Friday, February 10, 2012

Bronze Verdigris Mirror Color Match

I had a small color match challenge this week. My task was to transform an already beautiful and very ornate wall mirror, to match a stunning, bronze verdigris pair of wall sconces. I could tell there were alot of layers of color, most of which I knew wouldn't be an issue. Here's the mirror before, on the left. It was more gold and bronze with some silver and a gray wash. Very nice, but it needed to match a pair of sconces that had more red and bronze with a verdigris wash.  So I mixed up some of my awesome furniture grade primer base coat to be a reddish brown color. I was my basecoat and my primer to ensure adequate bonding. Here it is in process, below right. I would say the color is pretty close to a PPG Porter Paint http://www.ppgporterpaints.com color called Chianti.

The bright metallic gold was easy. I used Modern Masters  http://www.modernmasters.com/  metallic paint in "olympic gold". I used a very dry bristle brush to add a touch of color to all the high places in the ornamentation. I then used a burnt umber glaze to tone down the red and the gold and give it a bit of a tarnished look. I was getting really close to the final product. The sconces had an overall satin finish, but the verdigris was very flat. So, once the glaze was dry I applied the satin polyurethane to the entire mirror frame.
Now the fun part! Getting the right color of green for the verdigris. The illusion against the darkness of the mirror is that the green is pretty light. But once you start making the green wash, you realize it's actually a fairly dark green. I used a flat paint base and just kept adding until I got it dark enough. The color actually ended up being very close to a Porter color called Griffin Gray. I mixed one part paint to parts of my favorite flat glaze. I washed on the verdigris and wiped it off all the high points. Artfully adding a little more here and there. Here's a few shots of the finally match, mirror beside sconce. The client was thrilled with the match!













3 comments:

  1. Awesome work, love it, perfect match!

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  2. This is gorgeous! I'm so impressed!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks so much Megan! It was a small, but fun and challenging task. Hopefully, other DIYer's can duplicate it.

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