Sgraffito

Artist Statement:

For this assignment, we got to create and etch our own sgraffito slabs. This is the second time I have done sgraffito so going into this project I feel like a had a better grasp of how to "do this" and how to use the tools. Going into this project I knew two things: first, I wanted to create an animal, and second, I wanted to create a complex design to really challenge myself. I'm not really sure how I got the idea but I ended up drawing a chameleon. I then wanted to create a jungle background with animals scattered throughout. I really like painting such as Netherlandish Proverbs By Pieter Bruegel where the longer you look at it the more you notice. I tried to do this by adding a couple of animals into the background such as a frog, lemur, boa, and butterfly that you may not notice at first because you are first drawn to the simple chameleon, then the chaotic background.

The materials used for this piece were clay, an underglaze called true orange, and a variety of carving tools to etch away the glaze. Unlike when I did this project freshman year, I got to create my own slab of clay with my own dimensions and shape. I ended up just sticking with a rectangle because it was a little easier to remember those dimensions to bring home and sketch my design. After I made my slab and applied 3-4 layers of underglaze, I lay my sketch on top of the slab and went over all of my lines with a rounded cleaning tool to make an impression in the glaze seen in Sgraffito Stage 1. After I used a needle took to outline all of the major lines and to begin etching my design. In my sketch, I didn't really decide what I wanted to leave orange and what I wanted to make white, so while I worked, I was consistently thinking about how the piece would look fired and where contrast would not only look good but where it was needed. For example, around the leaves, I didn't originally have anything around them so they didn't really stand out and it was difficult to make out what they were, so I ended up carving out the space around them so they became more noticeable.

Overall I am very pleased with how this piece turned out. This is something that I have already done before in Foundations, I felt like I had a good grasp on some techniques and tools to use so I definitely like this piece much better than the one I made previously, I feel like I can definitely see how my technique and understanding of the tools and their uses improved. I went into this project with a basic sketch but had not really planned that far ahead, so going into this project I didn't know where I wanted the have negative space it was like a little journey, and I didn't know where I was going to end up, but I like where I did end up. Something that I wish I did a little differently though, was to clean up the white spaces thoroughly, I think everything would pop out that much more.