New Materials

So I tried some new tactics this week. Color, gesso, and and new paper. First, I was feeling a little disconnected from my work so I decided to get some energy out. Instead of starting with a drawing I started with paint. Bright red paint, to be exact. The change of pace was refreshing, and gave me the reboot I needed to work on some other drawings.

In addition to the painting, I spent time experimenting with gesso, as recommended by my review committee. I did an underlying drawing, then gessoed over it, and attempted to sand part of the gesso off. This worked to a certain extent. Because of the texture of the paper, only the most raised bits of gesso would sand off, and so the only parts of the under drawing that can still be seen are the parts where I used watered down gesso. Good thing to note for future reference. I began drawing on top of the gessoed drawing as well, but am feeling a little apprehensive about the extreme white background. Maybe if I water it down more next time...

Lastly I started a new drawing on top of my natural dyes, this time involving some color. As it turns out, lemon juice on top of red wine creates this beautiful pink/purple color, and I rather like the effect with the drawing. I also used some gesso instead of white prismacolor for the highlights I added. This gesso technique I actually enjoyed and might continue to use in the future.

Total amount of time spent on these projects was about six hours or so, and I continued some work on some past drawings as well, but the fresh experiments really have me ready to get a lot of work done this weekend and next week. I have a lot of fresh thoughts flying about my head and I am want to get them down on paper asap!