Blair House Christmas Ornament

This is a pictorial record of a christmas ornament I painted in 1993 for the Blair House in Washington D.C. The theme was green, red and gold and the wooden piece was heart shaped. The finished piece had Holly leaves and berries on one side and a three dimensional heart shaped wreath on the other with small gold bulbs and a red ribbon. It hung on the Christmas tree in the Blair house that year and is kept in their permanent collection.

The first step was sketching thumbnail drawings of ideas for a design. Once I hit on a design I liked the process was as folows:

The wooden heart was painted a bright Christmas red and then gold-leafed, overlapping layers of torn gold leafing were glued to the heart leaving some of the red basecoat showing. The heart was then varnished and antiqued with a dark brown to tone down the red and gold.

Holly and berries were painted with oils on one side and allowed to dry and cure.

The opposite side was textured around the edges of the heart with modeling paste to create a wreath. Small bulbs were hand rolled and glued to the dried wreath along with a hand shaped bow. The wreat, bulbs and bow were painted.

The piece was given several coats of semi-gloss varnish for protection.