Carving Clay

Carving in clay isn’t as difficult as it sounds, it’s really easy to get a good result with minimum tools and simple skills.

If you took part in the last AJE Theme Challenge blog hop, you will have seen my Egyptian eye cabs. Today, I’d like to share how I made them.

Eye of Horus Ceramic Cabochon

Firstly, you will need an image. I drew they eye using images of artefacts from the internet. When choosing an image, pick something that can be turned in to a simple line drawing. 

Initial Sketch

Trace the design in pencil on to baking paper.

Tracing the image

If your image has a left and a right side that’s different, flip over your tracing and draw round the lines again in felt tip pen. Flipping the image will transfer it the right way round in the next step. I pinched a pen from the kids art box, it’s water based washable. You might need to test different felt tips to see what works for you.

Retracing on the reverse in felt tip

Next take some clay rolled out to the thickness you want your finished piece to be. I like to use porcelain for carving as it’s smooth, firm, and holds a lot of detail. 

Prepared clay

Put the tracing felt tip side down on the clay and give it a good rub with you finger tip.

Transferring the image

When you lift the paper, your design should be transferred on to the clay.

Magic!

Cut the excess clay from around the edges.

Taking shape

And then with a sharp knife, cut into the lines of the drawing. You don’t want to go all the way through, just a couple of mm.

Scoring the design

To start sculpting, decide which areas you want raised, and which you want in relief. Use a flat ended tool to gently press up to the line. Depending on your design, you may want to press on either side, or just one.

Carving the relief

When you’ve done this along each line, take a paintbrush and smooth over the design until you have a nice finish.

Tidying up

Ready for bisque firing

Once bisque fired, the design was painted with underglazes and a clear top coat before going in for a final firing.

The finished cabs

Painting with smoke

This year I’ve decided that I will be concentrating on Raku firing for my ceramics, and I’m starting out with something I haven’t tried before… Naked Raku. When I told my husband what I’d be doing, he showed much more interest than he usually does, but the naked refers to the clay. The technique results in an unglazed piece… not quite as daring as it sounds, but still pretty exciting!

Naked Raku Pendants

So while I’ve been totally obsessed and not doing much else for the past few weeks, I thought I’d share how they are made… I hope you find it interesting! 

I have been researching this technique for a couple of years and there are some amazing ceramic artists who have been kind enough to share their processes to help others. A couple of my favourites are Ashraf Hanna, and Kate & Will Jacobson. Their work is really something to aspire to and they give regular classes demonstrating their techniques. 

Ashraf Hanna

Kate & Will Jacobson

Unfortunately, I’ve never had the opportunity to take a Raku class so everything I have learned has come from what other clay artists have been kind enough to share in their books, and just trying it out. 

Here’s how I’ve taken the techniques and adapted them to work on a smaller scale for my work…

To begin, raku clay is formed in to shapes for pendants, beads and other components. 

Just before they are bone dry, they are burnished with a smooth pebble. This compresses the clay, removes any dints and polishes it.

Burnishing

You can see here the difference between the pieces. One is the rough clay as it’s first formed, the other is smooth and shiny where it has been polished. My burnishing technique isn’t quite as good as others, I’m very impatient and would lose interest going over the same piece 3 times, so I’ve found that burnishing just before the piece is totally dry gives a nice enough sheen for the finished item.

The reason for burnishing is to help the slip/glaze release in the firing process. It also gives the final piece a beautiful finish.

The pieces are bisque fired and once cooled, a layer of slip is applied. Slip is liquid clay. Mine is made from the same clay as I use for making the pendants, by mixing it with water until it becomes a thin liquid and straining out the grog.

Coating with slip

Once the slip is dried, the pieces are then coated with a sacrificial glaze. This is made using basic materials, frit and china clay. It doesn’t have to be fancy as it will all be destroyed in the firing, it's job is just to hold the slip in place during the firing process. Without the glaze the slip would pop off when removed from the kiln and your design would be lost. 

