Playing with Texture

Every now and then, I have this urge to break away from the norm and try something new. I use the Avon Valley Artists group as a time to try out these new things, not least because I respect their comments, both positive and negative (in the nicest possible way!)

The studio is completely upside down, undergoing a major restructure, so it was a case of whatever I could lay my hands on, and as the subject was 'Flowers', too much resource material was not required.

I used a piece of heavy paper as I felt there was going to be lots of water involved, and I collected scrim, gesso, gauze, and cling film to provide the textural imput.

I pasted the scrim, gauze and gesso onto the paper, especially on the LH side of the sheet, and when they had dried, I washed over the paper in three distinct bands of colour, and covered it with cling film, pulled into vaguely stem shapes.
 I left the whole thing to dry over night.

 

 

I lightly sketched  a stem of foxgloves in the central gap, but became aware that if I continued in this way, I was in danger of producing a 'copy' of a well known artists piece of work

I'm not sure how this came about; maybe I had seen the piece recently and subconsciously been influenced by it.

Anyway, I changed the flowers to simple daisy shapes and painted these the paper in a freehand way.

 

 

 

 

 

I kept adding the flowers until I felt the balance was right, and added the centres and a good deal of splatter, and it was time to finish. Not my finest hour, but an interesting exercise, and as usual, lots of fun to do.