"The Red Shoes" vanishing fore-edge painting (SOLD)

Another Hans Christian Andersen collection receives a hidden painting. Also introducing...my Etsy store, Beneath the Gild!

Hi readers!

I’m excited to announce that I’ve started an Etsy store, which I will gradually add to as I create more fore-edge paintings.

The store is called ‘Beneath the Gild’ (because the name ‘Beneath the Leaf’ was already taken AND is hard to say without accidentally pronouncing it as ‘beneaf the leaf’).

The store’s inaugural listing is a hidden fore-edge painting that I finished last week. This one is painted on another Hans Christian Andersen story collection, but I decided to portray a single scene rather than a series of vignettes like last time.

The illustration is of Andersen’s fairy tale, ‘The Red Shoes’. For some reason, I always liked this particular tale, and I remember it vividly: it’s morbid, moralistic, and (most importantly for an artist) it makes a good dramatic subject.

I worked hard on keeping the palette cohesive for this one. I still have a great deal to learn when it comes to tonal contrast, but I think that I am getting quicker with each painting… All in all, it took around 5 hours of prep (sketching, planning the colour palette, researching) and 10 hours to paint. Not bad, methinks!

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My goal with Beneath the Gild is to sell the books that I paint over the coming year, and I aim to keep them on the affordable end of the scale (though I need to keep discerning what’s considered ‘affordable’ in this unknown market niche).

I’ll share links to my disappearing fore-edge creations as they go on sale and if you know anyone that might be interested in purchasing one, I’d be honoured if you would direct them to Beneath the Gild.

There. Now I can shake off the nasty squelchy feeling of self-promotion and get back to painting and writing, heh…

Lessons learned this time:

• A curved fore-edge on the book creates SUCH a difficult surface to paint on, since it doesn’t ‘flatten out’ properly in the press. It also stretches and places extra strain on the bottom-most pages while in the press (see photos below). I’ll steer clear of gilded books with this problem in future.

The Problem

• Secondly, prepare one’s palette BEFORE putting the book in the press. As Martin Frost says — “be kind to your books” — the less time in the painting press, the better.

That’s all for now! Thank you all for the encouragement shown over my art, especially since starting this new craft. I owe you each a decade of the rosary or something. ;)

xx The Inky Baroness

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