Tuesday, July 22, 2008

gesso and water color experiment

I gessoed the mole pages, which accomplished three things--it made
them white, it made them textured and it made them waterproof. This
had the advantage of preventing the watercolors from leaking through
the page to the pages on either side, but the colors acted totally
differently than they normally do. The paint, which is Windsor Newton
water colors, acted like gouache! Or even like acrylic or oils--very
strange. At first, I hated it, but it is sort of growing on me--if it
were used right it might be interesting, would take some getting used
to, though. The gessor prolly should have been painting horizontally,
but in another painting, say a stormy day, it could look like rain.

2 comments:

Ian russell said...

I think in the old days gouache was made the same way as watercolour but with added chalk which makes it opaque, and gesso traditionally is chalk based. Teacher told me to have separate brushes and mixing trays for watercolour and gouache to ensure you get the translucency of watercolours.

but he also said you have to break the rules sometimes and experiment. nice one, Mary!

Mike Kline said...

I totally agree! This one is unusual and beautiful...