Health & Fitness
Almost imperceptible
Creating a subtle and intricate ceiling work of art in grisaille style painting technique. Grisaille is born from early century Flemish artists originally intended to resemble cut stone.
Painting in a monochromatic style is always a fun challenge because from the start...your color palette is very limited - creating depth and interest with subtle shifts of tone.
In February of this year (2012) I was given the chance to create a unique design for a Master Bedroom ceiling. Using my Dover reference books again, I chose several 15th century French book cover patterns and combined them to create a special pattern. I've used the outside border design in this pattern below before. Look at the attached link and see the border of the map art:
http://9245waterfallglenblvd.blogspot.com/2012/08/a-large-donation-to-wonderful-cause.html
It's a wonderful design and very fun to play with. In the map version of the design...I cut and expanded it. In this grisaille project; I had to create a design that fit the shape of the ceiling. So, using a xerox machine and scissors I cut and pasted and rearranged elements to redesign this pattern to fit it's new shape.
Now I had a 'roadmap' to follow and once the color was selected I was off and running.
I began with the foundation of the design - the inner most horizontal lines and I used that as a design anchor for the rest. I knew where the corner art was to be placed and I had my 'anchor' lines finished. It was simple to drop the corner art into place and repeat it on the opposing side. Once that was complete - I was able to extend my lines outward to the opposite ends of the ceiling.
I added extra design elements once I saw some of the large empty areas. I located the center of the ceiling and prepared my design pattern from large xeroxes enhanced with charcoal on the reverse (to transfer the pattern).
The xeroxes allowed me to keep my design elements consistent and quickly move the project along. The center portion of the design was altered in mid-project by a structural design flaw of the room. The ceiling fan was NOT centered in the room and therefore the center section could not be anchored to the main body of the design. It was decided that it should 'float' visually free. This became the next challenge...to keep the center design in a perfect 90 degree angle with the completed art of the border.
Find out what's happening in Darienwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
I anchored a piece of string from the ceiling fan chain and extended it to the center of the room to each direction. Once this was accomplished the improper alignment of the ceiling fan became even more obvious. This was going to take some serious creative thinking.
It was a lot of rendering on the scaffolding...climbing down...inspecting it from the ground and trying to imagine a 90 degree angle to the string on the ceiling...making certain the design isn't twisting and keeping it aligned and straight. In short; it was a nightmare visually but once I got one side completed...repeating it to the other side became much simpler.
Grisaille art (monochromatic painting) is beautiful and quiet visually. I love the intricacies of the design and how a complex pattern can still be visually peaceful. I look forward to exploring more grisaille art with the next cool art project where the ceiling is my canvas playground of imagination.
