Wednesday afternoon this week I took the time to whip up a couple of goddesses. Now, I have to call much of what we do here 'studies', which means, don't sweat it! We explore in a couple of hours, and whatever happens happens. The process is the important thing, and the result is, well, it is what it is in a couple of hours. Often students will work on pieces further at home, and so do I. Below are my idea development examples.
 Tree goddess |  Water goddess |
The drawings are fairly refined, and I wanted the paintings to be looser, so in the next step, on the actual water colour (140 lb) paper, I used yellow pastel to block in the shapes, then orange pastel to solidify the drawing. These paintings were going to be splashy ones, so I didn't want the under-drawing to be too tight. Also, I decided I wanted the tree goddess to fill the picture frame more.
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I sealed the pastel with hairspray, then scudded gloss gel medium across the surface of each painting, being sure to leave some surface untouched. The different surfaces would absorb or resist paint applications differently. One thing I realized as I splashed watered down fluid acrylics on each was that the cool colours used in the water painting fairly disappeared, so bad choice there as I really had to search for my drawing after words. Anyway, the results after splashing, scumbling, reinforcing the drawings repeatedly, are below. Certainly worth further exploration. Maybe a series?
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My students, all goddesses themselves, using the same process released these lovely goddesses of their own.
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