Gilded Pears

Shortly after receiving this challenge, I was leafing through an art and antiques magazine and was struck by still lifes that just seemed to glow. I decided then that this was what I wanted to represent in my challenge piece. I love pears, perhaps because I am shaped like one. They are so voluptuous. I learned that this technique is known as chiaroscuro.

Chiaroscuro (Italian for light-dark) is a term in art for a contrast between light and dark. The term is usually applied to bold contrasts affecting a whole composition, but is also more technically used by artists and art historians or the use of effects representing contrasts of light, not necessarily strong, to achieve a sense of volume in modeling three-dimensional objects such as the human body.

I had some wonderful hand-dyed silk that just screamed pears. On my blog you can see how they looked before I added gold foil. They looked illuminated, even then, but I had to add the foiling, just because I could!! The background is dupioni silk.

I enjoyed this challenge. There were many avenues that I thought of taking, but with my busy schedule, this one was the most executable. (Is that a word?)