Texture!

My friend Phoebe is a magician. She makes all these heavily textured backgrounds, and then by some sleight of hand I have not yet fathomed she draws and paints perfectly rendered portraits over them with each highlight and every eyelash placed precisely where she decides they should be, using all sorts of esoteric media, undeterred by the damned bumpy surface! Well, I'm just here to say...Can't do it!

I decided to try today, so I put a big glop of gesso on my paper and spread it around, then roughed it up with an old credit card and let it dry. Then I attempted to make (in charcoal, just like Phoebe does) my base drawing. After I made it about halfway, I gave up, rubbed out most of it, and went back in with pencil.

I tried some watercolor on the surface but found that it beaded up and I couldn't control it, so I switched to acrylic. I made a great big daub of it for a couple of hours, and finally did some fixes with a Stabilo and a gel pen and called it good. It's not good, but I'm done with it!

This, poor woman, is "Tachina." Gesso, pencil, acrylics, Stabilo, gel pen, on Fluid 140-lb. watercolor paper, 12x9 inches. Someday soon I will paint her with a big sloppy watercolor brush on some nice smooth paper and do her justice.