April 25th– It’s day three (at least in business days) since we’ve been assigned the Sgrafitto tiles, and
naturally, my partner has practically finished hers; and all I have is a blank, rock-hard tile. Today I spent most of my time observing how Lilly was making her own tile and noting some things down. For one, I noticed how using a needle would be very helpful for details such as smoothing out the markings that the wire tools make. Notably, however, I’ve noticed how crucial the smoothness of the tile below the underglaze is, for you can really see all the bumps once you Sgrafittoout the leather-hard layer. So, I’ve fixed up my tile by wetting it and smoothing it out with a rib and also smoothed its edges out a bit for a nice detail. I’ve also settled on a colour. As my partner’s tile is going to look more on the blue side, I am going to go for more of a purple.
April 29th– So as I mentioned previously, I already have my tile ready, though unfortunately, I’ve run into a problem. After I overglazed the tile, and set it to slow dry over a couple of days to get that perfect leather-hard consistency, I went to score it with the mushroom details, and naturally, it practically cracked away. It was quite devastating, for although the “final” product wasn’t half bad from afar, I just knew it would look hideous if I overglazed it. So now it’s Friday, and I’ve washed the underglaze off and re-glazed it for the weekend. Fingers crossed!
May 2nd- After having made my Sgrafittotile the previous week, I planned on carving out my sgraffito on Friday. This plan went wrong, for I let the underglaze become slightly harder than leather hard, resulting in cracks and splits occurring. So, I washed off the underglaze, re-did the underglaze, and covered the tile in multiple layers of wet paper towels for the weekend.
When I came back from the weekend, I found that my tile was the perfect moisture for me to carve, so I got straight to it. Here is how it turned out (pre-being-bisked):
May 9th– Finished! My tile was bisked in the High Fire kiln over the weekend and boy! Are the results good!
Here is what it looks like with Lilly’s tile:
Here is my Final Product Post