Porcelain Painting Tutorial - if you afraid to start

Paints: acrylic for porcelain and ceramics, choose one you can bake in regular oven (its usually marked on the jar with paint). For baking 320 F is enough. 

How many colors do you need? Not many for start - tree basic and couple gradation. You can mix them but paints dries fast so better have more colors.The following colors were used in this tutorial: two green, orange, amethyst and brown.

Also you will need white one, black one and transparent (varnish). 

Brushes: 1 and 1.5 (synthetic)

Foil for palette 

Toothpicks - they will be using for taking paints.

Napkins - for wiping brushes

Cotton swabs
Porcelain cup - a lot of porcelain you can find in IKEA. There is only one restriction - it should be white.
Wash your cup with soap and let it dry. While painting use rubber gloves or hold it using towel to avoid putting of fingerprints on cup.

Start point:
Take your cup. You are able to see only one of its sides. Another is always invisible. Don't forget about it during planing your painting, think about what picture you want to see inside and what outside. Maybe you want to paint all story? And even more - we have saucer. The picture on saucer can continue your story and interact with cup. For example: 

Does it make sense? Yes? Lets go!
Take the most soft pencil you can find and draw the scratch on the cup. Just for your orientation. Pencils are not designed to paint on porcelain so don't worry if the drawing looks not very good.
Paints dry really fast, almost in seconds. Using toothpicks take couple drops of paint, put it on the palette and close the bottle with paint.  Wash your brushes permanently because paints behavior when dry is the same that glue has.
Ready for painting?
1. Draw outline of picture (use lines you draw by pencil before). Paint over everything that should be in color. 

2. Time for cotton swaps - using them add more color. When main color spots are ready using brush add details: eyes, claws, etc.

Some paintings look great without color - just white and black outline with  shading.

Uniform background:

If you want pale colors for your background mix the color paint with transparent paint. Take cotton swab, dip it in paint and carefully put it on cup. If you put the cotton swab in one spot couple times it will be more colorful.   

For painting of background you can use brushes as well. 

Everything else:

White paint is perfect for glares.
It is really hard to remove paints after drying. If you did a mistake using water soak this place with care and using cotton swab remove it. When you are done - in fixing purposes - stamp your painting with transparent paint.

Baking.
Use instruction on the paints bottles for baking. As an advice - you can use lover temperature and longer time.  Put your cups to oven as soon as you start heating it and remove them from oven immediately after turning off oven.
Your cups are ready. To save it for a long time don't wash it in dishwasher. To wash it use soft sponge and dishwashing liquid. 

Thats all. 
This tutorial can be found in Russian here. It was originally prepared by Ovcharova Ekaterina. More Elaterina's art works can be found on her personal webpage and in her LiveJournal blog