I am excited to attend my upcoming gallery opening at Cove Gallery (ww.covegallery.com).  The opening is Saturday, August 15 from 6:00-8:00 pm.  I will be showing new works including seascapes and floral paintings such as the Hydrangeas painting shown above.  Hope to see new and returning clients at the opening!  Meg

After the painting is completely dry, it can be tacked to a wall for closer viewing and inspection.  The painting can be worked on even in this stage.  I mark the areas with a colored grease pencil in which I want to make changes and then replace the painting back onto the flat work surface seen in previous blogs.  I add additional PVC glue to the pulp that I will now apply in order for it to adhere to the already dried pulp.

Let’s pause and view the in-progress painting for a moment.  The purple toned background is created largely with over-beaten abaca and treated with a mixture of water and paper sizing to prevent the surface from absorbing stained water that might leak from the addition of any new colored pulp that is applied.  In the case of this painting, that would refer to the green toned pulps in the foreground, which are a combination of cotton and abaca, beaten for 20 to 30 minutes in a hollander beater.  The sky area is created with the same cotton/abaca mix, and pigmented in blue tones.  At this stage, the painting will be allowed to dry under weights for several days, at which point another review of its completeness will be determined. 

Another way to remove colored water before it stains the surface of the painting is to squirt it back into the desired location with water from a squirt bottle.  Notice that the pulp I am using is green for the foreground of the painting (the green will eventually represent trees).  To accentuate the rough outline that trees would naturally make, I leave the edges of the green pulp jagged, in order to mimic the trees in nature.

Despite my best efforts, the pulp doesn’t always land where I want it to; it spills out from the designated area. as illustrated in the above photo.  If left untreated, the surface of the painting will absorb the colored water, thus creating a permanent stain.  To avoid the stain (I’ll never be able to avoid the recalcitrant pulp spills!), I treat the surface of the in-progress painting with a mixture of water and liquid paper sizing.  I fill a squirt bottle about 3/4 full of water, and then add a 1/4 cup of liquid sizing.  I spray the surface of the painting with this mixture and allow it to dry thoroughly.  This procedure protects the surface from absorbing the colored water as the sizing creates a tension between the water and the surface.  I simply take a rag and apply it to the colored water, and soak it up into the rag.

A closer look at the painting after the turkey baster has been used to apply pulp to designated areas.  See Monday July 20 blog for photo of application of pulp.

The turkey baster is used to apply larger quantities of pulp to the painting surface.  I place approximately one cup of pigmented pulp into a plastic container (such as a yogurt container) and fill the rest of the container with water.  I then suck the pulp up into the baster and squirt onto the surface of the painting.  Old plastic cards (credit cards, hotel room cards) can be used at this stage to gather the pulp into the designated area (shown in the photo above by the red marking).

The squeeze bottle holds over-beaten pulp that can be used for detailed areas of the painting.  In the photo above, I am squeezing over-beaten pulp, which has been diluted in a cup of formation aid, onto the surface of the painting “Changing Seasons” shown here in completion.