Getting ready to fire

It is almost three months since I started working on this piece. It is now dry enough to fire. Today i have been drawing the detail through the surface slip to reveal the coloured lines that i put there about six weeks ago. This method is called sgraffito.

This is what it looked like after i had been working on it for about a week.

I thought it would be interesting to bend a perfect circle over the undulating surface of this piece. Now I am wishing that I hadn’t!  One slip of the knife and it is ruined and it is so hard to draw on a curved surface. I am trying to capture the sketchy quality of line that I achieved when I drew the detail the first time.

Lines are finished and it is in the kiln where it will sit for about five days. The temperature will gradually climb to the point when the whole thing starts to melt. It will then gradually cool and I will be able to see if it has survived and if the colours are as I want them to be. this is the part that is both terrible and wonderful. Exciting and frightening. All I can do now is wait!