Sgraffito Tiles

Something Like Summer

Artist's Statement: (For a description of how I made my works, see the comments under the progress photos)

The project was to make one or more sgraffito tiles. We had to use the sgraffito technique, but there was no other requirement. The sgraffito technique is when you scrape/ carve away the underglaze in a design.

One of the reasons I chose to do the designs I did was because I wanted something that was that has a lot of contrast, with a lot of positive and negative space. I also chose to take some the design outside of the borders, which I think gave it a more natural look. I chose designs specifically geared to the colors, a fire flower for the red tile, an white oak acorn for the green one, and a honeybee for the yellow one. in general it was very nature inspired, and had a fresh, cool outcome that I really like.

I cut the initial tiles from a slab of clay,

then I painted at least 3 coats of underglaze.

These are the initial sketches that I made to fit the tile designs, and the colors that I ended up choosing as underglazes. For the yellow, I mixed some orange with the yellow.

Then I cleaned up the edges and drew on my designs with graphite, which burned off in the bisque firing.

I carved out the underglaze layer, leaving white behind. I used a needle tool to do this. After this was done, I let the tiles dry out, and then put them in the kiln, to be bisque fired. In the kiln, the underglaze got darker, and the gray of the clay went away, leaving the clay pure white.

Clear Glazed

The clear glaze left the underglaze even darker.

Clear Glaze with India Ink

The addition of India Ink accentuated the cracks in the clear glaze.