Angels Panel

Egg tempera and gilding on panel, about 30 x 100 cm
Assignment: produce a copy of a historical painting, using the original techniques.

This painting was the lab project for my Historical Techniques course at York University. It is done almost entirely with authentic materials and techniques (the exception being the panel itself, which is 3/4 inch marine plywood). The actual image is not done too well, in part because I only had small reference photos to work from.

The panel is coated with gesso made from gypsum powder and rabbit-skin glue. I now know more about rabbit-skin glue than I ever wanted. The paintwork is done in the historical method (naturally) of a monochrome shading layer with a color wash over it; the gilding is real gold leaf, and the professor told me that I had more than gotten back my studio fee with all the gilding on this piece.

While doing research on the techniques, I read a Renaissance painting manual which stated that rotten egg yolks work better for painting than fresh. Much to my chagrin, I discovered that this was true. My school bag smelled rather odd for that semester. Since egg tempera dries so fast, it has to be done with a very small brush. This entire painting was done with a #0 sable round brush.

Dawn of the Eye

[Acrylic on canvas, 24×36 inches]
Assignment: paint a natural object

This is one of my favorite projects from high school. I remember that I was one of the few students in the class that wasn’t using a photo as a reference; I had an actual peacock feather which I wanted to paint. It doesn’t really show in this photograph, but most of the feather is done in metallic craft paints which oddly enough were a good match for the actual feather’s colors.

The title comes from the name of a CBC miniseries that was running at the time. Of course, the painting has nothing to do with the series, but I thought it was a striking phrase.

An anecdote from working on this painting: the student teacher we had in the classroom at the time took my choice of subject to mean that I had an interest in peacocks in general (I don’t), so he showed me a picture of the Peacock Room.