Sgraffito Process.

 Sgraffito comes from the italian word graffiare meaning to scratch.

Below are some pictures of the sgraffito process I went through before I had my finished bowl.

I had to make sure the piece of clay I was using was large enough to fit the bowl I was placing it into. I made sure I had the right utensils such as a rolling pin, thick enough guides was very important and a big enough board for my clay otherwise that would cause further problems (which it did at one stage) making sure the board and tools were clean from previous use was very important as I learned because it can contaminate the clay you're working with. I had to re-role my piece of clay due to this problem. 

I rolled the clay until it was level this took a while. I moved my piece of clay around a few times to achieve the same thickness all the way through. Being careful not the strech the clay when lifting it is also very important because then it would become distorted.

Then using a metal kidney I got rid of any visable lumps or bumps. If the clay is still a little unlevel you can then use the kidney to removed that. I worked with the kidney and no water at this stage to get it smooth, it took a lot of time and practise and I wanted it to be perfect as I would then be carving into the surface later on.

I then had to "feed" the clay into my mold, making sure I did not stretch the clay at any point or pull at it, it is important at this stage you do not distort the clay at any point. This picture shows me placing the clay over a reverse mold, its the exact same process but the reverse of the mold I used. I will post a picture below of the mold I chose (bowl like). Once the clay had been fed into the mold I used a wire to take away the extra clay and then used them later on for a series of sample pieces. It was important I stayed level with the bowl when using the wire, making sure I didn't take away any more clay than I wanted as it would be difficult to add bits back on at this stage.

 Then the next stage was to get the clay ready to carv into. I used a rubber kidney for this process and a bowl of water. I made sure there was plenty of water on my kidney and took away a small layer of clay each time so that the surface was perfectly smooth.

The clay was then left to go leather hard so that it could then be carved.