Colour is a terrific way to make your ceramic art come to life and add some personal flair to it. Clay colourants opened up the colour possibilities for potters, as we all know how adding colour to your ceramic art can be a tricky proposition. Unlike when dealing with paints, the raw glaze you apply to your prize pot or sculpture often looks completely different from the burned result.

How to Add Colour to Your Ceramic Art?

With all this in mind, using a pigmented and easy-to-use clay colour will make your ceramic art pop. However, knowing which powdered colour is ideal for your requirements can be challenging with so many options available. These are the top-tier powdered colourants to have on your radar if you want to turn your art into a real masterpiece. After all, why settle for the basic when you can have the extraordinary one?

Micas

Mica is an extremely refractory material that is frequently used in cosmetics for its shimmering quality and in electronics for its insulating characteristics. It is perfect for use in numerous low-fire techniques such as naked raku, ferric chloride saggar, horsehair firing, clay saggar, and pit-fired ceramics because it easily withstands the 1472°F (800°C), (cone 015) temperature required by several bare-clay firing procedures.

To get the vivid hues we use today, micas undergo a laborious production process that includes mica flakes, titanium dioxide, iron oxides, or ultramarines, depending on the desired colour. These ceramic colours can be used alone or in combination.

Your favourite pearl and metallic clay colour is created by mixing polymer clay with mica powders. You can also purchase mica powders and use them to cover the project’s surface. Mica particles adhere easily to the surface because uncooked polymer clay has a tiny inherent tendency to attach to things. However, these particles must be combined with your preferred varnish or clearcoat to create a “paint” because they will not adhere to the baked clay’s surface on their own.

Mica granules, on the other hand, can be applied with a finger and flattened (burnished) on raw polymer clay to increase their lustre. Or you can use a dry, gentle paintbrush to apply them more accurately. Try soaking your brush to apply makeup with even more precision. As normal, use soap and water to wash your brush.

Ceramic Pigments

Prepared ceramic pigments, often known as ceramic stains, give the potter a vast array of clay colours. In other words, pigments give clay bodies, inglazes, underglazes, and onglazes a broad variety of colour options.

Pigments can be used directly and simply mixed with water, depending on the application, but they are more frequently used as colouring agents in clay bodies and glazes. Some colours are created expressly for clay bodies, while others are completely inappropriate. Rather than colouring the entire piece of clay when used in engobes and slips, pigments are typically employed in clay. However, the use of stains to colour porcelain for neriage work would be an exception to this rule.

The majority of pigments can be combined to produce even more shades and a larger palette. The one exception is that while black pigments are created by mixing a number of metallic oxides, they cannot be utilized to create shades of grey. A predominate oxide in the black pigment will alter the final colour if low quantities are employed.

You must test ceramic pigments with the frit, glaze, and slip bases you want to use before using them alone or in combination with other pigments and oxides. A good starting point is to use some of the existing recipes or frits. Although the cost of ceramic oxides is higher than that of pigments due to the higher manufacturing costs, most supplies sell ceramic pigments in quantities as small as 100 grams.

Powdered Dyes

In contrast to pigments, which are dispersed or suspended, dyes are dissolved. While powdered dyes are difficult to distinguish from liquid dyes because of their similar appearance to powdered pigment, they should be diluted (often with water) before being used to give colour to art pieces.

In most cases, you should mix 5% powdered dye with 95% clean water (deionized if you like) to create a concentrated liquid colour from a powder. If you plan to store the dye for any length of time, we also recommend adding an appropriate preservative.

Coloured Clays

Due to their organic pastel colours, coloured clays have become a popular way to colour and decorate your pieces of ceramic art. Their growing popularity is also due to the fact that clays don’t have a Color Index (CI) number and are therefore classified as an ingredient rather than a “colour.” This allows you to continue labelling your product as “uncoloured” or “colour-free.” The colours they create are often delicate and pastel and give a very ‘natural’ look.

This colourant is made out of mason stains or oxides. The contrast between stains and oxides exists in the fact that the latter are composed of basic metal components, whereas the former are oxides that have been processed and have added ingredients to make their ceramic colour more stable and consistent.