What is Sgraffito?
I recently learned of a technique that was developed by John Kilmaster. It's called granular spray enamel. It is very exciting to have a new way to create design and texture in enamel in a free an exacting manner.
Sgraffito is the art of scratching through to a layer below. Potters and ceramic artists utilize the technique, as well as enamelists. I learned the technique from Angela Gerhard several years ago, using liquid porcelain enamel.
Scratching through liquid porcelain enamel is delicate business. If it's too wet, you get little squiggles that roll up and are difficult to irradicate. If you let it dry too much, when your lines cross, large chunks can flake off. So, creating fine textures are difficult. I recently learned of a technique that was developed by John Kilmaster. It's called granular spray enamel. It is very exciting to have a new way to create design and texture in a free an exacting manner. In the picture below, you can see me spraying a steel mask that I fabricated in a class I took from Alisa Looney, a student of John's.
Here are some process pics of one of the test pieces I made in Alisa's class. We taped the steel tiles to cardboard to make it easier to work on. The last photo is of the piece after it was fired. It was slightly underfired, so there is a lovely, bumpy texture to it.
I went to Alisa's class planning to make jewelry. We spent three days making test tiles and fabricated one large piece. We made a few token pairs of earrings. I had to come up with designs on the fly - flying by the seat of my pants - ha, ha. Knowing that I am going to be exhibiting a collection based on The Day of The Dead at Whidbey Art Gallery in October, I decided to create a sugar skull. However, my sugar skull somehow turned into a more life-like skull.
The ease of creating lines with the sprayed on enamel was so freeing! I really enjoyed creating fine detail and shading with cross hatching. The photo above left is pre-firing. The middle photo is just after the skull came out of the kiln. In the third photo, I'm applying watercolor enamel to the skull to add more shading and visual interest.
Here, you can see the little scratching tool we made in the class. I'm using it to remove some of the watercolor enamel before I complete the final firing.
This is the skull after the final firing. I'm pretty excited about how it came out. Now, I have to figure out how to do this process at my studio. It's messy - not something you can do inside. I have the spray gun, but I don't have a compressor yet. So, I'm still doing sgraffito the way I learned from Angela. Here's a little video of how it's done.
If you are interested in learning how to do sgraffito in porcelain enamel, you should check out my Beginning Sgraffito Enamel Technique Tutorial.
Getting Ready for The Port Clinton Holiday Makers Tour
I've been keeping busy in the studio most afternoons getting ready for The Port Clinton Holiday Makers Tour. It's December 2nd from 10-4. It's been something that we at Blueschool Arts have been wanting to do for a couple of years. There are five businesses participating this year - Abundant Earth Fiber Mill, Blueschool Arts (of course), Island Nosh, Make Whidbey and Whidbey Glass Gallery. This is our first Makers Tour. It is happening the same weekend as the Clinton Winter Market, which the Clinton Chamber of Commerce organizes. We really hope The Makers Tour is something that will take off and bring awareness about the growing arts community in downtown Clinton. For more details, click here for a map/flyer that Karin Bolstad, one of my Blueschool pals, designed. It's pretty cool!
In addition to pins, I've been creating all sorts of new earring designs using painting enamels and acrylic enamel with the sgraffito technique. I like how the combination of these two materials has taken me in a fresh, new direction.
I am also playing with prong setting some of my enameled cabochons that I made during my silk screening class. Here is an example of one I did yesterday. I embedded the silver wires in the soldering block, tight up against the silver ring I made. It really made the process pretty simple. Practice makes perfect. I can hear my mother saying that. Soldering is something that takes a lot of practice. There is so much to learn about how to hold things together and how much heat to apply and different types of fluxes, but that's for another post.
Resurfacing from a long hiatus...
It's been a while, and a lot has happened since my Online Garage Sale. I spent a month in New Hampshire. My father passed away. A week later I went back to work. I spent a month taking an online class to learn how to silkscreen enamel. And now I'm trying to make sense of life. Life doesn't stop. Grief continues.
I wish I knew how to channel my grief into my work, to create a body of work that pays homage to my father. I guess it's too soon. So I've been working with some simple little line drawings and graphic images to create several sweet little lapel pins for the holidays. I guess they make me happy. Maybe that's progress!
Lapel pins with decals, silk screened images and sgraffitto designs.
Online Garage Sale
My Dad being wheeled out of the hospital by his nurse.
My online garage sale has been a smash hit. As many of you already know, I found out my Dad has Acute Myeloid Leukemia just before I launched the sale. With that in mind I decided to change the structure of the sale, to speed it up, not knowing when I would go back east to see him.
The long and short of it is he is doing great, which is such a relief to hear! He spent two weeks in the hospital and went through five rounds of chemo. He went back to the hospital yesterday for his blood work, and it looks good. He goes to a clinic closer to home next Thursday for more blood work. If he can handle it, they will do 5 days of chemo every four weeks. He seems to have tolerated the first 5 rounds really well.
So, I'm going to continue the expanded garage sale as long as I can at 36 pieces a week. I have a shoe box full of some of my older styles. As I grow and my style changes, it's harder to keep the old styles around. They are still wonderful, but they don't look like my work to me. Consequently, I like to see them fly off to loving homes!
If you haven't signed up for my newsletter, do so, and you will receive the secret link to my online garage sale each Monday morning. Only my fans get in on the deals!
PS - You have to act fast. Things on the secret sale page poof away really fast.
Make Your Own Charm Necklace