The Patron Saint of Junk
The threads of this project has been in the back of my mind for a few years now, I was on a trip in Brugges and as we trapsed through one of the big churches, on the hunt for a vile of Christ’s blood (it wasn’t there) I came across the painting in the first image. This sparked an idea that it would be interesting to make a saint like painting, with gold leaf in the background and a halo above some poor sod. The idea sat in the depths of my brain but nothing happened with it. A few years later I was thinking about what to do for the second set of Junk trading cards but had no golden goose of an idea. Me and Steph then took a holiday to Corfu and once again on the search for truth we ended up a mountain visiting a famous church, mainly famous for being on top of a fuck off big mountain, and I came across these saint painting’s scattered around the church and there it was the golden goose had laid a perfectly warm glittering egg of an idea right in front of me. I metaphorically lit a candle and placed it under the alter (it was like a 2 Euro donation) and thanked the gods for this.
We came back to London and I stared thinking of who these saints could be. I would be walking around and whenever an idea came into my head I would stick it in the notes on my phone, here is that list:
- Patron Saint of Careless Acts
- Patron Saint of mishaps
- Patron Saint of Furries
- Patron Saint of missing forks
- Patron Saint of Lateness
- Patron Saint of Therapists
- Patron Saint of Karens
- Patron Saint of Finance Bro’s
- Patron Saint of Suits
- Patron Saint of Vanity
- Patron Saint of Dentists
- Patron Saint of Cultural Appropraition
- Patron Saint of Accessories
- Patron Saint of Lost Property
- Patron Saint of Infectios diseases
- Patron Saint of Balding Men
As you can tell most of these are rubbish but a few stuck and I didnt end up writting down the ones I actually used.
The threads of this project has been in the back of my mind for a few years now, I was on a trip in Brugges and as we trapsed through one of the big churches, on the hunt for a vile of Christ’s blood (it wasn’t there) I came across the painting in the first image. This sparked an idea that it would be interesting to make a saint like painting, with gold leaf in the background and a halo above some poor sod. The idea sat in the depths of my brain but nothing happened with it. A few years later I was thinking about what to do for the second set of Junk trading cards but had no golden goose of an idea. Me and Steph then took a holiday to Corfu and once again on the search for truth we ended up a mountain visiting a famous church, mainly famous for being on top of a fuck off big mountain, and I came across these saint painting’s scattered around the church and there it was the golden goose had laid a perfectly warm glittering egg of an idea right in front of me. I metaphorically lit a candle and placed it under the alter (it was like a 2 Euro donation) and thanked the gods for this.
We came back to London and I stared thinking of who these saints could be. I would be walking around and whenever an idea came into my head I would stick it in the notes on my phone, here is that list:
- Patron Saint of Careless Acts
- Patron Saint of mishaps
- Patron Saint of Furries
- Patron Saint of missing forks
- Patron Saint of Lateness
- Patron Saint of Therapists
- Patron Saint of Karens
- Patron Saint of Finance Bro’s
- Patron Saint of Suits
- Patron Saint of Vanity
- Patron Saint of Dentists
- Patron Saint of Cultural Appropraition
- Patron Saint of Accessories
- Patron Saint of Lost Property
- Patron Saint of Infectios diseases
- Patron Saint of Balding Men
As you can tell most of these are rubbish but a few stuck and I didnt end up writting down the ones I actually used.
Above are the roughs of Ralph The Patron Saint of Stationary, he was originally gonna be called the Patron Saint of Staedtler in the hopes of getting some free stationary from them but then I thought would people actually get it and make that connection. The first sketch was actually going to be of a dentist (from the crap list above) but then I couldnt think of a way of making the dentistry tools look interesting and didnt want the character to be wearing a mask though that would have been easier to paint, so thats why he’s kinda got a doctors coat on. After the final rough I realised he had little childrens hands and so to help with drawing up the final I took a pic of my own hands holding all the stuff and photoshopped it onto the drawing for reference.
I start by drawing a onto the board, I use mount board as it provides a smooth surface and is able to take the Gouache without warping. This drawing is as detailed as it can be and I tend not to deviate from this when painting onto it. I then build up section by section like a puzzle, I use the gouache fairly thick only watering it down enough to flow well, using it more like acrylic but it still gives me the abilty to blend colours and I like how each layer of colour kind of blends together to create a single layer of paint.
I knew I wanted to make these as close to a ‘real’ saint painting and using gold paint just wasn’t going to cut it. I seal the background where the leaf will be applied with a yellow acryclic, this allows the size (glue) to not absord too much into the board and allow for the best adhesion. As the size is water based I use acrylic so it doesnt reactive the paint underneath when applied. I just use a brush to apply the size, wait a bit for it to set and apply the gold leaf. For all painting in this series I used 23ct genuine gold leaf, which is nuts as it costs about £50 a book at the moment and the fact that these were gonna be reproduced as tiny cards that wouldnt be able to print gold it seems a bit pointless but I wanted the originals to be there own special thing so I just thought fuck it.
Here are a bunch of sketchbook pages of sketches and roughs for the other saints and other bits.
Tommy
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Betty
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Helen
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Kevin
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Arthur
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Reference for the back
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Back of cards
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Unused idea for packaging
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