Sunset arches

1. Cream base

Two thin coats over the whole vase, neck included. Let the first go touch-dry before the second.

2. Ground, then the outer arch

In terracotta, paint a solid band right around the vase a hand's width from the bottom. Then, standing on that line, one tall arch — two straight legs and a half-circle joining them — filled in solid.

The band first, always. An arch with nothing under it slides down the curve of the vase and reads as a blob; one standing on a line reads as a doorway.

3. Ochre inside it

A second arch in mustard ochre inside the first, standing on the same line and leaving a finger's width of terracotta showing all the way round.

4. Teal inside that

A third, smaller arch in deep teal. By now the shape carries itself — as long as the gaps are even, nobody looks at the curve.

Even gaps matter more than smooth curves. Step back and check the gaps, not the edges.

5. Scallop the shoulder

A row of small terracotta half-circles hanging from a line around the widest part of the vase, running all the way round. Same shape as the big arch, upside down and repeated.

Mark the line first with almost no paint on the brush. A scallop row that ends in a squeezed half-bump at the back is the one thing people notice.

6. Line it

Fine liner in ink, trace just inside the outer edge of the terracotta arch, then run one straight line along the top of the ground band, right around the vase. One pass each, no going back over them.

Keep the pressure light. This line is there to sharpen the shape, and a heavy one turns the whole thing into a cartoon rainbow.

7. Fill the cream

Ink dots scattered through the bare cream between the scallops and the arch, and a band around the neck to finish.

Sparse and even. These are there to stop the cream reading as unpainted, not to become a pattern of their own.