Really USING GESSO for huge texture with Watercolor Painting.

 The class I was this month had many prompts to push yourself where you are uncomfortable. Great idea, because you never know what will move your art work forward.

Using a scaled down version of the 'dried arrangement', I used a larger piece of paper, sketched out my composition and then really slathered and dabbed the gesso on my heavy water color paper with ABANDON...really as loose as I could go and still stay within the planned sketch.

Setting up the arrangement, I left more air between the stems.

The tall stem is actually a Hollyhock stem that the buds never opened but dried on the stem. The thistle type are Sea Holly, that were quite small and also dried before fully blooming. (It was so dang hot here in JULY....ugh). I liked the graduated shading in the background lighting on the old board. 

Chinese lanterns that are normally orange upon full growth, but again dried from the heat, they had plenty of water...just wilted as shown by the curled leaves.

The dried Hydrangeas are every shade of brown, each fully grown petal curled as it dried on the plant.

I'm using artistic license to add some color to these but also giving the illusion they are dried. Here's a closeup with more air around the vase...you can see the crazy pattern, this vase is pre-1890's the best I have been able to date it.

I used watercolor pencil for sketching, and really slashed and smashed the gesso on. This time I didn't tint it...because I decided to wash the background right over all the gesso and marks with big sloppy brush strokes

First pass...of colors.

Here's my first drippy wet layer...you can see how the gesso where thick actually repels the paint. I'm again working with a blind picked limited palette, one from each of my color groupings but no blues I pulled a green by error, but kept it as a totally warm palette.

CadYellow Pale, Pthalo Yellow Green, Winsor red (a nice cross between a cool and war red), and Van Dyke Brown, I also tested washes on here.

I did a ton of mixing my colors, but only seldom used my water spritzer.

While the washes were still wet, I added some sloppy drops and wavy leaves and lines here and there. 

This is when I began dabbing off color with a paper towel and then rubbing color on with the same towel elsewhere.

Some of my lines became long pod shapes (not in the original arrangement), I don't remember the name of them, but often they were smooth brown hard pods with speckles and striping. (upper left). 

At  this angle, I think you can see the texture and buldup of the gesso as well as the watercolor layers giving the ILLUSIONS of depth through shading.

I tried to keep this area light...but all that texture eats up positive and negative space. I'm happy with not working the burrs to death, keeping them airy.

The whole painting, titled 'Fall Layers'.

I think it is still overworked, I scribbled some shadows here and there, added a few lines in colored pencil with White, med. dark Green, and Burnt Sienna. 

 
The last thing I did was take an eraser to all the raised gesso edges and also scraped/erased highlights on to the glass pitcher. I really scrubbed down that pitcher until it began to shine!

I'm happy as it is, but it's still very busy. 

I'm allowing myself one more try...sometime this week. 

Thanks for looking.

DO YOU EVER DRAW or PAINT in a SERIES? 

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 Sandi Magle

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