Self Portrait Tiles - Ink Transfers on Clay

Seventh grade artists incorporated digital photography into clay work by using an image transfer process. First, students took simple self portrait photos before cropping and manipulating them in Photoshop to reduce the photos to simplified black and white line and shape. The resulting photos were printed on an inkjet printer. Students then rolled slabs of soft clay and transferred the image by rubbing the ink onto the damp clay, allowing it to bleed:

The slabs were trimmed and students used various tools to carve away the lines of their portrait:

After the first firing, students painted the entire tile with black glaze before wiping away the surface glaze and leaving black inside the carved lines:

In the last step before the second firing, colored glaze was added to the background and shiny overglaze to the whole tile, resulting in these fabulous portrait tiles: