Thursday, November 7, 2013

"Fiber Preparation" (draft 1)



Today's posting is a "process piece" in preparation for a 16" x 20" canvas. I know from my own experience that it is instructive to see some of the very first steps in a process. It doesn't look like much today, but by tomorrow it will have full blown color. Never despise small beginnings...just keep going. 

My desire at this point is to move away from too much uniformity with horizontal bands. So in this piece I am shaking it up a bit by having random patterning and color. This is also a tight weave and lightweight muslim. I brushed black gesso on one side followed by drying it with a hair dryer and then sanding. To give it more stability, I repeated the process on the back side.

And then I began to ask the "What if..." question which led me to swiping some Super Heavy Gesso on a portion of the fiber. If you look closely, you will see a chevron pattern stamped into the gesso. The gesso is receiving the stamping in different ways depending on the thickness of the gesso. By tomorrow morning all of this will be "bone dry" and ready to paint. There will be a marked contrast in the way the fiber without the gesso and the fiber with the gesso receives the paint. 

In the meantime, I am continuing work on two other large works. It takes many days for layers of paint to dry and prepare the fiber. And that is the beauty of working on more than one piece at once. While one thing is drying, you simply go to one of the other pieces. 

My large journal will now have another addition (with notes) after I finish the piece of fiber you see today. And then I will switch to the actual piece, select the text, allow for drying time, and post the process as it goes along. And there you have it...just a few more things to think about.

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