Wednesday, September 11, 2013

"Essential Ingredients" (draft 1)

(draft 1)












This is the beginning of a highly textured piece. Today's draft is only one part of a horizontal band of fibers adhered to canvas. The entire piece is created with bands of texture and color. The white you see today ends up becoming a very dark green with the bright green showing through.

The particular fiber you see today is a very loose weave of burlap with some of the threads removed and coated with gesso on both sides. A format of horizontal bands is an excellent way to showcase color and texture. It is best, of course, to have the bands in different widths and different textures and colors. This automatically opens the door to alternating the bands.

In addition to three different bands of this particular fiber, I am also including duck cloth which has also been coated with gesso on both sides. It is risky to add fiber to a canvas without it first being washed and dried or coated with gesso first. Adhering it before taking these steps can leave some puckering. This is unlikely to happen on a cradled board, but I have not tried that, but other artists have with success.

Basically, anything can be gessoed and adhered to a support to create texture. It is probably a good idea to keep the main thing, the main thing rather than adhering anything and everything in a haphazard fashion. Another option is to adhere fibers on select areas of the canvas to create some texture with a majority of the design space left free of too much detail. It's all a process. Look at rugs and quilt designs for inspiration images.

Going in this direction clearly places the artist in the "colorist" camp which can be a great place to land since color is the most emotional of the design elements. I believe texture is a close second. And there you have it...just a few more things to think about.

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