Sgraffito Tile

For this work is that I had to think of something that would both be easy to carve and I liked. Because of this, I figured that the overall shape and outline of the koi fish is pretty and easy. I knew that just carving a koi fish would not be enough to fill all the black space and complete a 50/50 ratio of black to white. Because of this, I added the white curls, which added to the theme of water nicely and looked pretty.

To create this piece, I first started out with a pre-made slab of white clay. From there, after tracing my koi fish design onto paper, I then transferred it onto the clay by pressing down with a pencil. From there, I completely painted over the slab with black glaze, however even when doing this, you can still see my design underneath. After the glaze dried and the clay was leather/bone dry, I started carving the design I just traced. Once my koi fish and background swirls were completely finished, all that was left was too add clear coat and then glaze.

I went through many processes when creating this piece. The first and most fundamental, was obviously exploring with how the negative space in this piece would work. I knew that once I was done with the koi fish, there would still be far more black in the piece than white. To solve this problem, I added in the swirls in the background which also helped support the theme of water and therefore complemented the koi fish nicely.