For my second sabbatical pieces, I decided to create icon-inspired wall art honoring the role of bears as watchful companions. I’ve long been fascinated by the subject of spirit animals, and keep coming back to it. This time, it’s bears—but not just any bears. These are black bears, small and gentle as bears go. They occur in a variety of colors from a spectrum of browns, black, and even the occasional white bear which occurs in isolated pockets in British Columbia.
Here’s the piece all finished except for the absolute last bit which is a trio of glass stars hanging from the overhangs at the top, as if they’re hanging from the sky.
I’m very happy with the way the piece turned out, but it was a struggle most of the way through.
I began with drawing and painting the bears. No problem. But then what? I was planning to have text describing bears as dwellers of both the earth and sky. So, I felt I needed to depict both. I’d have one bear in a burrow in the earth and the other at ground level with the sky above.
Since I was working with metallic for my sabbatical week, I thought I’d use the earthy copper metal for the ground.
Here are the bears with two pieces of tooled 36 gauge copper sheet. I tooled it with a stylus. You begin working on the wrong side, impressing the design with the larger end of a stylus and working on a soft surface like a sheet of craft foam. Then you turn it over on a hard surface and impress on either side of the original lines with the small end of the stylus. I did this technique once some years ago in a class and really liked it. It’s fun to do, not very difficult, and gives a unique and unusual look.
I “glued” it to the board (the bears were already glued down) with modeling paste. I just used a spatula to cover the back of the metal sheet, pressing the paste into the design. Once the past was dry in all those grooves, it would prevent the design on the metal from being crushed.
I put more paste over the paper around the lower bear and smooshed some cheesecloth into it. Then I moved the cloth and paste around, trying to emulated earth around a den. When it was dry, I painted the cloth/paste portion with Golden Metallic Copper fluid acrylic—such a beautiful, rich color.
But now what?
My intention was to then patina the copper, both the tooled sheet pieces and the painted parts. But I ran into a problem. The patina solution I had didn’t work on the sheet copper. It just beaded up, like the copper was coated with something. I tried rubbing the copper with very fine steel wool, but the patina solution still didn’t work.
Desperate to be able to patina the copper, I tried a new product: Patina Effects by Vintaj. I’m sad to report that I didn’t like it. It doesn’t actually patina the metal, it just coats it. One can get a similar effect with acrylic paints and steel wool, and for a lot less money. That’s what I did in the end. And I liked the results.
Then I proceeded to the sky, beginning with the section behind the upper bear. I used metallic gold gesso behind the bear herself, then blended into the light blue. Once the paint was dry, I added more gold gesso radiating out from around the bear, like rays of the sun. To make it brighter, I went over the gold gesso with Golden interference gold fluid acrylic.
I based the upper, night part of the sky with an electric blue metallic acrylic then deepened the color with washes of dark, transparent acrylic. The metallic blue paint still shows through a bit. I added a few big drips of the darkest paint, then sprayed them with water to fuzz them out some. The stars are dots of white and the comet is painted with white.
Rhinestones are in the center of the stars forming the Big Dipper constellation. Ursus Major (Big Bear) is another name for the Big Dipper.
Final touches were the text (graphite), the scroll work to the left of the larger bear, and the coin towards the bottom right of the piece.
The scroll work extends the linear designs in the tooled copper, but they’re acrylic paint and a dimensional copper liner. To use the liner, you squeeze the dimensional paint through a fine nozzle on the tube. This takes more practice than I've had, but I like the effect even though it could be done better.
The coin is a copper UK half farthing with a lovely wren design. It’s from 1945 which is my birth year.
Altogether, this was both a fun and challenging piece to do. At each step of the way, I had no idea what I would do next. But it was interesting to let the piece guide me rather than trying to plan it all out in advance. I used some new techniques (the paste and cheesecloth, for example) and some new products. Even though I didn’t like the Vintaj Patina Effects, it was useful to try something new. And I hope to find some other use for them than working on metal.
The part I liked best was, as always, drawing the animals. But after that, I liked fooling with the copper parts and adding little bits of color until it felt right.
The one downside to working with metallics is that they don’t photograph all that well. But, in person, they’re fabulous!
If you’re interested in metallics but don’t currently have any, I’d suggest starting with a few of Golden’s fluid acrylics in metallic or interference colors. Although I didn’t use them in any of the three pieces in my sabbatical week, I also really like Krylon Leafing Pens, and I suggest them also.
And here’s a tip. If you can, avoid varnishing over any of your metallics. I think it dulls them a bit. But my best tip is to try metallics just for the fun of it!
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