Clay

For these projects we were tasked with making two pieces of art out of clay which could be anything as long as there were designs. When I thought of what to do for my sgraffito tile design I thought of it being a marine animal because I liked the way my striped fish turned out in Foundations of Art. I was at first unsure what I wanted my marine animal to be, until I was inspired to make a whale based off of one that I saw washed up on shore near my island house on North Haven after a midnight storm last summer. The next sculpture I was inspired to make was a bear, however after I began to put it together it began to look more like a hippo so I decided to go with making a sgraffito since surprisingly hippos are my favorite land animals. So in the end despite it not looking what entirely what I wanted it to be, I was very much appreciated by how it looks.

The materials I used were pretty simple: Rolling pin, wire cutters, needle tools, carving blades and glaze.

I first started rolling out a slab of clay for my sgraffito tile and then I began by carving around it to make sure the edges of the tile were flat and even. Then I began by putting some blue glaze over it because once I started carving I wanted it to look as if the whale and its environment is submerged in water. Finally once I had three coats of blue glaze covering the clay slab I began by carving out the whale and the moon, I added lines next to the whale to show the current flow of the water as the whale was swimming. Then after that I put three coats of clear glaze on it after it was fired so once it got fired again it would come out shiny. For my hippo I started out by rolling clay together with my hands into balls and then carving out little pinch pots so that I could attach them together and make the body. Once I did that I began by attaching the ears and nose together to add detail and then once that was done I added some blue glaze to the hippo and after it was fired I carved some designs as well, I tried to add things that were similar to a hippos habitat so I added a palm tree and some tangly vines onto the back of the hippo as well to make it look unique, once that was done I put three coats of shiny glaze onto the hippo and waiting 24 hours until the sculpture was out of the kiln and it was done.