Apple tree painting part 1

I've been working on this painting for an up and coming solo exhibition at the SOTA gallery...more details to follow :-)

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A sunny Sunday...

Getting some panels ready for the winter exhibition paintings and working on a commissioned painting this afternoon...nice and toasty in the studio, The Steeldrivers on good and loud and hot coffe flowing freely...very nice :-)

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Burnishing

Burnishing up the gold this morning....looking lovely :-)

 

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Gilding

Here I am starting to gild the mirror frame, I went for 12 carat white gold, rather than pure silver in the end as this will give a warmer feel to the final frame. It'll need to rest for a day or two now before I can burnish the gold...then I can begin work on the painted areas... :-)

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Burnishing the Bole

Today I'm burnishing up the Bole, until it's highly polished and ready for gilding...

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Bole...

This is the first coat of red Bole (clay & size), both frames will have 5 coats on the areas that are to be gilded, the larger of the two will also have a couple of coats of black Bole as I'm going to gild that one with silver.

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Silky smooth...

L

The two original frames have been sanded and water polished...silky smooth now :-) in the background are three more sample pieces, each of these is using a different profile of moulding, so I should have a nice little selection once they're all done.

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Gesso

More work on the handmade frames today. I realised I wasn't going to have enough size so I've made up some more, this time using rabbit skin, this comes in granules rather than parchment form. This is what it looks like when you've soaked it in water overnight...

Next, we just needed to warm it through gently and then add the whiting (chalk). Once that was done I started applying it to the frames...here's a frame after the first coat...

The tricky bit now is to keep adding layers of gesso at the right intervals, it mustn't dry out or the bond will be weak. But you don't want to add it too soon, or the new layer will pull up the one below... So basically, it's a case of keeping your eye on it, while dancing around the studio to kill odd bits of time in between layers :-) Here is the frame once its had 6 coats of gesso...

 

Now the gesso needs to thoroughly dry out, this will probably take 3-4 days in my studio...then it'll be ready for the next short stage...water polishing....more on that in 3-4 days ;-)

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First handmade frames

Here are the first of the handmade frames I'm going to be producing, I thought I'd show the behind the scenes processes here on my art blog and leave the main Cuckoos Nest blog for the finishes pieces. Anyway to start with I'm going to make a couple of test pieces, one for a mirror and one for this small pear painting I did a while ago. I'll be using the same moulding for both, but the gilding and paint finishes will be different.

Here you can see both frames assembled and getting their first 'size' coat (that lovely brew I cooked up the other day). They need to dry for a couple of days now and then I'll mix up some gesso for the next layers...

 

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Yummy...

 

Here we have the leftovers...

And here's the bit we were actually after...'size'...I'll be using this on a sample piece of frame later in the week....

Not much in there as I cooked it a little too long, but I'll add a little water to it when I use it and there should be more than enough for my little experiment...:-)

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Mr & Mrs Rice

I’ve been working on the portrait of Matthew & Meagan today. Again working from dark to light. Also varnished the portrait of Chloe & Ruby and Gesso’ed the canvas I made yesterday…time for a beer now I think :)

Custom Canvas

Opened up a delivery of art goodies this morning and found the 5 litre pot of Gesso had broken…very messy!!! Once that was all cleaned up I started assembling a new canvas for the start of a new series of paintings (more on what that series will be soon…) As well as developing the framing side of things, I want to be able to offer other artists a custom canvas service. As an artist if I knew of somewhere I could get a canvas made exactly the size I wanted and get a frame for it at the same time, I’d be a very happy bunny…I don’t know of anywhere like that, so I’m going to do it all myself :)

Doves over Eynsham 01

This is the first experiment from the studio, its acrylic and pencil on gesso board, I’ve sanded it back at various stages to build texture, added more gesso, drawn again and sanded again…generally I’ve had a good play :) I’ve built two more of these boards to experiment with…