Sgraffito Design

This assignment was to create a design of your choice, on a piece of slab clay. For this project, I knew exactly what I wanted to do and did not struggle with any ideas. I was inspired by the children's book, The Giving Tree, and wanted to make my own slab look similar to the cover of the novel but as my own version. We were required to scratch out a detailed design once our slap was at the leather hard stage and had been pre-glazed, and I am very happy with the results as it looks exactly how I had imagined it would.

To create this piece, we started out by rolling a slab of clay and letting it dry out to the leather dry stage. Then we used an underglaze to coat our slap with and used 3 coats of it and let that dry. Due to being absent, I used an already premade slab that had already been glazed with a purple underglaze. But because I was doing a nature scene, I chose an avocado glaze instead and did about 2 more coats of that color. Then we could scratch away at the slabs until we had the perfect design we wanted. Finally, after it went through the kiln, I glazed it with a clear glaze called SM-10. Then it was fired for the final time and now it's a finished piece.

Overall I am very happy with this piece. It turned out exactly how I had wanted it to and I love all the different shapes and sizes of the little leaf specks and the tree branches, and the little boy sitting under this giant tree is proportionately perfect. In the end, the tree turned out to not be the color I was planning on getting as I initially thought it was going to be an avocado green, but instead the mix of the purple and green made this gorgeous brown, which I actually like much more than the green color I picked out. Finally, I am very happy with the results, and would not change a thing about this piece.