"Road Tested" (draft 1)

(draft 1)

"Every God-direction is road-tested. Everyone who runs toward him makes it." (Psalm 18: 30....The Message) This is the beginning of a new piece. In this first draft, I am setting the stage for an inclusion of handmade paper.

Handmade paper can be cutesy and crafty if it is not presented well. Today I have laid down some mono printed rice papers and plain rice papers to prepare a setting for the handmade paper. I was careful to select a gessoboard panel (14" x 18") that will give me enough margin to showcase the handmade paper well. (You could also use masonite primed with gesso as your support.)

There are several overlapping layers of plain rice paper which cannot be seen very well because I have yet to spray the surface with spray acrylic coating which is what brings out the translucency. This could all have been done on a gessobord panel, but I do like the feel and texture of paper and I also like some "wiggle" room by having a some cropping options. So today I will decide the orientation and the way I want it cropped and then I will mount that on my panel. I will also be deciding on whether or not to paint my handmade paper or leave it white.

This can be tested by turning the handmade paper on the least important side visually and if it works then you can paint the proper side. If I choose painting the paper, I will lose some of the spontaneous bits of papers which have a bit of random specks of color, letters, and numbers. By painting the reverse side and laying it on my support (draft 1), I will immediately be able to make that decision.

There are several other directions an artist can take with the support. You could also place mono printed paper over the entire support. The reason I did not do that is because it would not have created an interesting division of space. By placing the black mono printed papers randomly on just one point of each side, I have created more shapes and more interest. I think it might all depend on what your mono printed paper looks like.

You could also use small rectangular shapes of balsa wood covered in papers and placed around the perimeter to create an interesting support. Another option would be to use overlapping neutral colors applied with a brayer. That will add a lot of energy to your piece.

Tomorrow you will see a big change, but today's draft shows you just one of the ways the piece can begin. I also will be adding lettering on the plain rice papers that you see today and there will be either a repeat of the mono printed rice papers wrapped around a rectangular piece of balsa wood or a piece of glass on the upper center of my handmade paper. We will all know by tomorrow. And there you have it...just a few more things to think about.