Layering

This week's teacher was a doll, and therefore I hate to say that her lesson result was just a little "twee" for my taste. But what I did like was her sense of adventure and play.

This painting has a layer of gesso, rolled on with a brayer; a layer of five or six different colors of acrylics, spread around with a palette knife and then scratched into each other; then the sun (or in the original, the moon) and the picture of the girl are drawn and painted on the top; then we came back in with some more gesso, both free-hand smudging and also some stencil work; and to finish it up, we simply took a white gel pen and scribbled all over it! So even if the girl and sun are not necessarily what I would do on my own, all the techniques to go under whatever I do end up doing are really cool!

"Sun Worship"—gesso, acrylic paints, flow-aid, charcoal pencil, gel pen, on Fluid 140-lb. hotpress (smooth) watercolor paper, about 8.5x11 inches.