This is what the Mantas custom tile mural looks like after the first firing to cone 018. I like to establish where all the images are going to be first and paint the backgrounds in later firings. There will be at least two more firings on this kitchen backsplash tile mural. I do a lot of things in completely different ways than traditional china painters, notably using only water based mediums. If you’d like to learn how I do things, you can sign up for my online china painting course from TeachinArt, at https://www.teachinart.com/china-painting.html.

This is hoe I start on a custom tile mural. I’ve got my proposal drawing togo by, my source material laid out, the tiles have been numbered on the backs. I usually start in the upper left and work my way to the bottom right. There will be a water background, but I like to get the images established and do the backgrounds later.

In the second picture you see the lower right corner almost done. I just have the two fish and on coral to do yet and it will be ready to go into the kiln. The white strokes that look like grasses just to the left of the blank area were wiped out with that rubber too you see laying next to the tile.

I’m getting ready to start a new custom tile mural. This one is going to Florida and depicts manta rays. It will go over a countertop in a kitchen. These are 6” tiles, so the mural will be 6’ 6” wide and 3’ 6” high. This is the drawing for it. Some of the images were supplied by the clients and some were from my extensive collection of books and clippings.

Sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn’t. In 40 years or so of making custom tile murals, I have found very few brands of tile that I couldn’t work on. But some will just not stand up to refiring. They’re almost always, like these samples for a bathroom vanity tile mural, made by hand either by an individual or in a small factory. They were made from wet clay on a slab roller, not dust pressed like commercial tile. This puts different stresses on the fired tile. They’re perfectly fine and durable as is, but they won’t survive the china paint firing. So now we’re looking for a different tile for this job.

These are two sides of a kitchen I did a while back. The one over the sink is a smaller version of a backsplash that’s pictured on the Kitchens page of the web site. The other is a version of the Italian Dinner image from the Shop page. I used it as a sample at the Home Show for a while and then decided to sell it.

Just went and took this picture of a great tub surround featuring water birds for a couple of bird watchers. There are 9 species in this one.