Who’d be a life model in this cold weather.

Last Monday morning I went to life drawing class. This drawing, like the green one a few posts before, has had the paper prepped with Matisse Transparent Gesso , with a little acrylic paint added for a bit of colour. I FAR prefer drawing large when I’ve got transparent gesso on the paper. It gives you something to dig into, and I draw better. (I find life drawing so difficult). It’s a transparent medium with gritty stuff in it (technical term!) that makes ordinary old cartridge paper work like pastel paper. This product is available in art stores around Australia, and in North America, you can get it from Jerry’s Artarama. It’s even on sale there now, as is all the other great Matisse stuff. 

Today is pretty cold, so I wagged life drawing, but I have been painting at home, testing some new products and they’re going to be such fun!  It doesn’t take much for me to wag life drawing. It’s silent, and it’s a struggle. It’s sooo tempting to stay home and do other art work that appeals to me more. I’ve also made some collograph plates, that I hope to print on Sunday. I’m taking a few classes with Seraphina Martin, who taught me collographs and viscosity printing. Hopefully I’ll have something worth putting on the blog next week. I’ve tried some amazing new textural things that I’m testing, so who knows how they’ll print.

Yes, it’s time I did my glossary. Maybe you don’t know what a collograph is, much less viscosity printing. You can see some of my viscosity-printed collographs from a few years ago here.  I found this short step-by-step on the web, should you want to have a try at collographs. We make our plates from mat board, and we print them on an etching press. Here’s all about viscosity printing from Wikipedia. This article says ‘it’s a slow process’. I’ve found that it’s not so slow once you get going – it’s just that it takes a long time to mix all your inks and set up. Takes a lot of space too.