Leslie Litt

“Strange Circus”

When i first got my theme it seemed Weird Circus got stuck in my mind. As I always think too complicated I was not successful finding what I wanted to create. Finally, luckily Sandra extended the date and I saw online a Jellyfish. Well I have done jellyfish in watercolor and also I did a painted enamel panel in the past, so I thought creating a underwater circus of juggling jellyfish. I did my first drawing which included 3 jellyfish. I proceeded to cut my metal (my plan was a champleve piece). As you can see in my photos I ran into a problem (I forgot to mention I was working with copper) I could not get the top rim to solder, I tried 4 or 5 times and realized it was not going to happen. Then I remembered I had 14 gauge copper square wire and I was successful soldering my rim,so much easier and then I was off and running. I decided to add an additional ring of wire inside my rim. I twisted some fine silver wire formed my Circle and placed it on top of my first layer of 2020 flux. After the first firing I realized I needed to also have a layer of flux on the outside rim so I fired a second layer 2020 in side the rim and on the rim. From there I laid out my wires and fired them. I was very pleased I got the wires down on my first firing, therefore I was ready to go on to layering my color. I was using aqua transparents for my water. The jellyfish, the balls and rings were going to be opaques. After getting most of my colors down I added some semi transparents for the water. I realized I needed to add color on the rim, keeping with my aquas I used an opaque turquoise for the rim. The piece was now done and I needed to set it. I choice a simple setting I was using a hammer attachment piece to set the piece and unfortunately it chipped a spot on the rim.

What I learned: I can say if I was to do this over it I would lay silver foil down before laying down my aquas it would have made the piece look brighter. As I am not completely happy with the setting at a later date I plan to will redo the setting and at that time I can repair the chip on the rim. So there you have my “Strange Circus” of underwater juggling Jellyfish. The final picture is my piece in its setting.

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