Sculpture and Faux Bronze #4

Using this method to create a faux bronze patina, you can dial up or down the effect you want to create. 

Want more BLING? Leave more blue and gold showing. Want the subtlest of subtle? Glaze away until your eyes glaze over.

The secret to this proces is to walk as FAR AWAY from your work as you can get.
Sit down and study your work for 10 minutes. Does it work from any distance? 
That will direct you quicker and more efficiently than hours of up close noodeling.

Bouquet for the City by Patrick Gracewood ©2012

The last step is to mix up a gold paint for high lights. For this use a very dry brush.

Logically these would be where the sculpture would be frequently touched. Since this is a fantasy, I use the gold high lights to direct your eyes thoughout the composition.

Shall we take a tour?

Look at the two slender branches hanging diagonally above. Those are pricked out with gold. 

Do you notice the gold? No, but you notice their delicacy and the weight of the leaves.

Since this is the first sculpture you see from my garden gate, I wanted it to read from 70 feet away, so I want contrast. If you want more subtlety, push everything back with thin layers of glaze.

Notice too, how the blues keeps the browns from going flat. 

With a very limited palatte you can get an amazing feeling of depth.

These blossoms, above, are the big finale as this sculpture reads right to left. It's where your eyes wind up. The blue drips are the most vivid right here.....

..........Where they lead your eyes to explore the ground, the suggestion of gravel, the fallen leaves.
At the far right, the first blossom to fall tells of time passing.

The plant that inspired this art was an enormous 70 + year old King George rhododendron. I took elements from it, like this torn and slowly healing branch to base the composition and contrast with the enormous fragrant spring blossoms.

In addition to being a tribute portrait of a great plant, this entire sculpture is playing games with relief depth and flatness, figure and ground, realism and abstraction. The paint, ooops, "patina" is just one more tool to help that illusion.

Until you can afford to cast your work in bronze, learn how to create a beautiful, beleiveable fake faux bronze patina it until someone is willing to make your vision a reality with cash.

It's what I'm doing.