Sgraffito

"Curvy Creek"
Scratched Clay Tile - 10G clay, black underglaze, and clear glaze

For this assignment, I was inspired by water, the forest, and plainly rocks. I also wanted to include movement, so I chose to recreate a river/creek and the area around it.

To start, I got a large chunk of clay. I rolled it out to be about one centimeter in thickness. I rounded the edges, and made it more of a circle/oval rather than randomly shaped (added purpose). After making sure it completely flat, I used black glaze and dried it with a heat gun. After the first layer dried, I proceeded to add two more layers (we did not fire these in the kiln). Once the three layers were applied and completely dried I  used several scratch tools to make my design. But, before we made the design on clay we used a white colored pencil and lightly sketched it on black paper. The first part of scratching I made general outlines of shapes and my desired lay out. With these tools, we were scratching out the white/light designs of the physical clay. I began by making all of the shapes solidified and outlined, and then slowly filled in. Lastly, I made the more intricate details like the plans and water. Once our desired design was finished, we coated our clay tile in clear glaze, making sure to use multiple layers until it was completely colored, and mostly a solid pink color (glaze dries pink, fires clear).

One challenge I came across was the water edge. This issue was never resolved. I probably should have used reference images, but I didn't. I struggled with making a realistic edge of the creek where the water comes in contact with the rocks. I don't think it looks good. In review of this project, I think that I somewhat like how my project overall turned out. I am happy that I didn't spend a ton of time on this project, and I tried my best.