Sgraffito

This is the sgraffito tile project.  The point of this project is similar to scratchboard, where you work the opposite way and scrape away the darks to show the lights.  The first sketch is done with a white gel pen on black construction paper. The final piece is done on a clay slab.

The sketch is just white gel pen on construction paper, and maybe a 2H pencil. The final piece is a slab of clay with black underglaze, and a clear glaze coat on top. For carving away the underglaze, I mostly used the ball shaped tool, along with the hooked tools in order to make it look flat.

It took me a while to figure out what I was going to do,  and to try and give myself an idea I cut the slab in a very random shape. That didn't work so I decided to take this chicken that I sketched and then add a pattern underneath it. I poked little holes around the chicken for texture, and also around the outside of the leaves, but the holes in the white section pretty much disappeared. I decided to make the pattern opposites so that they match together.