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And Then the Crow Flew Away
With a Strand of My Hair
Vitreous glass and gold smalti
on MDF, 24" x 24", 5/8" thick (60.96 cm x 60.96 cm, 1.58 cm thick).
A study in black and white, and a challenging one. This will form
the centre panel of a triptych, illustrating a not-yet-written but well
imagined faery tale. I wanted to incorporate text from the story directly
into the panel; my inspiration was book illustrations of the great American
author-illustrator Howard Pyle.
There are four whites and five
black shades used, in addition to the thread of gold smalti. I grouted
it in two stages, using charcoal coloured grout for the crow and sky, then
carefully masking off those areas (with rubber cement and tape) when they
were dry, and then grouting the lettering and sea with a stark white grout.
In this sequence you can see
the piece from nearly start to finish. I started by drawing the cartoon
on architect's vellum (a high quality, opaque, and quite durable paper
product, not to be confused with the animal product parchment
or vellum). I then transferred the design to the MDF panel with
a heavy black marking pen.
My cartoon is quite simple, as
I only need to see the basic outlines of major shapes. And the idea in
my mind kept evolving as I went. I've prepared the 24" x 24" MDF
(medium density fibreboard) panel (cut from a full 4'x 8' sheet) by painting
it with two coats of white shellac. This gives me a good white ground
to draw on, and offers moisture protection to the finished panel if I hang
it in a damp (not wet) environment.
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In this photo you can see
that I have - after an interminable seeming time period - finished both
the black lettering itself and the stark white background to those letters.
I also have moved the promontory down in the design, allowing me more room
to draw the ship outlined against the full Moon. Stacked on the face of
the panel you can see some of the blacks and whites, still uncut, which
I was considering for use in the background sea and sky. I've also gotten
the gold smalti laid in for my hair; to draw the hair I pulled out one
of my own hairs and dropped it on the board over the crow's beak to mimic
a natural placement, and then traced over that real hair. Detailing the
individual feathers of the crow with four different black shades was immensely
satisfying, and more than made up for the tedium of the white letter background.
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Here I have finished all the
tesserae work including the border edging, and now I am ready to grout.
I've tried to capture the sweep of the ocean waves in that rough sea by
laying the tesserae on at an angle, and crowning the windblown tips of
the waves with whitecaps. The sky is rendered with narrow horizontal cuts
of tesserae (by cutting the 13/16" (2 cm) tessera in half and then half
again, leaving four long pieces). The snowy background to the crow's ascension
is fairly large blocky pieces of a slighter softer white than I used on
the letter background.
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The completed panel, after having
been grouted in two stages with first charcoal and then white grout.
I don't know why I have not
yet committed the story to paper; somehow I cannot. It is as if I must
draw it first. I am already at work on the cartoon for the second panel
of the triptych. I know if I can just keep drawing it the entire story
will reveal itself to me.
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