"Orad Sin Cesar" (draft 4)

(draft 4)

Today I have changed the title of the piece. This is just one of the many things that can happen when working.  All of the fragments I have included from my old bible are scriptures about crying out to God. This title just seems to be more appropriate to the piece.

A little over half of the piece is now adhered to the support with gel matte medium. I also laid wax paper, a book, and a large rock on it overnight. This definitely insures that nothing comes up as I move into the final stretch. You can now see how the white toned pieces also create their own shape as well as the yellow at the bottom. I do love the idea of staggering the separate pieces in such a way that everything seems to be interlocking. And it's much more interesting than having each color be in a straight line.

So what I have learned about when to adhere the separate pieces is to get one color section adhered at a time. It is not doable to try to keep pieces where they go and having to constantly put them back in their places. However, it is important to wait until all of the pieces in a particular color range are placed before adhering to the support.

Another point to note is that it is not necessary to lay out a double palette of colors to create this kind of piece. (Even though that is the way to achieve color harmony when creating a painting.) This technique affords you the opportunity to use up some of those odd colors you may have purchased when you didn't know better.

The yellows, for instance, are raw sienna right out of the tube. I then mixed raw sienna with some cad. yellow light. Liquitex Parchment color plus cad yellow light created a nice chartreuse. But you can see that they are interspersed throughout the yellow section to create some interesting echoes. And I am doing the same thing with the blue area. I like mixing cobalt blue with cobalt turquoise and then throwing ultramarine blue in the mix. It makes for a very interesting color arrangement.

So if you want to work larger, you might want to give this approach some serious consideration. It allows you to work section by section to create a very dynamic surface treatment. And there you have it...just a few more things to think about.