Third in the mixed technique series (see the category link on the right for a fuller description of the mixed technique). Here, compositionally, I am still navigating within the abstract flooring pieces of the larger composition. The plan for this panel called for a collage. Thus, in the very early stages I glued a number of pieces of fabric to the bare panel, roughly imitating the compositional planes to come. Doing so resulted in a very coarsely textured substrate and covering this with 9 layers of gesso never completely eliminated this coarseness. Yet elimination was never the idea for this project. My idea has always been to live with whatever the process created and still try to create something beautiful from it.

A piece of Me #32, egg tempera underpainting

A piece of me #32, mixed technique over collage, 21 x 13.3 cm or 8 1/4 x 5 1/4 in.

So the image here on the right displays the egg tempera underpainting (over the collage) stage. Overall it’s light in value while the hue differences between the tiled planes have been accentuated. The image on the left shows the panel after one working session in oil. Due to my gray unifying glaze, the heavy texture of the collage caused the broad fields to look very dirty. Couldn’t live with that! So, I decided to do one more working session in order to reclaim the beauty of these subtly modulated fields. The spotlighted image above illustrates the difference. BTW: if you’re reading this via email, the wordpress interface doesn’t include the enlarged “spotlighted” image at the top, so (if you are interested to do so) you’ll need to use the link to compare these three stages.

Write up on the mixed technique here.

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