This is not one of my stronger pieces. It is fairly obvious that I didn’t think about the outcome of this piece too much. It is not meant to have any kind of philisophical meaning or depth, though I do not rule out the idea of someone seeing this and understanding something that I missed. I’m actually surprised by how often that happens. This piece, though, was an experiment, a time for me to play with colors and techniques. I picked some colors I liked, added elements I liked, and threw it all together. I didn’t really know how it would turn out, but the finished product is one that I can’t seem to turn away from.
You gotta love when experiments work. I’ve seen this tissue paper technique before but I’d never tried it. One of my 5*7 canvases seemed like the perfect foundation for my first attempt.
I took a square of tissue and crumpled it up as much as I possibly could. I spread it out (without flattening it), and after adding gel medium to the surface of my canvas, laid the tissue on top and simply pressed it into the gel without pulling or straightening it. I wrapped it around the edge and once the gel medium was dry, trimmed the edges.
Now that I had my textured surface, I had to decide what colors to work with. The tissue texture reminded me of the choppy water of a lake on a windy day, so I used a palette of blue and cream. I wet the tissue and used watered down acrylics to make the colors run together.
Once I added my clay pieces, I splashed a little more blue acrylic over the surface and let the whole thing dry once again.
This piece may not make me question any of life’s great mysteries, but it does make me anxious for summer. It’s a good thing we only live a couple of hours from the beach.
