This piece started as a doodle during one of our Tuesday afternoon sessions at Jewels. Gill, spends more time practising piano and less and less on flute lately, and I tend to think there is so much more magic in the flute than the ivories.
This began as usual with the two pencil approach but this time I wanted to concentrate on a roundel.
By the end of the session I had something like this.
Some of my Facebook friends thought perhaps I should turn the “flute” around to flow with the other letters and after trying different combinations I came up with this. You will see there is also just a ghost of a crescent moon.
Then this was traced onto a large sheet of Canford card and drawn with a pointed pen and gold, silver and bronze acrylics.
I might have left it there and framed it as a square but I was still determined to add the Moon, somehow. First though, the sky needed some colour and some stars. These were added using various shades of acrylics with a blow pipe. Lots of puff. I found then, that all my letters needed another coat to make them more visible. Then the planning of some relevant words from the opera, lightly sketched in with chalk.
N.B. If you use acrylics, Chalk can be easily dusted off using a damp sponge.
Then the Moon was painted in with Kolner Miniatum ink and gilded with 12.05 ct. white gold. Quality Control thought this looked a bit stark so I puffed some colour over.
Still not looking right, so I bit the bullet and set to, distressing the silvery moon with sandpaper. Then, with silver acrylic and pointed pen wrote in the words and added more, in blue, to an outer roundel, the name of the librettist across the bottom of the piece, and finished by creating a few filmy clouds and some more stars, using the same gold as the moon.
A nice silver frame to set it off.
Phew! what a journey. I think that will do. As usual there is much more that could be done, but you have to stop somewhere.
So, on to the next piece.
BILL'S SPACE 