Last week I think that I mentioned a new artistic technique I picked up at the life-drawing session I attend each week. It involves treating paper with gesso before painting or drawing on it. It was interesting to try out then, so as I am looking for a way forward with a new idea of a picture I thought I would give it a go.
This morning I found a loose end of watercolour paper in my store, taped it to a drawing board and and gave it the treatment. After lunch I was able to see what it could do, and because the idea for my picture probably involves the use of oil pastels I thought I would start with them. Frankly, it was not a great success. There were irregularities in the gesso surface that really intruded through the colour, and turned out to be incredibly difficult to eliminate. What is more, the surface was so absorbent that the natural oil in the pastels just disappeared into the support before I could do much with it. The use of a little linseed oil to correct that was not a great success. It seemed to me that I would be working against the natural properties of the support all the time, so I abandoned that idea.
Then I thought I would try my hand with dry pastels. That was a good deal more satisfactory, and the holding properties of the gesso surface resulted in a good dense colour. Blending was a great deal easier also. The rough surface of the gesso its incredibly greedy with the pastel, however, and I would have to have a very good reason to use a method that is so profligate with my pastels.
On balance, then, I reckon that the experience was an interesting one. Thanks for the idea ….. but, “No thanks”. I’ll file it for future reference, but it’s not for use on this occasion. Still, as my wife says, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always had.” I’m glad I tried.