Clavichord Day 15 - Faux Tortoiseshell

Today, we got to the meat of the faux tortoiseshell design. The plan was to build up a series of glossy warm layers of paint to simulate the look of the real thing. For each layer, we use an acrylic gloss medium and soft body acrylic paints.



The first layer was a yellow ocher, which we laid on very thinly in short diagonal strokes, to give it some texture and depth.


When that dried, we put on a layer of thicker and darker spots (burnt umber color), keeping in a diagonal pattern.



Keep in mind all these steps were performed on all necessary parts (lid, toolbox cover, fallboard, case).



After burn umber, we added raw umber spots, which are more of a cool gray. As these melted in, overlapping previous layers here and there, we could begin to see the effect come alive.



Finally, after raw umber, we added accents of black.



At this point, things still look very crude, but by the end of the next day it should get a lot more subtle and beautiful. We'll see!