black gesso – Mixy's Art Blog

Moments in the process

There is often a stage in the process where I look at the page and think WTF? What is going on? It might fly off on a tanget, or it might develop recognizably from here. But until it does, I have no way of telling…

Pushing on from this point gets easier every time. Like this…

Beginning the page with Black Gesso, some white writing and doodling. Tissue paper for texture.

Building up the shapes with slices of dyed envelopes

And some splashing – I used Dr Martin’s Bombay inks and some dilute acrylic paints.

And left to dry…

…to doodle on…

…and on…

to this! 😀

Back to the page a day project, unaccountably I seem to have ten days backed up and un-shown-off to you! How did that happen??!
Sitting comfortably? Here they come…………………………
Day 7 was the day I first played with black gesso. Delighted! I was expecting a kinda chalky grey-ish-ness that absolutely isn’t there. My new love in life is gesso. Words can’t express my joy at its cover-up-ability, it’s smooth creamy texture and lush slide-about-the-page-ness it has. YUM. This was the base for the swirls in guache and acrylic.

Day 8 is a showcase of the bits of scraps and fragments and dead leaves I save ‘in the name of art’. I know I’m in safe company here, you understand!

Day 9 is built up in layers of dyed paper and stencilled experimental gessoed tissue paper.

Day 10 is upside down. When I was getting towards the end of the previous book I showed it to some friends, as one leafed through the pages and said “Some pages make me feel like I’m upside down in this book”. “Yes, just like some days feel upside down”. This was one of those days!
This was also my first EasterEgg day (tissue paper swished with water, like I did here)