Fitting an elephant into six inches

An elephant is the wrong shape for a square. There is too much of it, and the trunk always wants to run off the edge.

So I curled it. The head and tusks come forward, the trunk coils back on itself, and the back and hind leg step down layer by layer to the flat of the tile. The tile is six inches square, and none of that carving is more than a quarter of an inch deep.

Out of the first firing the tile is chalky and almost none of the carving reads. The cobalt is what finishes the sculpting. I brush it over the whole face, let it flood the low points, then wipe it back off the high ones.

It leaves the blue dark down in the crevices and pale along every raised edge. Your eye sees far more than a quarter inch. Your fingers can confirm it.