Fèvres  Fèvres:le magazine de l'Artisanat des Métaux n°13 d'Avril 2005. Michel Girard, a painter of steel   The colours to be retained are hidden under masks and the metal around this is brushed           Colouring Steel by Flame   Michel Girard is difficult to classify on a professional level, and he is described in various ways by the people who know him. “Master of fire and metal,” a “painter of steel,” a “metal magician;” as poetic as they are, all these names only partially explain his activity. Michel, who also admits not feeling he belongs to the fellowship of iron workers, defines himself as a visual artist who colours steel using a flame.   Though born to a family of teachers, Michel Girard did not receive conventional schooling. He was very quickly attracted to manual work and a predisposition for drawing incited him to enter the training centre of the School in the “Rue de Reuilly,” then twinned with Ecole Boulle, and learn how to work with bronze. He left three years later having passed his CAP diploma and joined the ranks of a Parisian company specialising in store layouts. Following military service and a time with a company dealing in church bronzes, he again took up professional training and took a drawing diploma for structural iron work with the AFPA training institution, thanks to which he obtained various jobs in the metallurgical and mechanical industries.   Natural coloration The desire to use his hands for work other than to produce handling machines led Michel Girard to experiment with repoussé-work on metal. To get an idea of public opinion, he decided to rent a stand at the Exhibition Fair in Amiens. The welcome he received from the visitors was positive and several pieces were purchased. “I told myself that my work was perhaps not altogether uninteresting,” he remembers, “and I began to think about the opportunities in this area.”   Finally, in 1989, this man who has worked with metal throughout his professional life decided to launch himself and set up as an independent worker. After having initially tried to combine copper, brass and nickel silver, already with the idea of giving colour to his works, Michel Girard very quickly noticed that he was going down the wrong path. “With metals like copper,” he admits, “I couldn’t manage to fully express what I wanted. After the long process of cutting, assembling and soldering, I still couldn’t rival with industry that was able to mass produce items with seemingly similar results using galvanoplasty and other processes.” He therefore very naturally turned to steel, a material that he already knew well from having worked with it on numerous occasions in the past, even if the conditions were now different. “I started to make a few items in repoussé-work,” explains Michel, “that I left as they were, only playing around with dimensions. But I gradually began to work with heat to colour my work. The idea was to reduce the unflattering aspects that appear on the surface of the metal to make it more pleasing to the eye. This was with the aim of creating sheets of steel        Fèvres “Le Bicorne” (The Bicornuate), a painting in coloured steel by Michel Girard, 1996   that were coloured naturally, meaning without the use of chemical products such as acid, sulphates, etc.”   Once framed, these metal sheets became pictures of stark realism, where the metallic reflections changed according to the effect of the light. But before the picture could gleam with a thousand lights in the hall of an art lover, many hours of work had been required by our “metal painter” to achieve the result.   Stopping at the Blue Area   Michel Girard’s paintings begin as 8/10-thick sheets of steel. The first step consists of brushing the metal to obtain a completely clean, smooth surface that is almost white. The sheet is then cleaned with trichloroethylene – a solvent that cannot now be freely bought in France – to remove the steel particles that have been deposited on the surface of the sheet; this prevents any form of oxidization during heating. By brushing, Michel works at cleaning his background as a painter would work on the general décor when creating a new picture. But whereas the painter illustrates his subject by adding colour, Michel Girard proceeds to “remove” colour. Once the metal sheet has been cleaned, it is heated until it is uniformly blue. The colour is on the surface only, so it is possible to make the colour disappear simply by brushing, and to reheat the metal to obtain a different shade in the brushed area, within the range of steel coloration that extends from straw yellow to dove-coloured.   In fact, the colours produced on heating are nothing more than a form of oxidization of the metal. Under the flame, the metal sheet becomes successively yellow, ochre and orange, before taking on a purplish-red hue, and finally blue. If it is heated beyond this point, a very unflattering dull white is obtained, and the material starts to become deformed. For this reason, Michel Girard advises to “stay with the blue.”   When creating a painting, the unchanging order in the appearance of the colours therefore means our “steel colourist” must control the different stages meticulously. He must notably plan all the dark areas from the outset, such as the shading on the faces for example. As the blue only appears at the final stage of heating, it is crucial that this first stage of colouring is perfect as it will not be possible to reheat the sheet of metal at a later time; the risk being that the other colours would also turn to blue. For this work, the metal is not heated using a blowtorch as this does not provide uniform heat    Fèvres due to its narrow nozzle; he uses the heat from… his gas oven. Although not very glorious, this process enables him to let his sheet of metal “stroll” over the flame - making sure he handles it at the edges to prevent finger marks, which are a source of oxidization – and have greater control over the coloration thus produced. Heating is stopped just before the sheet becomes blue to the naked eye. Why stop at this stage? Because when the sheet is reheated to colour a neighbouring area, heat will be conducted and the metal will continue to be heated indirectly and become blue. By stopping before the blue stage, Michel Girard gives himself leeway to prevent him “burning” the metal and causing irreparable damage to his work.   Care and Precision Once the metal sheet is blue, Michel Girard concentrates on removing it (using brushes and pads) from the areas in the painting that will be of a different colour. The smallest details are highlighted using plastic masks over the coloured areas to be protected and around which areas are brushed. “As the colour is on the surface,” he repeats, “the blue is removed according to the original traced drawing to leave room for the other shades. A second heating session therefore enables the areas in red to be ‘fixed’. This colour is difficult to retain,” he stresses, “as it marks the stage just before the blue and thus tends to return to blue when the surrounding areas are heated.” The heating operation is repeated until each of the areas has been coloured. After the last heating session has given the yellow, a final brushing enables the ultimate colour to be brought out, which is none other than the grey of the metal the artist is working on.   Once the work is finished, the sheet of steel is varnished to protect the metal from exterior damage (fingerprints, sweat, nail marks, etc). This protective layer becomes even more important as the public likes to touch Mr Girard’s works, to his annoyance, to experience the relief effects.   “Finally,” he explains, “colouring the steel comes down to the state of the surface. According to the way in which the metal is brushed, it is possible to obtain various nuances. When the same area is brushed in different ways, various shades of yellow, red and blue can be obtained at once. Working with this principle, the state of a highly polished surface can take on a golden aspect when heated. The brushing process is therefore essential, as is the direction of brushing. To highlight details on a face, anatomical brushing that is as precise as a surgical operation is required; whereas, to highlight background relief effects, panoramic brushing would be the chosen option, carried out using a circular motion.” This technique of colouring steel requires much preparation and does not allow for mass production. Thus, Michel Girard designs only approximately 20 items per year, for exhibitions, for example, or individual orders. “Actually, I haven’t invented anything new,” he confesses, “I only control the natural appearance of the heat ‘marks’ that are a nuisance for most metal craftsmen who choose to mask them. As for me, I have never stopped experimenting with new ideas for refining my technique and bringing sparkle to my creations over my 15 years of experience as a professional.”   Today aged 68, Michel Girard is not interested in keeping the secret of his technique. For this reason, he speaks openly of his talent in the hope that others will become interested in the subject and bring new ideas to colouring steel.   Contact: Michel Girard Tel.: 00 33 3 22 46 03 63  Fèvres

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