'lester' and 'peg' (below) were both done on plaster cloth with a muslin backing. i now feel like i could be the colored pencil, cover-up-your-bad-art, draw-with-your-left-hand AND plaster cloth ambassador to the world, ha!
muslin, plaster cloth, acrylic paint, collage elements, colored pencil, matte gel medium, oil pastels (same for lester)
peg and a roll of plaster cloth, plus the pencils and oil pastels i used for her face. the pencils are prismacolor light and dark umber; the oil pastels are sennelier titanium buff and brown ochre, and caran d'ache cream - in case it's helpful.
some more pages in my 4 x 4 muslin journals... am contemplating what size to make the next journal.
i used colors here that i don't normally use and got all twisted around... but i learned a few good things...
a pogo print of lester - this is one of my favorite things to do with the pogo, hee! take pics of pieces that leave home! but, i also wanted to say a few things about the pogo... amazon has a great price on packs of 50 now; if you run the blue sheet through each time before you print you won't have a problem with streaking; and, as far as i can tell (from reading), the paper doesn't really expire even though it has an expiration date. in the same way that ink cartridges have an expiration date, law requires this inkless paper to have one (i know, crazy). anyway, it sounds like it's best to store it in a cool place if you have a lot of it, but it doesn't expire.
these stamps! have you seen them? the motherwell stamp is almost 2" x 2"! i left this really big so you can click and read everything...
there were a few photos in the taschen matisse book that really moved me. one was this of matisse when he was about 80 and bedridden. he put a piece of charcoal on the end of a fishing rod so he could lay in bed and draw on his white walls...
and this of the matisse room in the home of russian art collector shchukin. if you click you can see how he's hung matisse's paintings on top of other stuff that was already on the wall. what exuberance! the one on the far right is hanging over the top of a mirror!
this week reading walker percy, listening to leonard cohen and gazing at matisse - savoring human genius...
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"...I've also studied deeply in the philosophies of the religions, but cheerfulness kept breaking through... (uproarious laughter) But I want to tell you something that I think will not easily be contradicted: There ain't no cure for love."
~ Leonard Cohen, Live in London
XO
what i've been fiddling with so much these last few months is seeing how much i can leave out while drawing a face and yet still have an expression, a feeling, come through. i try different colors so i can see what their effect is. each little change makes a difference, and usually a big one. a face can go from happy to sad with one dark pencil stroke.
since the first 'face book' i've been letting what's already on the page show me where to start. there are usually blobs of walnut ink or wrinkles that point the way - a face is in there somewhere.
i drew/colored 'della' this morning while having coffee - i have to make myself not fill everything in; leave some mystery.
plaster cloth can be found at michaels for about $10, and jude's got a great post here about collaboration and 'diluting our efforts'.
XO
oil pastels, colored pencils, collage elements, acrylic paint, plaster cloth, muslin
whew! i went out of town last week to visit friends and am just now getting settled in and caught up. boy did i have a good time, though... i laughed so hard one night that my stomach muscles were sore the next morning. now that's nice!
i finally picked up some plaster cloth while i was out, and have just begun to experiment with it. as you can see in the piece above, you can dig into it (the grid and circles), which puts it way up there on my list of desirable working surfaces. and it's really easy to use - that's two layers of plaster cloth on top of a piece of muslin.
the finished piece is rigid and thin - about the thickness of 300# watercolor paper. i'm chomping at the bit to work with it more...
and i've been working in my muslin book - LOVE these as travel journals. here are two pogo prints of trees that i sat under in chico... a giant sycamore and a giant palm. total tree love...
i did this sitting under the sycamore - i'd just bought a book about matisse at the used book store. this is my fauvist tree, ha!
still using mostly colored pencils...
in case it's helpful i thought i'd pass along some of the things that i've discovered lately, mostly about working with muslin or colored pencils...
1. for the smoothest muslin surface, buy permanent press muslin. no amount of ironing will make non permanent press muslin as smooth as p.p. muslin.
2. i use a regular eraser to blend and lighten colored pencils *a lot*. colored pencils will erase almost completely from acrylic paint if you haven't pressed down too hard.
3. if you use colored pencils on top of oil pastels, they blend easily with the oil pastels using a paper stump. of course you can't have a thick a layer of oil pastels down, or they won't 'stick'.
4. if i put a layer of gel medium on the muslin (to keep watercolors from bleeding through to the other side, say) i sand it lightly before i start working on it. i've found that every surface that i add to the muslin feels a bit rough, even though the original surface has been sanded smooth.
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"... One cannot live in a household that is too orderly, a home run by aunts from the provinces. So off one goes into the bush, to seek simpler methods which do not smother the spirit."
~ Henri Matisse on Fauvism
XO
muslin, plaster cloth, acrylic paint, collage elements, colored pencil, matte gel medium, oil pastels (same for lester)
