This is from a book by Hans Van Lemmen (ISBN: 978-0-74780-682-0). It’s a tile made by Alfred Meakin circa 1905, and is a quite nice round floral motif. I thought it would be a good example to use for pooled varnished effects. Also my plan was to ‘tube-line’ the gesso to get the underlying shape:
This was done with a squeezy bottle that you can cut the applicator tip to shape. It sortof works, although it’s a bit blobby … Might be best to just paint with gesso.
Sticking to the original colour scheme, I painted it in yellow, green, and orange. It went ok:
However the thicker lines on the gesso makes it look a bit crude.
Afer putting some silicone oil and varnish layers - well mixture, as the varnish does not dry very well - I finally decided to use some spray lacquer that my friend Wil uses for cars:
which actually gives a touchable surface! I might use lacquer on some other pieces, as they have not dried over months. Anyway, I’m mostly happy with it but I think I used to much yellow in the final layer.