Artifact Box 4

This was the last thing on the table when I was told to leave. I'd been playing with texture paste and my own hand cut stencils (I know. But you have to suck it up and cut your own when the commercial brands don't have what you want.) for a while. What with the intense focus on earthen vessels and jars of clay could be better than a material that could easily pass for actual clay? So why not? So I did.

It takes a long time for this stuff
to dry.I think that this particular
canvas spent four days curing
before I ever applied paint to it.
The tricky thing with this is to
remember to keep things in the
proper perspective. Which, looking
with a somewhat distant eye now,
I see I did not quite make muster.

There is the same left-side-right-side
issue with my perspective. And the
lip of the rim is not foreshortened
enough. That being said though...

I absolutely LOVE the texture and
color of the mid-section of the jar. It
looks like it has a well worn patina...
exactly what I was going for. And I
worked in come cool compliments
so that the whole color scheme didn't get bogged down or become boring.

Man I hope that color scheme isn't boring. Now I am not too sure how I am going to finish the background. That was a schmear of raw sienna and some other yellow and lifted with plastic wrap. Of course I need to lay in some shadow colors and punch up the background. And some kind of embellishment, handwriting and maybe some high gloss finish.

This is a close up shows the colors.
All the colors were dry brushed. The
first layers were matte base colors.
Next came several shades of Lumiere.

Four days of curing turned out to be
the key to getting good paint layers
down. I had to use a runny wash
to do the body of the vessel
so that it would streak and look
like the jar had been overfilled
frequently.

Not sure how to finish this. Like I
said it was on the table drying
when I was told to leave. I packed
up an got out like it was Volcano
Day in Pompeii.
Fortunately I had never completely
unpacked when I moved in.
Uncovering the canvas feels a lot like I've dug through the ashin that famed city and found the remnants of someone's last day.

And in the timeline of my life it was a last day for
me. I am the artist and I should be able to finish it. Yet there is something in me that says it belongs in the past and should be left as it is. A testimony to a time and place that does not exist.