Alchemy - varieties of heat induced patina effects on copper.

Some months back I showed some of these images on facebook. I didn't let on then that they aren't actually paintings at all, in the literal sense anyway. These are actually patina I developed on copper test plates I made while experimenting with fire and water. It wasn't pure water though....I added a tiny amount of an innocuous salt also.

By playing the flame on the plate and quenching in the water when the colour were interesting I was able to gain a fair degree of control of at least some of the effects. As the temperature never really got that high, not enough to anneal the copper properly, I think this technique might have some application on larger copper sculptural forms.

You can see a few more images here.