Blog 44: Sgraffito

This is the second art project inspired, once again, by Pat who mentioned casually this decoration technique called Sgraffito (graffito).

It is made by scratching through the finishing plaster coat to reveal a lower layer of a different colour. For the record, Sgraffito is an Italian word (means scratching) invented in Europe and refers to the practice in northern Italy of decorating the outside of houses with drawings.

Palazzo Massimo Istoriato: a fading palace facade in Rome by Maturino da Firenze and Polidoro da Caravaggio , 1523.

I thought that would be great to do in our little bathroom that has a long empty wall. I had a design in mind based on some stylised toi toi that is on one of our beach towels.

Toi Toi (Toe Toe)

Martin had done graffito before so I asked him to help me with some test runs.

We chose the bedroom wall for the test with the idea that if it worked out we might keep it. So the test design needed to be nice for a bedroom.

I combined 2 images that I found browsing the internet, I think it is a great place to find some inspiration:) , and created a full size drawing on cardboard. I then traced it with a permanent marker on a big plastic sheet.

Martin kindly prepared the under clay plaster coat and added black oxide to the mix.

After it dried he added the second coat of clay plaster, this time without the oxide.

After about 20 min we stuck the plastic on the walk and with a pencil I traced the design onto the plaster. Using a stanley knife I cut through the plaster following the lines of the design and with a homemade tool (a piece of wire on a stick!) scratched carefully the plaster to reveal the black layer below.

The top layer was quite sticky to the black one and I couldn't remove it easily, so we tried again and used very fine sand.

This worked and I continued the cutting and scratching till it was finished, because the plaster has to be at the right consistency, not too wet and not too dry, as the job had to be finished in one session.

With some retouches the day after and the job was done! A very satisfying technique and I look forward to doing it again with the toi toi, when the bathroom wall is ready.