Gold Leaf

My new metallic gold acrylic paint has been burning a hole in my pocket, so to speak. So I had a plan to use lots of it on a painting of another iris, inspired by a couple of paintings I’ve seen recently which employed gold or bronze backgrounds to great effect.

I used a canvas board, which is quite a new surface for me, but which has imparted some interesting texture to the picture. My initial sketch of the flower head was made directly on the canvas using a graphite stick. Once I’d laid in the background I soon discovered that my original composition was weak, as the flower head just floated squatly in the middle of a blank golden square. That would never do. I added the purples over a white base, including some deeper shades, enjoying using a rather dry brush to give a different kind of feel to the paint as the canvas texture showed through. Outlining the petals in black ink helped somewhat to give the flower a little more definition.

Standing back and appraising the picture, I had sudden thought to create some leaves by  using negative painting to create leaf shapes in the golden background. Although this improved matters, the composition was still missing something. Necessity being the mother of invention, I dabbed off some of the newly-dry purple paint with a cloth to blur the background a little, and then used my fingernail, to reveal the gold coating beneath, which I was relieved to see finally did the trick of bringing a bit more life and texture into the picture’s background.

I wonder whether I should have taken some photos while I was working of the different stages, but hindsight’s a wonderful thing.  I learned loads with this one, and also had the slightly reckless fun of experimenting to escape the difficulties I’d found myself in. Maybe that’s enough irises for a while now…