The story of painting inside a virginal lid.

This is the continuation of my story about creating the painting on a lid for a virginal.

Next thing was to draw the design in charcoal on handcoloured paper.

The saint Cecilia with a trombone player.

Wich turned into a...

...celloplayer

This i why I like to sketch in charcoal

The whole composition.

Now ready to be transfered to the ghessoed lid itself.

Painting a lid for a Virginal

 A Virginal is a keyboard instrument with the strings parallell with the keyboard -thus its very long shape.

Inside the lid is often a painting that the player could look at and dream away while playing. Many old instruments have beautiful paintings inside the lid. This one (a copy, not an original) doesn't have a painting inside.

I got the request in the spring in 2020, this is the instrument how it looked. I got the measurements and started scetching in the scale 1:2,5

Then I reallized that the final size it is small enough for all the detail, and the redesigns have to be in charcoal, for more freedom, so then I made a scetch in real size, charcoal and chalk.

The Charcoal and chalk drawing is 140 x 40 cm and in real size. Click on it if you don't see the whole thing!

I practised on my goldplates.

I practised the sky in eggtempera.

Taking the red away, adding at least eight layers of true ghesso....

Next post coming soon!