Marci Blattenberger

Marci says she tries to work from life or her own photographs as much as possible, although she does love antique photos (portraits).   She also does some portraiture from current magazine photos.   She says she can't resist working from time to time on a "yummy" study from another artist, but it always comes out with her own twist.   One of the pieces featured here, the thatched roof cottage, is painted from a photo from a magazine she got from a friend in England of cottages that are available for rent for holiday.   The other two paintings are her originals.

If you would like to email Marci to let her know how you like her paintings, her email address is rxguitar@home.com.   You can click on the hyperlink below to send her email now.

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Barn on 12 x 12 Inch Tile (New as of 8/8/97)
Image Size: 74K
Iris Pendant (New as of 8/8/97)
Image Size: 40K
Portrait on a Vase (New as of 8/8/97)
Image Size: 87K

Boonie
(Image Size: 84kb)

Boonie was Marci's white cat.   The background is basically a running turp technique but instead of using turp, she did Vi Lane's method of using lamp oil   (the scented kerosene for those cute oil lamps...)   the lamp oil is so thin that it runs the paint just like dribbling turp or dispersing fluid but it leaves a somewhat softer effect...She ran the colors and then wiped out the cat and fired..then did one more fire on the cat. Unfortunately, Boonie passed away on June 28, 2000. Marci says he was a good kitty. She and her husband, Rex, had him for 20 years.

Pout
(Image Size: 15kb)

This was a little girl   (Marci thinks she was polynesian,..some sort of island exotic looking little thing) who came to the daycare she was painting at   (She does murals for Kindercare).   Marci said this little thing was so sweet but she never ever smiled...but that pout was just begging to be painted, so she did a bunch of photos of her and this plate is worked from one of those.

Thatched Cottage
(Image Size: 16kb)

This is one of a series Marci has started to paint.

The source of this painting is a photo in a magazine sent to her from a long time friend who is a china painting teacher living in England.   They met nearly 20 years ago at a china painting convention in Buffalo, New York and have kept in touch all that time.   Marci says she finally got the chance to go to England to visit her friend in 1995 and she LOVED it!   She was fascinated by the sites..like being dropped back in time.   She says her friend teased her because she ran around like a maniac taking pictues of thatched cottages and pub signs.   (Gorgeous handpainted signs over each pub entrance)..unfortunately she only had an inexpensive point and shoot camera.   She said when she told her friend that she wanted to do a series of plates on thatched cottages, she sent her the magazine which she used to paint this plate.

Now that she has a great camera, she's dying to get back there.

Boxes
(Image Size: 63kb)

This shows two pictures of some boxes.   The pieces are boxes that have luster on the box bottoms and around the outer edge of the rim, then the portrait work was done   (the one with the ivory and mop luster is a magazine photo and the one with the turquoise luster is from an old victorian photo.)   Marci surrounded the photos with raised BASE for gold   (not paste, the white stuff)   and embedded bits of stained glass and dichroic glass into the raised base.   (She says that dichro was developed for the space program to cut glare on the space shuttle windows...it's very difficult to produce and is very expensive ...she's still getting over dichro sticker shock ($225.00 for a 16x16inch sheet.   When you look at it across the surface, you see one color, when you look right at it, you see another color and when you look directly at it with light behind it, you get a third color...this color shift is what gives dichro its look when fired.   When you fire it to an 015 to bead up the edges, the glass internally breaks up into tiny liitle fractures and each fracture reflects a different color so the effect you get is an opal look with color play that changes all over the surface   (an actual opal, like the gem stone, not like mop luster).

Marci says that it is incredibly beautiful!.   (sounds gorgeous to me)   The final step was liquid brite gold over the raised base.

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