Chic Chinoiserie Lamp

Hello to everyone visiting today with Tina at The Enchanted Home!

I was more than happy to be asked by Tina 

to do a guest post here at one of my favorite blogs.

This piece was created especially for my Enchanting visit~

I hope you enjoy it.

 Chinoiserie~ A french term signifying "Chinese-esque".

I have always wanted to try my hand at this Asian inspired art

 to create a piece of my own Chinosierie. 

A lamp in the living room was my canvas.

 

 This was how the lamp used to look.  

It is a tole lamp, (which means it is metal).

 There was nice crackling detail, 

but the overly cheerful subject matter did not fit my living room.

 The crackled texture on the lamp would 

still be visible once I painted over it~so this was a plus.

 A mixture of Paris Grey and Old White chalk paint

 covered the old artwork on the lamp with one coat.

This lamp would dry quickly~

now I needed to decide how I was going to create the chinoiserie scene.

First I drew a sketch of a pagoda sitting on an Asian tree on my sketch pad.

I was planning on doing a monochromatic look, but as art happens,

 I ended up using 5 colors with metallic sheens.

I wanted colors that would look nice in the living room.

 I drew the pagoda onto the lamp lightly with a pencil, 

then added the metallic pencil color into the sketched areas.

 After I colored my sketch I applied a champagne 

metallic craft paint with a tiny brush over the colored pencil.

 I laid the lamp down so I could carefully apply the paint by brush, 

which is harder than applying color with

 pencil on such a small and detailed sketch.

 I found my chinoiserie inspiration on a teacup 

I owned as well as online by googling images.

This was the pagoda before the metallic craft paint was applied.

 I planned to add scroll work and crosshatch motif

 seen on this tole tray all around the bottom of the lamp.

I spent New Years Eve watching Dick Clark and painting this lamp!

The background was done by mixing some Louis Blue

 chalk paint in with the champagne craft paint.

 Here is my inspiration tray, sketch and tools that I used to create this lamp.  When you put the sheer metallic craft paint over the penciled artwork it all kind of melts into a painted effect.  The entire lamp has a lusterware effect and it is quite enchanting.  This was really a shot in the dark~I always remind myself that things look worse before they look better. When I drew the image of the pagoda I thought I might be painting over it and starting from scratch.  But I kept going and added a little bridge to the right of the pagoda and some tall Asian style trees too that I found pictured on the side of the blue and white pagoda teacup.

 Now this lamp is soft and magical looking.

Each panel fades to luster when you look at the next panel. 

 The crackle base comes through and adds a nice quality to the finished result.

It sits to the right of the sofa....

While this ceramic lamp that my parents owned 

when we lived in Asia sits to the left.

The old lamp went from this~

To this~

 The pair of lamps in the living room.

Old world meets new.

 It mixes nicely with the French desk I painted too.

 A custom Chinoiserie lamp~

made with colored pencils and a little bit of faith and paint.