The ceramics class I’m in this semester is called “The Story Behind the Naked Clay” and we’re exploring visual narratives with clay. We’ve been doing naked raku firings in class for the past few weeks and here’s my try at a narrative on a tile.
This is a drawing of the bedroom my sister and I shared with my grandmother when we were little and living with our grandparents in Taiwan. My grandmother slept on the bed on the left, my sister slept in the middle, and I slept on the right. My side of the bed actually butted up right against the wall but I’m not sure why I didn’t draw it that way. The tile was dipped in slip and glaze and the drawing lines were scratched with a needle tool. Smoke produced by saw dust at the end of the firing makes the lines black. The finer crackle lines and dots were made by the crackle glaze. You dunk the pieces into water after the firing and the slip and glaze are scraped off leaving just the bare clay piece with the smoked lines. It’s a very cool process for those who like to play with fire (me!) and you get to see the results of the firing in just a few hours.
Absolutely loved this drawing.
Wishing you continuous success with your efforts and experiments with this technique.
A brother-in-clay.
Wally, Schoten, Belgium.