The Ming Vases

Year6 Ming Vases at Cherry Garden Primary School

We’ve tried an effective technique to imitate the Ming Vases, the typical Chinese vases in white porcelain with blue decorations, using oil pastels, white acrylic paint and a toothpick!. 

We begin copying the characteristic shapes of the Chinese vases from some pictures, with narrow necks and large bellies. To succeed in draw the symmetrical shape you start by median vertical line, draw a half and then you try to complete the other side, as if in a mirror.

Now you color the shapes with oil pastels in various shades of blue, making sure to fill the whole surface of the vase. After that you cover the vases with a layer of white acrylic paint or white gesso primer and wait until it dries.

When the white layer is dry you engrave the surface with a toothpick copying the drawings from the Ming porcelains (dragons, ideograms, plants, flowers, clouds and birds...), thus it will appear the underlying blue!

Eventually cut vases and paste them on a black background. You can paste on a white cardboard adding shadows cast (as you can see in a previous post with the Striped Bottles),  or you can complete the composition with white lettering in Chinese!