If you’re looking for a creative pottery painting idea, this moon cycle design adds a touch of magic and elegance to any piece. Whether you’re a beginner or experienced in pottery painting, this project is simple to follow and gives you room to be creative with colours and textures.
Step 1: Choosing and Preparing Your Base Colour
To start, paint the entire pot — both inside and outside — with a dark shade. I chose a rich charcoal colour with a subtle shine, which gives a sophisticated background for the moon phases to stand out. Apply your paint in thin layers, letting each one dry before adding the next. You may need several coats to ensure the original surface doesn’t show through.
Step 2: Marking Your Design Placement
Once the base coat is completely dry, it’s time to position the moon cycles. Draw a full moon on one side of the pot, roughly in the middle.
Now, you want to draw one directly opposite it. I look at the pot from the bottom placing one finger on the moon I drew and another directly opposite it.
Where the other finger is, is where your second full moon should be.
Step 3: Sketching the Moon Phases
Between the full moons, sketch the moon phases lightly with a pencil. You already have the full moon, no you should just add the waning phases, crescent moons, and so on. Repeat this on the opposite side of the pot. Don’t worry if the shapes aren’t perfect at first; mistakes can easily be corrected by painting over them and redrawing.
Step 4: Painting the Moons
Using white paint, carefully fill in each moon shape. Depending on your paint type and the darkness of your base colour, you may need several coats for good coverage. Here is an image after I painted only one layer.
While that was too see though for my taste, I didn’t mind a little of the charcoal showing through eventually. After all, the moon’s surface isn’t a single flat colour. I liked painting in different directions to give a rougher look.
Step 5: The Final Touch
Halfway through the project, I decided to make my final coat for the moons an off-white instead of pure white. This softer shade gives the moons a more natural, realistic look, perfectly complementing the charcoal background.
