So- inspired by one of my favorite artists James Christensen (whose daughter is a fellow teacher and I just idolize her because she's amazing), I've decided that I want to paint a "Fairytale Series"... we'll see how far this actually gets but I decided to keep you all updated on the process. The first step was to collect 'scraps'.
Scraps: a collection of images, fabrics, color schemes and composition examples that an artist will combine in order to create a work of art.
And on my search for images I found these:
I'm sorry but I almost laughed out loud (which would have been awkward as my students were all taking a test)... Now I'm sure we all had wigs for Halloween costumes but I'm also sure that none of us looked this silly. Lets dress kids as kids and adults as adults shall we?
Anyway.... artists are usually A.D.D. (I'm not, it's just my work for liking to do lots of things) and can't just do one part of a project at a time, so I took a break from scrap searching and I started to demolish one of my paintings by sanding it. I hated the painting, didn't feel inclined to EVER finish it and the supports are expensive.
Supports: what a painter or artist works on, the surface of a painting, drawing, etc. Canvas, Masonite Board, Paper, etc.
So- anyway. It was a reproduction of this painting.
I brought it out and started to sand and MY STUDENTS FLIPPED! It was so funny! They were saying things like "Oh my gosh! She's sanding over the face!" "What are you doing?!" "Why are you doing that Mrs. Johnson?"
I just laughed and said it was awful and I didn't like it and that I didn't want to have to buy another canvas because they're expensive... ok so it wasn't canvas- it was framed masonite board covered with linen, rabbitskin glue and homemade gesso- Leonardo Da Vinci style... all very expensive stuff.... but they wouldn't have know what the heck I was talking about so for all intensive purposes it was a canvas... I did explain it further to my students who really seemed interested bnut anyway.... They tried to argue with me saying that it was a good painting and that I shouldn't ruin it. FUNNY.
So, the process is going very slow. I started to sand it down because I wanted to try painting in Acrylics (polymer based paint)... geesh, I feel like Elle Woods "Isn't it the first cardinal rule of perm maintenance that you are forbidded to wet your hair for at least 24 hours after getting a perm at the risk of deactivating the ammonium thioglycolate?"... anywho, you can't paint acrylics on top of an oil painting because oil paintings never really dry, the paint is constantly moving on a molecular level....but then sanding was too much work, so instead of painting over the whole thing with acrylic gesso I decided to bag that idea and coat it with a Titanium White layer of oil paint... this layer provides an even base for painters. The problem with that idea is that in order to create an opaque, not transparent, layer you must do several layers of paint that has been thinnned with liquin... (liquin is what thins out oil paint and allows it to dry more quickly)
So that's where I'm at. I've collected most of my scraps and as I wait for my second layer of paint to dry I'm going to do several sketches of color experiments... trying different color combinations out to see what would look the best. I'm sure this is all very interesting to you :) thought it'd be fun for you to see the artist process :)
PS- no word on the house yet - In the words of my amazing husband...."FREAKIN A"
