Loving the new textures.

My love affair with texture continues! This series of mugs and tumblers were made by impressing a carved lino cut design into the clay before slab building into its final form.  I embellished with additional tool marks and slip trailing. I am so pleased with the colors.  I wanted safe, soft and clear semi transparent glazes, so I took my favorite recipe for a basic liner glaze, and tweaked it and added colors.  Expect many more colors to be added in the coming months.

Working on Sgraffito

Work in progress. Hours of pleasure removing the colored slip to reveal the contrasting clay beneath.

Sgraffito Rocks!

Those of you who follow me on Facebook will have gathered by now that I have fallen under the spell of the sgraffito technique.  I guess it is because it affords me a complete range of expression, from throwing the form, to the design elements of decoration, and the most satisfying aspect of the tactile experience of carving.  I am being nudged into a whole new direction, combining relief stamping, with sgrafitto negative space design, incising and slip trailing.  I am excited about following where this is all leading me. It would seem for the moment that "color" is taking a back seat to the "clay" as I am restricting the surface color to one or two colors in contrast to the basic clay color.