Sgraffito

I started by collecting a piece of clay and rolling out to my desired thickness of the clay so it would fire properly. I used a dull plastic edge of a tool to cut the shape I wanted. At first I wasn't extract sure what I wanted to do so I carved a random shape. This shape reminded me of a skull so later on I recreated the facial features of a skull through the elements of a landscape. I used small amount of water on my fingers to smooth out the edges. This was all done on a piece of canvas board. Once the clay had time to dry slightly under a piece of plastic bag it was taken out and I traced the shape onto a piece of white paper.

I created many different sketches of different landscape but in the end I decided on the one similar to above. I then when to scratchboard where I decided where the positive and negative spaces were going to be. Once I figured that out I painted a layer of black ink onto my clay and let this dry. One the layer of ink was dry I chose tools to take away the top layer to reveal the black. This then went to kiln to be fired. We had to put a coal of clear glaze on the top to complete the piece.

In the end I liked my piece. Next time I would think about doing a different ink color or doing a much more complete and detail oriented piece. I would also try to do a much larger pice of clay and really work the space in more unique ways.