Today I have to clean out my mortar lines. To do this, I use a little tool that Rik Pierce gave us in his class. It's a little stick with a pointed end, and what I'm doing is just basically defining my bricks and making them all look like they're separate bricks. I take the tool and run it across the clay for the bottom lines. For the lines in between the bricks, I have to kind of flick out the clay in between the bricks--hence cleaning the mortar lines.

Once the clay has dried a bit and formed a "crust", meaning it feels like it has a crust on it when you touch it--sort of like if you were baking a pie crust and it had just started but hadn't dried much, just a bit, I can then begin preparing the bricks for painting. The first thing is to put a "dirty wash" on it to tone down the white of the clay. I use 3-4 drops of black and 3-4 drops of dark burnt umber (acrylic paints, in the bottle) in about 1/2 cup of water.

I then take a paint brush and just kind of slop it on there, making sure to get in all the cracks and crevices.

I'm now done with the dirty wash. Once this dries (and you should let it dry at least overnight, if not longer) it will be quite a bit lighter than it is now.

Compliments of LPCullen