Paul Lewing Custom Tile

This is how a custom tile mural starts and how it comes out. The client gives me the measurements of the space, and any images or descriptions they can round up to tell me what they want it to look like. I then make them a scale drawing so we can see how it fits into the space. In this case, I needed to work around an outlet. This lady came from a family of Northwest fishermen, so there’s lots of seafood in it, and she wanted it fun and whimsical. She gave me some pictures and I used my very extensive library of images on all kinds of subjects. Then I fire it onto the tile we select, and she’s happy.

Working my way through the second firing. This is when the real painting happens. First thing to do is paint in the background water and sand. You can see on the big manta ray how I just paint right over the imagery and wipe it off later. I like a closed medium for this. I want it to dry but take a while and not dry too hard. You can see on the other photo where I’ve deepens the colors on the rays and their shadows and the fish, but I haven’r started on the coral yet. I’m wiping out the patterns of the light on the sand with the same rubber tool I used before.

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. And you can see lots of my finished handprinted artisan tile work at www.paullewingtile.com.

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. To see a lot of jobs handprinted tile that actually did work well, go to www.paullewingtile.com.