Another interest of mine is old British coins; the designs for some of these have not been surpassed since their original issue (in my opinion, anyway) and have a depth of detail and craft not often found in such small objects.
The pictures below are from one item in a series of coin art pieces; this is the 1936 Three-Pence piece, in silver.
The original coin has good detail, including a number of knocks, scratches and small patches of corrosion that the coin has suffered during its active life. The green and brown colouration used for this piece refers back to the oak theme, and provides a range of contrasting but complementary tones.
During the colouration of this piece the tone values (i.e. the relative brightness) were retained as far as possible, but the existing ‘natural’ colours were transposed into two basic colour ranges, from dark green to light green and from dark brown to yellow.
The method used to produce these pieces relies on a complete re-drawing of the coin surface, including all identifiable blemishes, and recolouring of each identified region using a suitable colour from a range which may be decided on the basis of the original coin material, the motif used in the decoration, or the general history of the coin. None of these pieces are processed photographs, they are all original works.
All pieces are available as high-quality prints, professionally made on art paper (The default is Photo Rag Ultra Smooth, but other choices are available), in a range of sizes. The default print is approximately 24″ / 60 cm across, but can be made up to twice this diameter if required.
