What started as an idea to practice some sgraffito work changed as a result of some cracks forming in the slab vessel I had created.

To salvage the vessel I decided to make cutouts and then still do the sgraffito, but slightly differently than originally planned. This required a bit of planning and measuring. I used Adobe illustrator to draw out the design (so I could understand better the positive and negative space). Then I mapped it out on the piece and went on to sgraffito. This was done on a slab (black clay) that has a white slip on it.

The overall finishing on this piece wasn’t great. The edges were a little rough and uneven. The line work could have been crisper.

I decided to give this another try, this time on a longer more cylindrical piece. While the planning was fairly similar as the first, to achieve crisper lines I decided to add slip only after measurements were done and the slip was the last step.

Planning and working towards accuracy

While this piece turned out slightly better than the previous one, this had it’s own set of challenges. Since the surface are on each “side” was slimmer achieving crisper lines through sgraffito was much harder. But definitely the over technique and application of the slip was better. I need to try out a third piece in a different dimension to see if this theory works.