After the shellac pattern had dried, I started wiping away the background during my Monday night class with water and a sponge. The basic idea is that you wipe away the exterior surface of all the areas that are not protected by the shellac. As you wipe away, the unprotected surface goes down leaving raised surfaces under the shellac. You can wipe as much away as you want… but be careful as the shellac will start to wipe away eventually too!

And mental note to self… if you’re going to do a colored slip under the shellac like I did, it would be a lot easier to see what’s happening if the slip was a better color contrast to the clay body. The orange flashing slip I used is very similar to the B-clay color… so it was tough to see sometimes if I had wiped it all away. The color you see here is amber shellac. My fear is that there might be areas where the background wasn’t wiped away enough?! We’ll find out after bisque firing… but by then it’s too late to fix. Fingers crossed.