Rococo table - stage 3

Hello eager revampers, 

Not content with the way the design was going I thought the problem was due to the legs but then I realised all roads lead to, and from, the central image of Marie Antoinette.  

While trying to figure out how the top will relate to the legs, I painted the whole thing brown, as a base layer for Wax Resist technique.  Because the table has to look old after it’s painted, I decided to achieve the patina I really will need to bash out about a bit with various implements, not least of all my wire brush.

So after it was painted brown, I then had to about making Marie look more like she was hand painted.  The great thing about inkjet prints is you can move the colour around with water colour paint, applied in thin washes.  Being careful not to get the paper too wet. First I sorted out some colours by using my best pigments, then I toned down the highlights, then I neutralised some colours, then I used a gold pen, then made all the darks darker.  You basically go on like this to try and make it all more 3-d.

Feeling Marie had been sorted out by being made to look less flat and more 3-d, it gave me the idea that the shell design for the outer circle of the top design needs to be painted 3-d too.  I don’t have a problem with 3-d per se, because it incorporates lots of tricks, or illusions.  So I found an image of a period shell but it was too abstract for this piece, but I liked the dimensions.  So I traced around it with a ball end thingy, went over the shape with graphite, and then within this framework I superimposed another image of a shell from my phone.  The thing about Rococo is they abandoned lots of symmetry, so motifs like this are actually easy to repeat because they are forgiving.  The problem of how to fit the shells, that lie on a horizontal axis, within in the circle is not going to be a problem, I hope, because I shall make a template of the whole thing first with baking paper. 

I’m very excited to use massive dollops of gold paint.  To date I have about 4 different gold shades, which will come in handy because I don’t want very much flat gold.  I cannot yet see the fully finished piece in my head because I always wait to see how much I can exploit the materials.  I also want drama and that is always a bit uncertain but very very exciting.  I also must keep within budget....so no more decoupage images!

As I give the table more thought, the more serious this endeavour becomes, which is great because I have a lot of stuff going on at the present time and wrestling with design ideas really takes my mind off the things that are going on in reality.  As Hitchcock once said “No one really wants reality”.