So next step is going to be the carefully cut this out and when you’re cutting the foil so that you minimize a chance of getting cut, instead of trying to cut them out in all one single cut all the way around, I would suggest to cut it a little bit and then you cut in from the outside and cut away the foil because this stuff is pretty sharp and you can get some pretty nasty cuts okay. So now we’ve got a face here.
Now this one actually the whole reliquary figure which made out a tooling foil which of course is an option for you. You can do that or you can do it where you do the face just a reliquary and then the rest is drawn. Okay, and size of the reliquary is totally up to you. You can see I’ve got a really small one here and I’ve got a relatively large one here. And then the one we’re going to do is going to be somewhere in between.
Now to get this kind of antique look, what you do is you need some India ink it needs to be a permanent ink, and you’re just going to squirt some of these on the foil. And you need a little bit of paper towel and you’re going to cover the foil with the ink. And you’re going to let it dry, and you want to try and get it down in the low areas because the idea is that the ink will stay in the low areas and then when we buff it off with some steel wool, the high areas are going to be silver again and the low are going to be dark.
Now there’s one thing you need to be careful about when you’re using permanent ink is be careful about getting it on your clothes because it’s not coming out. Now we’re just going to let that dry for a few minutes. And I’ll show you want you can do with this one.
Okay now, if you want it too you could actually put the black ink on this one and you’d have kind of a copper, silvery, black effect because underneath this copper is silver okay. So what you do is you take the steel wool and as you start to rub this. The high areas are going to turn silvery and the low areas are going to stay the copper, and you can kind of decide how much you want to come off of here and how much silver you want to show just by rubbing a little bit more, and directing the steel wool where you want it to fill. You’ll notice I’ve got my finger behind here and I’m applying a little bit more pressure, so that more of the copper coating comes off, okay. So now we have kind of a coppery, silvery antique look to this face.
Now we can come back to this one, it’s almost dry and we’re going to do the same technique on this one. And the neat part about this is if you don’t like the way it looks, the first time, you can always go back and apply fresh ink, blot it down, let it dry, and do it again. So you really can’t make a mistake. So now our reliquary looks relatively older.
So I’m going to move these out of the way because the next step is going to be to transfer the body onto the paper that we’re actually going to draw on, so remember that black construction paper I talked about, and then here’s our original drawing, the sketch, and I’ve got some transfer paper which you can actually buy at your local art store. It comes in a big package here, a big roll, and it’s great for all kinds of art projects, easy way to transfer a sketch onto the final paper that I’m actually going to use. I’m going to lay my transfer paper on top of the black and just line it up on the edge here. And then I’m going to lay my original drawing on top, and you notice that I’m scooting it just a tad, destruction, because you’ll notice that I didn’t get this perfectly centered and I’d like to have my reliquary centered better on my black piece of paper, so I’m just going to eyeball where it would be, and I would take a pencil and I’m going to go over my lines.
Now once again, if you’re worried about your paper sliding, I suggest you use paper clips. Now I’m going to remove this and put this out of the way, and the face is going to fit right like that, and then we’re going to use black, white and gray oil pastels and a combination of gold, silver and copper paint markers. I think what I’ going to do first is to do a little outlining with my silver and this is actually a silver sharpy which does a great job, and you’ll notice I’m just drawing in a little bit further because I know that this is going to overlap. And I think I’m going to do some outline with the gold, okay.
Now that’s just my basic outline because now I’m going to start to do some designs and patterns, so I’m just going to start with my silver. The idea is to kind of build your designs and use different media and the gold dots. I think this is kind of a fun part where you just get to kind of make designs that keep going in further and further, and let’s see. The most reliquaries, the real ones, aren’t this fancy on the body part of them. It’s usually just, you know, a metal, but as long as we’re doing a piece of art work, it’s kind of fun to add all of the extra designs and patterns and besides it’s our interpretation of a type of art that they do in Africa.
So we used their art as inspiration for our own art, and you’ll notice that not all my little dots are perfect. You just have to remember that if you make a tiny little mistake in big picture it’s probably not even going to be noticed because you’ve got so many other things going on. Now, if for some reason you decide you want to go back and add some more things after you’ve glued down the face by all means feel free.
So I’ve got my hot glue gun all fired it up here. We need to put in another glue stick, just makes certain that you don’t touch the metal part because that’s the hot part of the hot glue gun and remember that when you put hot glue on a piece of metal that metal is going to absorb that heat very, very quickly and these things are going to get hot, so just be aware you don’t want to go and keep your finger on there too, too long. So I’m just going to squirt some glue on here real quick and with hot glue, you’ve got to work fast because by the time you get done, finishing putting the glue on it. It could very well get harden enough and be dry when you start it out. So just going to gently press it, it’s a little warmth okay and I’m going to push this little opening together, here we go.
Alright, and here’s our completed reliquary figure and make certain when you go and put it on top of that box or basket of bones that it has a special place in your home and it keeps away those evil spirits and those witches.
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