I grew concerned about the fragility of the drawings on paper and the fact that they had to be protected with glass, which obscured some of the hard-won nuances. While searching for a way to get a texture in acrylic paint that would evoke the grainy luminosity of the drawings, I stumbled on the idea of floating thin washes of opaque color over a surface on which I had created a heavy, suede-like “tooth” with black gesso and a paint roller.
The wash of lighter, colored paint pooled in the tiny hollows of the dark gessoed surface as it dried, creating a variation on both the rubbed pastels and the charcoals – here the lights settled in the troughs of the surface grain and the shadows broke through the crests.
The wash of lighter, colored paint pooled in the tiny hollows of the dark gessoed surface as it dried, creating a variation on both the rubbed pastels and the charcoals – here the lights settled in the troughs of the surface grain and the shadows broke through the crests.