One of the things that Portugal is known for are its tiles, called azulejos. You'll see them everywhere--inside churches, outside buildings, in train and metro stations.
As part of our tour, we got a chance to visit a ceramics factory and paint our very own tile. When our tour guide told us about this activity during our orientation evening, about half the group was super excited and the other half was dreading the experience.
I had all these plans I wanted to do. Each evening after a day outside, I would think about what I wanted to paint, but I couldn't settle on anything.
Finally the day of the tile painting came. I thought we would get around 45 minutes to work, but the time seemed to go really quickly. It seemed like 25 minutes. As you might be able to see, I started with a detailed design in the middle and as I learned how much time was remaining, I started to use the larger brushes and dab on the color. The fact that the paint was thick and the brush was kind of frayed, made it difficult to paint on a smooth consistent line. Instead, I had to repeatedly dip my brush and paint in tiny choppy increments. When it time to leave, I was still not done and was one of the last to leave my station. I randomly dropped in the green leaves to take up some space.
Not my best work, but it was fun to be creating something while in Portugal instead of always looking at art or consuming something.
My plan is to get some cork to glue to the back of my tile to make a coaster. And since cork is a major product of Portugal, that would be perfect!
As part of our tour, we got a chance to visit a ceramics factory and paint our very own tile. When our tour guide told us about this activity during our orientation evening, about half the group was super excited and the other half was dreading the experience.
I had all these plans I wanted to do. Each evening after a day outside, I would think about what I wanted to paint, but I couldn't settle on anything.
Finally the day of the tile painting came. I thought we would get around 45 minutes to work, but the time seemed to go really quickly. It seemed like 25 minutes. As you might be able to see, I started with a detailed design in the middle and as I learned how much time was remaining, I started to use the larger brushes and dab on the color. The fact that the paint was thick and the brush was kind of frayed, made it difficult to paint on a smooth consistent line. Instead, I had to repeatedly dip my brush and paint in tiny choppy increments. When it time to leave, I was still not done and was one of the last to leave my station. I randomly dropped in the green leaves to take up some space.
Not my best work, but it was fun to be creating something while in Portugal instead of always looking at art or consuming something.
My plan is to get some cork to glue to the back of my tile to make a coaster. And since cork is a major product of Portugal, that would be perfect!
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