Narritive Project (Part 3)

First painting of final piece

Prototype painted with under glaze

Final piece painted

Both the crosses that I kept, the prototype and final piece were bisque fired at different times. I was unsure of what to do with the to spare crosses so I left them to the side as I worked on the other pieces. Using under glaze colours I painted both the crucifix daggers. It took some time before I got a skin colour I was happy with on the complete piece. The first attempt was too yellow and had to be washed off before I could start again. On reflection I felt perhaps I left the skin too pink. It seemed much easier to get the right colour on the prototype.
I decided that the colouring on the prototype was problematic. I had made both the figure of Jesus' hair and the dagger hilt brown. The shades were far too similar and the hair was blending in. In the complete piece the crown of thorns would also be brown. Eventually I went with black for the hair and left the hilt and crown brown. At first I tried to just darken the brown but the contrast needed was great, especially as I was using small amounts of black for the hilt. This was in an attempt to give the effect of wood. I had the idea of the hilt being wood and the blade being metal.
On both the prototype and the complete piece I added red around the holes in the Jesus' hands, His feet
and the gash in His side. On the complete piece I also put red around the crown of thorns although I was unsure how well it would stand out against the black of the hair.
Another change was the colour of the loin cloth. One of the reasons I had it grey was to use up the paint. I also felt that realistically it was unlikely to be a clean white at this point. I thought about it and came to the conclusion that as the rest of the piece was unconcerned was reality there was little point starting now. Besides which the grey was to close to the colour of the blade.

Close up of final piece

Both pieces went through a hardening on firing. At this point I was unhappy with the colour of the red I had used for blood. It was the only red I could find but seemed to me very brown looking. After some thought I felt I would like if both works were glazed. Luckily there was room and time for this. I would have preferred if the prototype could have completed the process before I had to decide on the complete piece but there wasn't time.
I dipped each piece in the bucket of transparent glaze, submerging them completely for about three seconds . Where my fingers had been I used a brush to paint over.