“The stillness as a Chinese jar” from TS Eliot’s Burnt Norton haunts me for the sheer beauty of those words.
I have begun my first large (30cm x 60cm) vase and its scary. I did the drawing a while ago and I have waited to see how to develop it as an oil painting.
I want to imbue it with a sense of presence, give it some pattern and yet flatten the 3-dimensionality. A tall order, but I thought by treating the background as a texture or pattern or even flat, rather than shaded would help.
I decided to texture the birch ply physically by cutting into it using my wood cutting tools and I then gave this a wash of very diluted white acrylic paint and sealed it with clear gesso.
Now for the vase itself. I am going to work with aluminium metal leaf and do oils over that. You can paint oils over acrylic but not vica versa, and I have yet to learn how to gild on top of oils in small areas. So an acrylic undercoat of blue where I’ll put the aluminium should be perfect.
Don’t you just love the flakes of aluminium while you are dusting the excess away? I’m happy for the blue to come through on the edges, but I will be putting oils on top of this anyway. I’ll probably stomp some sanderac onto the aluminium first to give it some tooth. On the sides you cna see the masking tape for giving the vase but not the background, a coat of white gesso.
Leave a Reply