Thursday, September 12, 2019

Sgraffito

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again.
~William Faulkner


Sgraffito today. Sgraffito is a form of decoration made by scratching through a surface to reveal a lower layer of a contrasting color (on walls or pottery).

Sgraffito
photo by Maryele

House covered with sgraffito
Greece
photo by Kostisl

Carved and Incised Vessel with Deity Heads, A.D. 600-900
Guatemala

Portrait of Aristotle, 1500-1550
Italy
shared by MicheleLovesArt

Maison Cauchie, architecte Paul Cauchie, 1905
Belgium

Kraków - Prelates House
photo by Andrzej Otrębski

Movie theater
Hungary

How to do it yourself:


2 comments:

HWY said...

I've always wondered what this process was called, and now I know.

These are excellent examples of the wide range of "canvases" that can be used.
Loved the Aristotle portrait and the Maison Cauchie particularly.

The DIY video was great.

Liz Steinglass said...

Beautiful. We used to do this when we were kids with crayons. We'd color over a whole piece of paper with colors and then with black and then we'd scratch through the black. It was like magic.