I got the idea for this series of pieces from a link my friend showed me of an intricate ballpoint drawing on the outside of a styrofoam cup.  I wanted to do the same thing, but in ceramic.

For the design, I took about a hundred photos of plants while I was visiting a friend in Missouri.  I ended up using only two photos (that’s the way it goes.)  For this piece I used a photo of a branch of Japanese Maple held up against the sky.  I found that the problem with most photos of plants is that they are too detailed.  This one worked, as I was able to see the branch structure against the lighter background.

To incise the design into the clay, I used scraffito tools on leather-hard clay.  After it fired, I mixed some green stain with a waxy opaque white glaze, painted the entire piece with it, and then wiped it off, hoping that this would make the image come out better.  I’ve done this with straight stain on bisqueware and had great success with it.  Alas, the clay body is too porous, and too dark, and the glaze mostly burned away.