After spending a dazed couple of hours "in the zone" of creating the drapes or curtains at the rear of the Holbein deconstruction of his painting the Ambassadors, I realised some time last week that the real target that I want to make the Narratives of Taste Culture and Class of is actually the materiality of the materials used in society to identify and define the class positions of the wearers / or owners.
This notion came to me through the repeated drawing and painting of the classical patterns of the drapery...
At first, I drew the pattern outlines by freehand, although taking my queues from the original Holbein drapes. It is highly likely that Holbein may not have actually painted these patterns or drapes, as it was common practise for apprentice artists to carry out the background work on such larger paintings. The main representations of the two figures however would be reserved for the Master Artist (e.g. Holbein) to compete, and thus be eligible for the commission as a whole.
I soon got bog-eyed trying to slavishly copy these beautiful, though complex and intricate patterns, so I resorted to another old technique used by the Great Masters, slightly adapted to bring it in line with modern speed of execution... By this I mean the technique the masters used for transferring the outlines of Frescoes, that is, ostensibly by tracing a design through to the plasterwork by using pins to puncture the design and create indentations on the plaster behind. A draughtsman would then complete the tracing from the pin positions upon the wall, ready for the application of pigments / paints to fill in the fresco. However, in my case, I dispensed with the intermediate pin step and re-draw of the plan, by simply using a graphite block on the rear of my scale copy and tracing over it with a blunt pencil to make a carbon transfer. I was then able to paint in the variety of green and brown shades and hues in the resultant pattern boundaries...
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