Going along for the ride (2): The (glazing) medium is the message.

 Sometimes the process intervenes to affect the outcome. In this case, the procedure I use to  get a certain effect intervened to influence the look of the piece in a way I definitely didn't intend.

I use a lot of  water-abrasion on my work, which means I use (mostly) a glazing medium mix to mask sections. The problem with glazing medium out of the bottle is that it is clear and sometimes difficult to see on the piece it is applied to:

Glazing medium with no color added.

I began to add acrylic paint to the glazing medium to make it easier to see how much mask had been applied.

Glazing medium with black acrylic added.

When I  added the underglaze, the unfired piece looked like this:

 The black background really makes the design jump out. But as I said, the acrylic medium burns away in the bisque, so if I wanted that look, I would have to add the background with something more permanent. I put a layer of black underglaze on the piece prior to masking on some of the pieces:

After bisque the mask has burned away. Two with black background applied.

Example of a finished piece with black backround .

So the use of color in the mask, which was by intention, only to allow me to see the mask, ended up influencing the look of the finished product. I still use the white background as well , but will continue to experiment with the background color, possibly substituting black slip for the underglaze.