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Monday, March 17, 2008

another goose egg

This weekend I spent a long time working on a large goose egg pysanky that turned out to have an inch-long crack right through the hole at the end. I didn't even notice the crack until the egg was halfway finished, and blue dye began collecting in the crack edges. Goose eggs have very strong and thick shells compared to regular chicken eggs, and they seem to take dye more reliably than duck eggs. Hopefully the crack will not spread further through the shell after it is varnished. This design was abstract in nature and used 7 colors (turquoise, blueberry, navy, violet, apricot gold, lime, orange). I got to practice making my wax lines smooth, straight, and evenly spaced, a skill that I'm finding to be a challenge. The first photo shows the egg during the wax application; the second set of photos show the egg after the wax was removed. I still need to apply some polyurethane varnish to bring out the colors and make the surface smooth and shiny.

3 comments:

sukogirl said...

nicely done! prehistoric looking. i am impressed by the many different (all beautiful) designs you come up.

cignoh said...

me too, the colors work really nicely, i like that most of them are similar, but the orange and yellow contrast well. i like the graphic nature of the design---how you have the thin/thick lines---makes it look shadowed in parts, which is cool. it looks so hard to do...

lila said...

very pretty. they almost seem to have a native american element. look like they could glow in the dark. :)