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

A Piece of Me #32, the mixed technique

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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, 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.

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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A Piece of Me #57, the mixed technique on panel, 21 x 13.3 cm or 8 1/4 x 5 1/4 in.

A Piece of Me #57, the mixed technique

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A Piece of Me #57, the mixed technique on panel, 21 x 13.3 cm or 8 1/4 x 5 1/4 in.

A Piece of Me #57, the mixed technique on panel, 21 x 13.3 cm or 8 1/4 x 5 1/4 in.

A Piece of Me #57, egg tempera on panel, 21 x 13.3 cm or 8 1/4 x 5 1/4 in.

A Piece of Me #57, egg tempera underpainting on panel, 21 x 13.3 cm or 8 1/4 x 5 1/4 in.

Here is the second of the mixed technique series (see the category description on the right for a full explanation of the technique). Like #47 before it, this one is another abstract design principally of the tile flooring in front of the great mosque at Casablanca. You can read about the concept behind the whole project here.

To the right you can view the egg tempera underpainting before its layer of oil. To the left the completed panel afterwards. Once again, the increase in saturation and depth seems to happen almost automatically – due to the difference in medium. Additionally, what’s interesting to me, is that I had completed the underpainting a few months back, imagining it to be a final piece (and not just the groundwork for further manipulations in paint). That is, I thought I was creating a finished panel for the egg tempera series – and at the time I was pretty happy with the result. I think the composition lends itself to that satisfaction, but still after I discovered the error, I was curious about how much the oil level could or would enhance the piece. I think it does. What do you think?

Write up on the mixed technique here.