"Mi Reposo"

($60.00......6" x 6"......Pouring Medium.....Mounted on a 1.50" depth Clayboard)

"Stop striving and enter His rest." This is a paraphrase from Hebrews 4:13. It will be submitted for an upcoming Easter Exhibit. "Entraran mi reposo" is Spanish for "Enter my rest."

In this piece, I pumped up the volume in the lettering by combining gestural writing, Roman Versals, and Spencerian Script. There are many people who want lettering to be extremely readable, but I love expressive and gestural writing as well, so this is an illustration of how they can be combined to satisfy my artistic voice and also satisfy the average person who thinks all lettering should be readable. 

This is a pouring medium background from my stash. I am preparing to write on two similar surfaces in an 8" x 8" size so this piece was a precursor to the larger ones. I did the expressive background lettering with a pointed pen. (The surface had been prepared for lettering with (2) parts water to (1) part Gel Matte Medium with (3) applications.) After this lettering was dried, I sprayed it (2x) with Spray Acrylic Coating and prepared it for lettering again.

Next came the Roman Versals, written on tracing paper so I could position it over the expressive lettering. I then transferred it to the piece by scribbling on another sheet of tracing paper with a 3B pencil and slipping it beneath the tracing paper with the lettering and rewriting to transfer it to the piece. The Versals were written with a pointed pen. The one line of Spencerian Script was written last. 

So this is how I prepare to do lettering on larger works. Doing them in a smaller format is the ticket and also gives me another completed piece. The piece is now ready to be sprayed again with Spray Acrylic Coating (3x) and then mounted on a 1.50" depth Ampersand Clayboard. After the sides are painted black, the entire piece will be sprayed one last time with Golden Spray Varnish for Acrylics. And there you have it...just a few more things to think about.

"Small Beginnings"

($40.00.....mounted on a 1/8" depth clayboard panel)


"Small beginnings are infused with the power to change." It is easy to think that starting at "square one" is too difficult or that everyone else is much further ahead. But we should never despise small beginnings because everyone at some point in time had to start somewhere. Let your small beginnings infuse you with the power to change.

Yesterday I said that my aesthetic was to allow the image to cover a large percentage of the design space. Today that is definitely not the case. You can see that the eye gravitates right to the small image of berries. It helps to have direct complements in the image, but the larger issue was the negative space taking up most of the design space. There is a natural tendency when creating these small focal points to also feel the need to place elements in the negative space. I actually think it works best to focus on creating depth in this negative space with very subtle textural and value changes. The viewer then has some more interesting things to examine as they get closer to the piece.  (It is the equivalent to tonal range in music.  No one wants to hear music played at the same decibel level throughout.)

The division of space is also subtle with the pencil lettering moving from edge to edge horizontally and the focal point plus the addition of gray soft pastels going from edge to edge vertically. Paying attention to the division of space continues to be a primary consideration in every piece which is remarkable even with my 300th posting.  Just a few more important things to think about.

Please contact me personally to inquire about this piece.