Artist Statement

My sgraffito piece is one of a single olive sprig. I made a border that resembled sticks, going with the natural theme, and used thick lines to call attention to the white space amongst the black. Sgraffito is a dried clay material, and is very brittle but easy to carve into. A black layer is added over the clay, so when one scratches it away, the white clay shows through. After the carving is done, the tile is fired, glazed, and fired again. It acts much like scratchboard with the change of "drawing" with light rather than dark paint, graphite, etc. Personally, I found the texture of the sgraffito much easier to work with then scratchboard, and I like it much better.

I used one main sgraffito tools to make this piece, including a small stick with a rounded metal tip, and a larger rounded tip at the other end. The only other tool I used for this was a pencil, to sketch out the shape of my piece on the black top layer.

I looked at other sgraffito works for inspiration, and decided I wanted something simple but with enough detail to be interesting on it's own. I considered how I would set up the piece when it was finished, and how it would look. I made various sketches, and eventually narrowed down my choices to three. I decided on the olives because I thought that the single branch with a firm border around it would look pleasing to the eye on the rectangular tile. I made a practice piece on scratchboard, which helped me decide to do a singular olive spring instead of multiple, and include the idea of the border lines. I then began my actual sgraffito work. I started with a pencil-sketched layer, not wanting to carve a line that wasn't quite right. When I was happy with the general shape of my sketch, I began going over it with my tools. I started with the larger lines (the branch itself, the leaf outlines, the olives) then went in and added the creases on the leaves, the shine of the olives, etc.