a medieval handfan

Last summer I realized how useful an handfan could be. I found myself accumulating random paper and cheap fabric ones at different events, but I knew I wanted something of higher quality, something more personal. I started looking for the right one and one day in a little shop I finally found this wooden one.

Since the beginning I wanted to paint something, I was not sure yet, but after getting it, inspiration struck me like a lightining. I knew what I needed…

Tadah!!!

I always loved these weird medieval illustrations of funny animals, and snails and weird man-snails even more, so I knew it was perfect!

The first step was to trace the shape of the fan on some paper to know what I was working on and be able to experiment a bit, because I did’t want to copy exactly the scene, I wanted to make it feel more grounded into the semicircle of the fan. I was satisfied with the result.

Now I just needed to find a way to transfer the drawing, or at least some major lines, I was fine loosing some details, I could have always fixed them directly on the wood.

I had some carbon paper, it works very well on wood, but I realized that my fan (like any fan of this type) had a bit of a 3d structure. Luckily nothing that some towels and a loooot of tape cannot fix.

I copied the sketch, added some details with the pencil and started painting with acrylics. At the beginning I was not very convinced, because I wanted to imitate some shades from the original, but the colors looked very flat, but after a bit of practce on one of the rabbit I got a nice result.

Once I finished the mein colors, everything looked veeery flat, but I knew that adding some black edges would have made the colors really pop up. So with all the patience of the world I got back. It took probably more time than the first painting, but in the end I was very very happy with the results (I finished with an additional layer of transparent matt acrylic spray to protect the colors because I was worried that opening and closing the fan might ruin them).

I hope you like it!