Coating with glaze

Again, the pieces are dried and a rough outline of a design is sketched on to the piece. Using a sharp skewer the design is etched on to the piece scratching through the layers of slip and glaze down to the bare clay. It is better to use a wooden tool to draw the design so that the smooth finish of the clay underneath isn’t scratched.

Etching the design

Now the pieces are ready to go into the kiln. They are fired up to 850oC, taken out and put in to the reduction bin. The bin is filled with sawdust and straw which ignites on contact with the hot pieces and the smoke from the fire colours the pieces where the bare clay has been exposed.

Fire!

After 15 minutes, they are removed from the reduction bin and they look pretty awful.

Hopefully beautiful on the inside.

They are put in to cold water and as they’re still hot, the shock pops off the slip/glaze coating revealing the design on the bare clay.

Naked raku Mackintosh style roses

Cleaning up the pieces

Revealing the design

Once they’re all cleaned up they go in to the oven for half an hour to dry them and remove the smoky smell. For a monochrome finish, they can be waxed for protection and to give them a satin shine.

Naked raku pendant

To add a little bit of colour, I used acrylic paint to wash over some of the white areas in the designs, and then they were sealed with wax to protect them.

Adding colour

You can tell the difference in pieces from the first attempt and the second. The second batch turned out much darker, I think because I used more sawdust in the reduction bin for my second firing, but it could be due to different thicknesses of slip and glaze between the batches, ultimately the whole process of Raku comes down to doing what you can then leaving it up to chance. I love that aspect of the process, you can only control so much, the rest of it is down to the kiln gods!

And when they’re in a good mood, you can get some brilliant results!

The finished pieces

Thanks for reading, and I'd love to hear what new things you're planning to try out in 2016!

Stamped Shadow Beads

Since discovering hand carving, I tend not to use commercial stamps in my work very often, but I do like pattern stamps. Once in a while, I get an idea of how to use them in an interesting way and I’d like to share one of my ideas today. 

Pattern Stamps

I’ve been continuing my love/hate relationship with my pottery wheel (now back on after watching The Great British Pottery Throw down) and a while back I made some mugs. They are very wobbly and I’m sure one day I will look back on them with horror, but at the moment I love them. They’re made from buff clay and decorated with a sprig from my own mould. 

Wobbly Mugs

I really like how the sprig part of the design came out, so I decided to scale it down to use on beads.

Shadow Beads

They’re quite simple to make, although a little fiddly at this size, and you only need basic tools to create them, a skewer and a scalpel. 

To start, you need some outline images. I used shapes that I designed for screen printing on to raku tiles and scaled them down to the right size for fitting on to beads. These were then printed out.

The designs

And cut out…

Cut in to templates

I took some buff coloured stoneware clay and rolled it to around 2mm thick. I discovered this type of clay is very weak when it’s so thin and it tore as I tried to lift it, but it doesn’t have to be neat, just flat! 

Gently stamp a pattern on to the clay.

Stamped Design

And place your cut out on to the pattern.

Placing the template

Using a scalpel carefully cut around the paper outline.

Trimming the design

Using the same clay, I made up some bead blanks that were larger than the paper cut outs and pierced them with a skewer from side to side for stringing holes.

Wet the bead with water or slip and carefully lift the cut out clay on to the bead and gently press it down to stick. I lift using the scalpel as the thin clay is really delicate. 

Placing the design on the bead

Then with a paintbrush, smooth around the edge of the design taking care not to wipe over the pattern.

Cleaning up the edges

Once dried, the beads go in for a bisque firing. The design is coloured with an oxide wash and either fired like that leaving the clay bare, or they are coloured with glaze around the edges. 

The finished beads

Glazed and washed set

The finished design

Although they are fiddly and take a bit of patience to make, I think the end result is worth it! I hope you'll try out some of your own designs to make some for yourself!