"Cathedrals" (draft 2)

(image 1)

(image 2)

No quote yet, but by tomorrow, I feel sure I will have one. As you can see, there have been many changes since yesterday. I am going for a very ethereal look.

Last evening, after viewing my piece several times during the day, I had the urge to go over the cathedral imagery again with the same colors plus adding some alizarin crimson to the yellow shape. I also laid a kleenex in a place or two to lift part of the color. It was left to dry overnight.

This morning, one of my first questions was how much detail to add....what tool to use....what color and type of pigment. I began with moon palace ink and a pointed nib, but decided to go with something a bit more graphic and found a hand cut stamp of a cathedral that I cut several years ago. Rather than inking the whole stamp, I chose fragments and stamped those on with Speedball Printing Ink applied with a brayer.

After writing a few words and creating different types of line work, I dried the piece...sprayed (3x) with spray acrylic coating. The reason I sprayed that many times was due to the thickness of some of the ink. After drying the piece again, I used a sponge brush and applied dilute gel matte medium 2x. After drying that layer, I laid in the dark shape which was cobalt blue + brt. sienna gouache. The reason I chose that medium is the ability to lift it if I didn't like the result. Because it is an opaque watercolor, it also has a bit of a translucent effect in places. (You do need to brayer it on and then keep brayering until it becomes smooth.)

White gesso was also added (1:1 ratio with water) and dried. Alcohol and a brayer were used alternately over the gesso to create the texture you see in image (2). I also repeated all of these steps....spraying...brushing on med...adding more gesso...etc. until satisfied.

Today I will be studying this image and seeing if I need to do anymore "tweaking" of values and shapes before deciding on the lettering. So far...I have asked and answered (30) questions about this piece. And there you have it...just a few more things to think about.