove without having to bisque fire it again we all know you can't have glaze on the foot of a pot when you put them into the kiln or they'll weld themselves to the kiln shelf as such many potters use wax as a resist on the bottom of their wares you can achieve the same thing by wiping the glaze off the bottom with a sponge much of the time the one exception is if the glaze has a staining quality then wax might be a good option to do this i use a foam brush and i spread the wax thoroughly on the bottom and just over the sides [Music] another way wax comes in handy is to keep a lid from sticking to the body of the pot waxing the bottom of the lid and the gallery of the pot can help resist glaze from those areas and it can also keep the lid from sticking to the clay body whoops it's a good idea to protect your workspace with newspaper because if the wax gets on the table and you put your piece on the wax it'll contaminate it one popular decorative technique is called mishima i coated the surface of a bisque fired pot with wax and let it dry this wax will be sticky dry in a couple of hours but what i learned was to let the wax dry overnight before handling it then i carved the design into the wax i really had to use a lot of pressure to dig through the wax to the clay surface underneath i then coated the surface with an under glaze and lightly wiped back the excess with a sponge to reveal the design oh here's another reason i dislike wax it'll contaminate your brushes so that you can't use them for any other purpose and if you don't wash them straight away they'll clump up and become ruined here i painted butterflies when the clay was in the greenware stage i bisked the piece and then carefully waxed on top of the underglazed areas [Music] notice that i used small brushes to be as precise on the design as i could including the very small antenna and the legs again i let the wax dry overnight and then brushed on the glaze over the whole thing it'll be interesting to see if the fine details show up after the high fire stay tuned now here's the bummer with this process i still had to go back and clean up where the glaze beaded over the resist [Music] for this technique i put auto detailing and electrical tape over the mug if you're interested to find out more about this process see our tape resist video i then waxed over the design i tried to brush with the lines as much as possible to avoid getting wax underneath the tape [Music] after 24 hours i carefully peeled the tape off leaving the raw clay [Music] using a stiff glaze that doesn't run i brush this over the waxed areas as you can see i still got glaze beading on the wax which was difficult to sponge off without also removing the glaze around the taped areas perhaps the glazed beads will add another layer of interest to the surface we shall see i have heard production potters say they use wax to save time in my own personal use i spent more time just for the wax prep cleanup and drying time i started with a piece of green wear and painted underglaze over the surface in retrospect it would have been more interesting to paint the surface with a variety of colors when that was dry i painted wax in the shape of butterflies over the underglaze [Music] i let this dry overnight when the wax was no longer tacky i used a wet sponge over the surface the areas around the butterflies turned to slurry and washed away the wax butterflies remained untouched the more i wiped away the more slurry i removed until the waxed areas stood out in relief to the background i then bisque fired and glazed it this brings me to another reason to dislike wax it's a water-based emulsion making it prone to drying out and to freezing once either of these things happen it's ruined on to the next technique first i glaze the entire surface with one glaze [Music] i then waxed a simple design over the top [Music] again i waited overnight for the wax to dry caution some waxes will not stick to a glazed surface but the aftosa did a good job i then used a second glaze over the first one again i had to clean up some beading on the wax surface but most of the glaze was resisted i haven't used these glazes together before so stay tuned to see the big reveal next is a technique called cuerta seika which is spanish for dry cord the first step was to make the black wax from the recipe here on the screen when fired the wax will burn off leaving the black lines remaining in place i drew a design then outlined the whole thing with the black wax these dried quickly and after two hours i was ready for glazing the idea is to flood each separate area with a different color of glaze the waxed lines will help keep the glaze separate i can't wait to see if it works [Music] do okay let's see what we got after the high fire the first piece is the mishima mug glazed with a rose glaze and electric blue under glaze next is the cuerta seika jar the colors did stay separate and the black lines remained intact this is also the piece that i waxed the bottom the lid and the gallery the lid did not stick and you can see the foot stayed nice and clean although it had a few hard edges where the wax went a little farther than i wanted it the inside of the gallery is also glaze free here is the wax over the underglaze i was a bit nervous that the feet and the antenna would cover over the glaze but they didn't this one i think is my favorite [Music] next is the water abrasion mug it's hard to tell in the video but the raised areas added a level of texture to the surface which was nice and the streaky glaze added a feeling that the butterflies were aloft in a billowy sky [Music] here's the tape and wax resist i love that pattern on the mug and the red is dramatic you can see a little bit of the glazed beading that i couldn't remove but they're not enough to detract from the design in fact i think they add a little interest to an otherwise naked clay next is the glaze on glaze wax resist i wasn't sure if the overlaying glaze would drip down and cover the spirals but they dripped linearly around them almost leaving a honeycomb appearance with the spirals in the center of each cell the drips are a little overpowering to the spirals but it just makes me want to pick up the mug and take a closer look if you liked our video please like share and subscribe see you next time in the studio you

Channel: Little Street Pottery

Views: 5,464

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Id: KO-0McKQBbI

Length: 9min 52sec (592 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 19 2021