painting for the MFA cupboard project

scribing oval

I got out some painting gear yesterday, to make yet another sample for the painted work on the MFA cupboard. I started by scribing the design, an oval and 4 quarter-circles.

This time I wanted the paint to be somewhat gritty; the original shows chunks in the paint. So instead of a muller & glass, I just mixed the pigments with the brush right into the vehicle; in this case, hide glue. The tests have shown there was chalk mixed in the pigments as well, so in a pinch I just crushed some blackboard chalk & threw it in.

crushing some chalk for the paint

pigments: iron oxide, bone black & yellow ochre

I did the red color first, just tossed some pigment into a dish, with the watery glue. Stirred a bit with the brush, & painted it on the bare oak.

iron oxide background

then the black, then the white.

black corners

The white is the hardest to imagine. Today the section on the original that has tested white shows up as dull grey/black.

MFA cupboard base; painted decoration

white oval

The oval & quarter-circles get a thin border painted around them, then the whole thing gets a tinted varnish.

Now I want to do another, because I think the borders come first, essentially as an outline. At least I’d like to try it that way.