Project: Adding other materials

Exercise: Preparing a textured ground

Various materials stuck on (with either PVA or gesso) to cardboard (mainly backs of paper pads) to create texture: sand, rock salt, dog hair, bird seed, dried-out individual cleaning wipes; sheets of kitchen wipe, paper (smooth cartridge and watercolour), gesso scratched into the surface while wet, pva dribbled from the bottle and skeletonised leaves.  All then prepared with a thin coat of gesso to enable painting.  Different paint consistencies applied (dilute through to neat/dry brush) to see effect of colour on the surface texture.  Some of the heavier textured samples (eg bird seed and rock salt) were difficult to paint over but I feel this just adds to the sense of texture with the deep shadow areas creating their own tones.  One problem I did note on applying texture to canvas was the weight of the application made the canvas curl – I think you really do need to use either a heavy card or board for this type of painting.

Created grounds (with title in mind):

Wrinkled

The textures I had created with both the kitchen paper and the cleaning wipes instantly reminded me of tough animal hides (have been on safari twice so thought of rhino and elephant).  My initial experiments had been sticking on the materials with PVA but this took forever to dry so instead tore up patches/strips of the wipes/kitchen roll and applied very loosely with gesso, painting over the top quickly to seal in.  The effect of the liquid made the paper wrinkle on application which I developed further by pushing into it with an old brush.  Being just paper and gesso, although fiddly to apply (and very messy and awkward around the edges) the prepared ground dried overnight.

I found a photograph of an elephant taken in Kenya and, as this is a complicated form, decided to do a detailed drawing to better understand the folds, wrinkles and textures of the skin (A2 - charcoal and H pencil).

As the prepared support was very textured, I decided to blow up my drawing on a photocopier and to use the outline as a stencil, as I did not want to make the surface dirty and knew it would be virtually impossible to erase. 

In terms of colour, elephants aren’t really grey anyway, and as they always cover themselves in dust, it is more a neutral beige with hints of grey.  Looking at the colour more closely, it reminded me of one of the colours used in my assignment 2 (still life) piece (the jug).  I referred back to my colour chart for this painting and so created my base colours plus darker shades from this.

In order to allow the ground to continue to be an important part of the painting, I applied the paint in very transparent layers, diluted with turps (which also allowed the layers to dry very quickly) using a large brush to allow the colour to sink in (or conversely skip over in places) the folds and wrinkles created by the cloth and paper.

Spray

The second textured ground was created as a reaction to my original small experiments on board - I had applied adjacent patches of rock salt and sand on a small board which brought to mind beaches / seashore / crashing waves.

I found a photograph on the web, and created my interpretation of it using charcoal pencil, cropping the image to concentrate just on the area of the beach, foam and the unusual mottled texture you see in between waves.

After basically sectioning out the cardboard, the main crashing waves were created with sea salt, applied thickly with PVA, concentrating the salt on the crest of the waves.  The texture medium and salt was pushed into shape with an old brush, which also added a textured layer for the front side of the wave.  Sand was applied for the beach and texture medium applied with a brush for the foremost, small cresting wave.  The area I struggled with slightly was the texture for the central section between the waves.  After various experiments with foil, cling film, etc, I tried slightly scrunching up some wide masking tape, then unfolding it slightly and sticking layers of this together.  This worked very well in lifting up stiff peaks in the impasto medium.  

After leaving to dry (for about a week!) I coated with gesso and then over painted in oils.