All posts by Sue Banks

Commisioned Work, New, Table

Pearls on Pale Green Faux Marble Table

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This graceful small side table was brought to me by a client to embellish with Trompe L’oeil pearls and shells.   She handed me a piece of striped fabric to guide my color scheme and I was off and running.  I used a favorite bug pin from my own collection as a model for the ‘clasp’ on the casually piled string of pearls.  The gold and garnet fly also represents my signature insect.  The table top (27″ X 11″) is painted as faux marble in soft greens with just a few delicate lines threading through it.  To keep the illusion of real marble, I even painted the underside of the tabletop, so it would look like an actual piece of stone when you turn the table upside down.  Loose pearls of various natural hues sit in a shell on the  lower shelf which is painted a solid Sea-foam blue.

Commisioned Work, Small things

Pansies on a Faux Marble Box

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This project began as a simple wooden box with no hardware. The flowers are painted life size. I wanted the Pansies to have all the varied  attitudes of the real world.  There are buds, seed pods and fading blossoms as well as wide open ‘faces’! Of course there is a visiting honey bee near one long edge.  This is Trompe L’oeil;  The marble is not real. The clasp is not real, nor are the hinges.  The cover still lifts off to open!  The photo of the ‘block’ of marble is the underside of the box.

Murals

Barn Board Porch Mural

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This mural with a Trompe L’oeil wood surface is painted on the porch of my own home.  For more than 25 years these walls were just a slightly textured, ugly brown, metal surface.   Then ten years ago I decided to paint it!  Thank you to my sister-in-law for suggesting the faux barn board wood surface.  On the wall which is viewed directly from inside my dining room, I painted rambling wild Roses that ‘bloom’ all year long!  On one of the sides I created a strawberry jar loaded with luscious berries.  There are bees that visit the flowers and a butterfly by the strawberries.  On  the other side is a squirrel which initially even startled my cats.  They have ignored it ever since!  In the winter I hang baskets of artificial green plants to keep a little summertime always just on the other side of the sliding door.