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Health & Fitness

A Room with a View

Turning an ordinary wall in your home into a view out towards a castle town in the south of France.

A while back, I was commissioned to create a trompe-l'oeil stone archway with a view of a castled village from the south of France.  The Client had selected a specific town but the castle in the photo reference was in ruins.  Not only was I to paint this incredible view but I had to also repair the castle back to it's original shape.  I love a good challenge!  http://www.coggart.com/french1.html
I began by locating the center of the wall and rendering in pencil the basic layout of the stone archway.  I used a lightweight plaster build-up to create stone relief on the wall and I shaped and carved these as they dried to be individual stones.  I masked off where the inside of the arch was to be painted and also how I wanted the adjacent wall to appear 'broken' and the stones reveal themselves.  I did this by tearing painter's tape in small pieces and masked off the wall where the stone would appear to be 'come through'.  When the tape was removed, the stones would have an irregular shape to them and when I created my trompe-l'oeil effects of the broken wall...the whole thing would suddenly appear to be real.

I enlarged the reference photo and transferred the design to the wall using my charcoal method.  This was something I learned in art school and it's wonderfully effecgtive in transferring any complex pattern to another surface.  I simply get an image of the appropriate size and cover the reverse side with a layer of rubbed charcoal.  Then when I tape the photo or design source to the wall or canvas and trace the image I see...the charcoal on the reverse side pushes against the surface and the image is transferred as perfectly asd I traced it.

I began painting my art from the background forward.  So...sky first and then background details.  The stones were painted in similar color and texture to match the same stonework of the fireplace in an adjacent room.  In this way; everything unites to form a common theme.

As the background is completed and sufficiently dry....I add a 'fog' glaze to visually push the art back into the painting.  Foreground art should be brighter in tone and color.  A fog glaze is an ultra thin layer of white that visually 'pushes' the background art into the distance.  Our brain sees distant objects with less intensity of color and we also are viewing them through more atmosphere.  Atmosphere is made up of water vapor and dust and this also 'fogs' the image.  In art, we have to recreate this effect to separate layers of depth otherwise with the same color intensity you would have difficulty discerning what is foreground and what is background.

Finally...adding last minute details; small birds perched on the railing to bring 'life' into the art, touches of sunlight on the castle and tree tops and lastly.... phosphorescent paint on the windows of the foreground village and in the sky for stars.  At night, the entire village lights up with nocturnal activity beneath a star-filled sky.

I use my phosphorescent paint as often as I can.  I purchase the actual powder (not the commercial grade premixed stuff).  I create my own mixture and add lots more of the phosphorous.  So my stars glow brilliantly for about 10 minutes until the chemical process wears off.  They will glow like this every time a bright light source is switched off...over and over and over....forever.

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It's fun and fills my customers with imagination possibilities that they never considered.  It makes a beautiful painting in the day time...something fun and engaging for dinner or small parties.  It makes art fun and that's another part of this wonderful career I have chosen.  I have them in my home, too...inbetween the trees of my Foggy Forest art.  It's like I'm looking out from a glen through the trees at the late summer night sky.

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