Ceramic art has the added bonus of being functional, adding an artistic edge to your mugs and plates. Case in point: Erica Lynn Hood’s ceramics. Showcasing her love of nature, each of her pieces is adorned with flora and fauna, carefully drawn in black and white.
“My surface design is inspired by animals, wallpaper, nature, and ink wash paintings,” she told the Boston Voyager. “I loosely sketch out all of my ideas first and then refine the illustrations based on the form that they are going to be transferred onto. Each illustration is painted with black underglaze on top of a piece of tissue paper. The illustrations are then transferred onto the clay surface. I use watered down black underglaze to add shading and other details onto the piece before it is fired. Once the surface is decorated, it gets fired in the kiln, glazed, and fired one more time.”
“I am really interested in illustrating a variety of animals,” she added. “I like animals that have a lot of personalities, but I also enjoy using my work as a platform to start conversations about threatened and endangered species. Right now, I am obsessed with Condors and Vultures, but I have a soft spot for any birds of prey. Nature is such an important part of my life and my artwork, so I have been slowly building up a body of work that illustrates all the amazing animals that I love.”
Catch a glimpse of her work on Instagram and grab a piece for your ceramics collection on her Etsy shop.
