Scraffito

Hexagons

clay

The main idea of the piece is to experiment with sgraffito. For this assignment, we were instructed to make a clay form, paint it with an underglaze, and then scratch the underglaze off to create designs. I picked a tortoise, so I would have a big surface on the shell to do designs. I used black underglaze because I really liked the simple color and contrast. I wanted to design more on the back, but I think I put too many coats of underglaze on, so it started chipping a lot. My idea definitely changed while designing, and I ended up doing a simple pattern almost like the one on a real turtle's shell.

The materials I used were black underglaze, the round tip scratchy thing, and the sharp tip scratcher (Not sure the real names haha), and clay. I found that by sketching my designs in the shell with the sharp tip, I could then go over the lines with the bigger round tip. This created less chipping and allowed me to sketch my design with fewer mistakes.

When I first thought of my idea to make a turtle, I had to figure out a way to make a big shell with legs and a tail that wouldn't fall off in the process of traveling back and forth to school. Unfortunately, the head and tail did end up falling off, but they were able to be glued on later. After creating my clay form, I painted it black and brainstormed my design. I ended up doing a design inspired by real turtles, I was planning on doing a more abstract design, but due to chipping, I decided to stick to something more simple. The chipping and flaking of the underglaze while I scratched it off my a big problem. I think I added one coat too many of underglaze, but after I finished my design on the shell I just touched up the missing glaze with more glaze and it was fairly easy to fix.