Submitted another IRCC II update, but I think I will hold off on reposting it here since it would just be redundant. However, I do have something new and shiny to show off: A portrait miniature necklace! There are many extant miniatures from England, but there are enough from Italy to not make it out of the question for me to make one for this challenge.
Just for fun, some images of extant portrait miniatures.
Unknown girls, 1590, 64mm (frame). Arn’t they cute? Especially the smiley one.
A Man, called Sir Arundel Talbot, 1596, Height: 69 mm, Width: 54 mm.
Unknown woman, 1575, Height 39 mm, Width: 32.5 mm.
Unknown man, 1572, Height 60 mm, Width: 48 mm. I love that he is wearing a (possibly) portrait of his own. I really love the lace on the tails of his necklace, I think I will have to copy him :D
I want to link to a million more pictures, mostly from V&A, but I’ll stop here. This tiny sample shows a few of the common portrait miniature points I’d like to make.
1. Oval seems to be the most common shape, although circular and rectangular definately exist.
2. A very common color scheme is black clothing paired with a lovely blue background.
3. Most portraits are bust style, but there are full figure and half figure too (like the little girls).
4. 3/4 view is most common, but front facing and side facing both exist.
5. The sitter for a portrait seems to be pretty evenly split between men and women.
6. Among the extant one’s we have, it looks like it isn’t too unusual to have a paired set. Mostly husband and wife, but the sisters above are another example.
7. Common sizes appear to be in the 60-50 mm range, which is roughly 2 inches.
I bought a pair of simple frames from a bead store, meant to hold cabochon stones, but I figured would work nicely for a portrait. The frames measure 29mm by 24mm, so they are a good bit smaller than most extant ones, but some come close to that small. I wanted to make matching portraits of R and me.
I had planned on making 3/4 portraits, but was having the darnest time getting them to come out nicely. Tried a side shot and decided that it looked nicer than my attempts so far. Only working on R so far, havn’t started on mine. Will probably get to it after IRCC. I decided to switch the black and blue. Not for any particular reason really, other than that R has a blue doublet irl. But I think that the switch came out nicely.
Yay! I am pretty happy with the end product. It made R all smiley when he saw it (good, means it’s recognisably him!)
All that’s left is to finish the ends of the necklace (not shown for that exact reason) and add some lace!
UPDATE:
I have added lace! Such pretty pretty lacy bows shall forever grace the back of my neck now :D
I got the idea from this little portrait by Nicholas Hilliard:
(This is actually a picture of my garters, but the necklace was made almost exactly the same, using a different lace.)
Check out other parts of this outfit below:
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