Sgrafitto – kidney dishes

 I thought I would practise my new found Sgrafitto skills on my kidney dishes.

They had been dried to a leather hard state (not fired) and then coated with three coats of coloured slip – orange on one and bright blue on another.

They had been dried to a leather hard state (not fired) and then coated with three coats of coloured slip – orange on one and bright blue on another. 

 

(The colour comes out when the firing process is finished.)

I decided on a kind of visual illusion pattern – which looks better on a flat piece of paper to be honest, but I think it did work quite well on this.

I started by marking the dishes out in sections…….

……then carved smaller lines into each of those sections.

I am quite pleased with the result of these.. off to the kiln to be biscuit fired before being glazed and fired again.

Learning Sgraffito

 This morning we had a ‘slip decorating’ demo planned, and our tutor had prepared a large dish to demonstrate on.

As I was hanging about the room as it was being prepared I asked some questions about how to apply my Sacred Geometry designs to clay – I was told to go home and prepare I pattern and he would show me during the demo.

So I went home and found a relatively easy pattern to draw on YouTube - https://youtu.be/m10l55vMTOw

And got to work.

Back at Uni, I placed the design onto the clay and pinned around the lines to give me a grid.

The clay had been painted with 2-3 coats of coloured slip.

Then it was time to carve out the marks with a carving tool.  Through the coloured slip and into the base clay underneath.

There were lots of other techniques going onto this plate too, but it was really cool to be able to add some of mine.

Rob (Tutor) then started adding coloured slip and other marks, some stencils and other bits to the dish.

This is the finished dish, with loads of decoration going on.

I have now been given the task of trimming it and getting it ready to fire – then I can keep it!  😊