Illusion panel

Earlier this summer in 2024 I started a new project at home. My thoughts was to combine both wood and marble in it and i wanted it fairly big. The piece is about 180x120cm big and made with both beer and powder pigments and then a waterbased marbling base from Alcro and powder pigments on the head piece. The base coat is a wood primer mixed with powder pigments to dye it since it was white from the beginnging. The wood primer was also used for the black box with white streaks but with a ton of black powder pigment in!

I started with the wood part but overpainted the outlines to be sure to have everything covered and after it dried I used a wet/moist sponge to clean up the overspill so the beige background appeared again. Once it was cleaned up I coated the wood part with boiled linseed oil diluted with some white spirit to protect the sensitive base, I also added powder pigments freely to make the colours more intense and pop. Once that oil layer had dried I had to clean up the outlines with the wood primer again so that the new beer and pigment marbling would stick to the base and after the greenish back- marble base was done I cleaned up overspill, added a diluted oil layer over again, added som white streaks with oilpaint as well to not dull the white too much. After everything dried I once more painted over the overspill with wood primer and used the marbling base and pigments for the head and once that dried I added the shadows/shape with oilpaint twice to make it really deep and pop from the marble background. The waterbased marbling base I used for the head doesnt dissolve so I didnt need to add an oil layer over it, if I did it would've yellowed the marble instead of keeping it fairly white. The black "box" is wood primer and then mostly white and grey pigments added with both natural sponges and brushes in different sizes. Lastly an diluted oil layer was added on this box as well.

I worked on it to and from for about a month.