Clay Cow

For this assignment I chose an animal to make out of clay and then used sgraffito to create a design on the sculpture. I chose to make a cow because I had drawn some cows recently and I though they were cute. Starting this sculpture was a challenge because I hadn't worked with clay in a while and while I was trying to make the torso using the pinch pot method the shape of the torso kept widening. I tried again with less clay which worked better but was still difficult so I started over again and eventually ended up with a good torso. I made sure to add the cow's spine because I saw that it was pretty visible in the pictures of cows I printed. I was able to use the spine as a reference point to make the torso the right shape. I made sure it went slight more to one side to show that the cow was sort of lying on its side. Then I made the head and attached it using the coil method. I left a hole in the back of the head so I could still shape it and add the ears without it caving in. Once everything was the right shape I was able to cover up the hole in the back of the head. I attached the leg and some extra clay to make the shape of the shoulders and then I added the tail on the side of the back leg. One of the ears and part of the tail ended up falling off after it dried but it was fine because I just glued them back on when the cow was finished.

Once the cow was dry I painted three layers of sgraffito on it. Then I sketched out some designs for what to scratch into the sgraffito. I already knew that I wanted to include flowers but I had to figure out where to draw them. My original idea was to have it be a white cow with black spots and have the flowers be the white, but I ended up doing the reverse of that and having the flowers be the spots. This also made it easier for me to add the details in the face. I made the flower have very simple petals but added more detail by doing the lines on the petals. I decided not to add a clear glaze on top because I just think that the matte looks better on the cow.

The elements and principles of design that I used in my sculpture are form, shape, contrast, line, pattern, and emphasis. I used form and shape because it is a 3D sculpture and I had to make the head and body the same shapes as what I saw in the pictures. I used contrast by drawing a white design on a black sculpture. Line, pattern, and emphasis are all in the spots where the flowers are because I used line to outline the spots and the flowers and the flowers create a pattern. There is emphasis one the spots because they are filled with flowers and way more detailed and interesting than the rest of the cow. I enjoyed scratching the flower design into the sgraffito and I am happy with how my sculpture turned out.