Cello Painting
The Cello is a timeless design. Originating in the ninth century, cellos are revered for posessing as many notes as the human voice. In 2011, Mel was comissioned to paint a cello with her signature fantasy woodland style. The resulting peice of work is a modern take on a classic instrument.
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| Filling stencils |
This piece was completed for a private client. They had seen the Jimi Hendrix guitar on my website and decide they would like me to make a variation of the design. They suggested that I used a cello as the instrument instead of a guitar I found this intriguing.
I created several designs for the client in order to gain insight into what was desired. After the design was chosen I set about the practical side of things.
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| Steady Progress |
I started by sanding down the cello to remove the lacquer, this gave it a distressed look similar to the other piece the client liked.
I then masked off areas that should remain wood coloured such as the edges back and neck. I decided to mask off the shapes of trees in the design to create a stencilled effect also utilised in the previous piece.
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| Filling stencils |
Now I laid down the base colours using aerosol paint mapping out areas of difference e.g. Sky, ground, path and leaves.
Then came the moment of truth peeling off the stencil. The stencil had worked well but because of the nature of the design it needed to be brought together. I did this by adding tones to the trees and leaves over the branches making the trees part of the overall scene.
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| Steady Progress |
I continued to do this to the rest of the piece by adding more leaves, grass and adding texture to the path. At this point I felt it needed some depth and added light sprays of varying colour all over to create the illusion of distance and depth.
Finally I finished the piece using a matt lacquer in order to seal it and retain the look of age.
Article Written 24 July 2011
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Contact: mel@melsaggs.com
If you would like an instrument painted, please contact Mel for enquiries.
