portrait miniatures... because the blog post wasn't enough

[gwendolyngrey]

 I've spent the last week utterly buried in research about portrait miniatures.

(blog post about my plans and immediate aims... sort of)

Books are strewn around my room (in fact, there are five just at my feet right now... two of them are open to specific pages), my desktop is covered in images, and I'm reeling with information.

I still have SO MUCH to read on the topic, and I desperately want to get more period appropriate materials, but I think it's time for me to think a little less and do a little more.  No, I don't have handmade ultramarine blue ground from lapis lazuli or handmade madder red or any handmade paints at all, but I do have modern equivalents of the most common colors used in the 18th and early 19th centuries (although I've found a source that sells pigments made from historic recipes and instructions... they're quite expensive, but hopefully I'll be able to make my own paint some day).  And while my current brushes might not be squirrel hair, that's an easy fix.  As for painting on ivory, that's not even a possibility anyway, but I'm looking into various imitations and I've been experimenting with different colors of polymer clay.

Also, why is no one else doing this at the moment?  There are plenty of current artists working with historic subjects and selling prints etc. at events, but I've yet to see anyone work with authentic materials on appropriate surfaces and do it in public.  Wouldn't that be an awesome sort of demo at an event?  To have someone portraying an artist of the time and actually doing real work to talk about, display, and sell.

Painting and portraiture was a real and lively trade... it ought to have some sort of presence in the reenacting world.

Comments

[koshka-the-cat.livejournal.com]

It would be an incredibly awesome portrayal!

I'm excited to see where you go with this :)

[jenthompson.livejournal.com]

I can't wait to see what you do! Maybe once you figure it out, you can give me a few tips. I failed miserably at my attempts with period techniques.

[girliegirl32786.livejournal.com]

I'm really interested in seeing your experiments with this! I'm not a painter but I find this fascinating.

[bauhausfrau.livejournal.com]

I've wondered that too, I've seen reenactor silhouette artists and 18th C bas relief type wax portraitists but never miniatures painters.

There are Russian artists who do miniature painting on shell, maybe that's a possibility? There is a great book out there with lots of miniatures called Love and Loss American Portrait and Mourning miniatures you might enjoy.

[the-aristocat.livejournal.com]

I'd love to have a miniature portrait too. Making it yourself is so wicked. I can't wait to see the outcome.

[mlsdesigns.livejournal.com]

I have my great granmother's miniature painting materials, gold powder and leaf and sheets of ivory, I keep meaning to try my hand at miniature painting again. She must have bought the ivory somewhere round the 1920s I think, when she was in Paris.
I can't wait to see what you do with this project!