Tag Archives: a kiss from death

Marie Marfia, The Kiss (Skelly Lovers), soft pastel, gold leaf on gessoed gator board, 18x18"

WIP, The Kiss of Death

That’s a working title, too, by the way. I still am not convinced it’s the final.

Oh boy. Have I been having fun with this one.

At first, I had a huge reluctance to work on it at all. I finally sat down and wrote about it and decided the reason I was fighting it was I didn’t know how I was going to manage the gold leaf part of the painting. Put it on first? Last? What was going to happen with the pastels? Would they all play nice together?

So I decided to experiment and get it all straight in my head before going any further.

The Kiss of Death, WIP
First, I took a piece of gator board and brushed some clear gesso on it to replicate the texture on my big board. I decided to see if scribbling some lines into the gesso would hold up under the leafing. In the Klimt painting you can see where there is some relief going on under the gold. I wanted to see if I could get the same effect with gesso. After the gesso dried, I brushed on the adhesive from the gold leaf kit.
The Kiss of Death, WIP
I also experimented with some other kinds of gold making. Here’s a couple of pens and a pot of leafing finish.
The Kiss of Death, WIP
Definitely, the gold leaf is the brightest of all four. And it seems to work well with the gesso relief, too. Yay!

So, with this done, I was free to play once again.

Stay tuned, skelly lovers! This is starting to get good!

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The Kiss

This one is going to be great!

That is, I hope it’s going to be great. I love Gustav Klimt’s paintings and all the beautiful gilding on them. A friend suggested I do a skelly painting based on The Kiss and I thought, why not? It’s iconic, it’s romantic, it’s gold!

The Kiss by Gustav Klimt, subject of my next Skelly painting!
The Kiss by Gustav Klimt, subject of my next Skelly painting! This image courtesy Wikipedia.

For this piece, I ordered some gator board. If I’m going to put gold leaf on this, it’s got to be on a pretty stiff ground. Paper is so flexible I’m afraid the gold would flake off. So here you can see I’ve started with black gator board. (I buy it at Uline, in case you were wondering.)

I love this piece already because of the patterns in the ground and on the clothing. I love the brush strokes in the background. I’ll start with the bones first, then work on the green ground with all the flowers, put in all the clothing details that are in color, then last, but not least, I’ll put the gold in. I have some gold leafing supplies, plus gold paint, plus gold metallic markers, so I ought to be all set.

I am probably too excited about this, but whatever! I’m just going to let it wash over me while I work. Stay tuned.

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