Art nouveau Ivy - reproduction on wood

Inspired by work of Alphonse Mucha from 1901, I've sketched and then painted it on a wooden box. It was previously another cigar box made of cherry wood, about 21 x 15 cm. I've painted the Ivy on the lid, and I covered sides of the box with acrylic paint texture using small sponge...

Of course there's an original engraving visible under layers of my paint - it was so deeply engraved that abrading it or filling it with more paint didn't cover it completely (I also didn't have silicon mastic in my stock yet). Anyway luckly it's not so visible in reality :)

Morpho butterflies & clematis lanterns

In another blue creation I've decided not to use decoupage. Painted art over an item is much more beautiful. I've collected some photos of blue morpho butterflies and blue clematis flowers to see how did they look like in detail, where to add light and shadow and what kind of color palette should I choose. Then I took two tall jars used previously for olives, took labels off and cleaned them with alcohol to degrease them. I chose white acrylic paint used for painting furniture and covered those jars with a thick layer of it, painting them few times each half an hour. The paint covered the surface equally without smudges visible.

Then I sketched butterfies, flowers and leaves with a pencil and painted them with acrylics.

This is the effect:

Two additional Arsenic bookmarks

As I wrote before I promised to make more Arsenic-related creations. I've enjoyed designing bookmarks a lot, so I decided to make another two of them to add to the set. Here they are:

I used photo references from old, damaged photos and postcards from ca. 1900-1930, authors and models are unfortunately probably dead by now. I've scanned old photos, retouched them and re-painted them using my Wacom Intuos 3 graphic tablet - the best tool with a pen to get ;) One of models of that old photos was of course a fabulous Maude Fealy (1883-1971), who firstly appeared in a silent film in 1911. It was so nice to retouch that old and damaged photo and then to paint it from a sketch to restore her beauty...