"Untitled" (draft 1)

(image 1)

(image 2)

This piece is untitled (for now) because I haven't decided what psalm will fit best. And this was one of the things I learned after one year of blogging. My pieces are much more suited to the quote if I do the image first.

This new piece will be cropped by tomorrow, but only after doing some more layers. The finished size will be an 8" x 8", so I obviously have a lot more surface than I need for the finished size. It does, however, give me lots of options.

The first image is a mono print created on 300 lb HP. (I chose the heavier paper because it will not buckle when wet and there will be no need to tape it to a board.) The mono print was created on a glass printing surface with Golden Fluid Acrylics. I simply squeezed some paint onto the glass...sprayed it with water... and rolled it out a bit with a brayer. It was very "sloshy". I then laid the paper into the paint. It was too dark to suit me so I sprayed the paper with water and let some of the pigment drip off. I then wiped the glass off and laid it on the clean plate to mono print over the first one.

While the paper was wet, I wrote into the wet surface with a stylus which created the gestural marks. And this brings me to the point of gestural marks. I have noticed that some students like to create a bit of writing in the middle of the design space. But it is infinitely better to completely divide the space by going edge to edge. Random marks in the middle of the design appear to be floating around and going nowhere. Ground them by going to the edge.

Another thing that makes gestural marks more interesting is to have a variation in height and interval of the marks. Pretend you are writing a word, but vary the height and size of the letters and then have the line continue with no letters before making any more detailed marks. If your marks are all the same size and interval, it looks less spontaneous and interesting.

In the second image, (after drying the paper), I poured some white gesso out on a foam plate and added water (probably a 3 parts gesso to 1 part water ratio). Using a cut up credit card, I laid down some gesso while preserving a window of my most interesting gesture marks. After drying this first layer of gesso, I sprayed it with rubbing alcohol and brayered over it (many times while alternating with spraying and brayering). This removed some of the gesso and evened out the tone in some areas.

And after doing a few more layers, if I want more gesso removed, I will scrub the surface with a stiff brush dipped into alcohol....followed by blotting. The beauty of this type of layering is that I can add more marks and even more color or mono printed rice papers in between the layers of gesso if I like. And tomorrow you will see what I decided to do. In the meantime, you have a few more things to think about.