A Tale of Two Canvases

It's funny what you can accomplish when you have a deadline to meet.  Or, in my case, a looming deadline.  As in mere days to potentially move artistic mountains.  Now, no complaints from my corner--I'm a notorious procrastinator and I do it to myself.  You guys may remember my last post where I showed you two big canvases I'd had kicking around my art space for several years.  Well, they've gone through several transformations since I last checked in.  I'm afraid I'm not showing the end result in a very timely fashion, but at least the finish line has been crossed.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it! :D

So, when last we saw the two canvases, they were primed and ready for some stroke of genius to befall them.  In the meantime, they underwent several coats of gesso to build up some texture.  Once that was done to my satisfaction, I decided to spread some yellow ochre across all my lovely new layers.  I thought, "That'll look great!"  I then used a rag to blot some texture and let it sit for a day or two to dry.  Next, I spread instant coffee across the dampened surface.  "It's going to look like aged parchment," I said to myself.

And then they dried.  And they looked like this...

Yeeeaah, not really the look I was going for...at all. Fortunately, there's always room for improvement!  It was a warm spring day, so I decided to spritz some water on my poor canvas experiments and start again.  I rather liked the streaks that resulted from the instant coffee streaming down to the deck.  That was at least one good thing that came of the yellow nightmares.

Feeling a little dejected at my failure so far, I left my canvases to dry.  They then sat in my little studio while I stewed over what to do with them and tackled some other projects.  Finally, the deadline for my art show was knocking on my door, and I had to do something with those two sad canvases.  I had already decided a long time ago that I wanted to draw some stylized water fowl on them.  So, on a sunny morning, I hauled them out to the kitchen and brushed on some phthalo blue to cover up the terrible egg yolk yellow.  The result was a very pleasing turquoise blue with some of the original coffee streaks showing through.  After another round of drying time, I sprinkled a little more instant coffee on them, sealed them, and left them for one more round of drying time.

Funnily enough, the bulk of the time I spent on these silly canvases was soaked up in just trying to get the texture and color right.  Once I was satisfied with that, I sat down with my vine charcoal and sketched out a heron and an egret in about five minutes.  I simply looked at the canvases and let my mind pick out shapes among the texture or swirls of paint to help determine where the body of each bird would fall.

From there, I went over the rough sketches with a Prisma marker and filled in the details.  After many hours and many episodes of Tattoo Nightmares (yeah, it's a guilty pleasure), I was done.  Behold, the final product!

Skyward and Windfall, mixed media

I chose to depict a great blue heron and an egret to tie in with the watery background.  These are birds that I grew up watching as they stalked the shore of my backyard and flew back and forth across the lake.  The birds can stand on their own, but I really like how they function as a pair, too.  These pieces were a bit of a departure for me, but I'm thrilled with how they turned out. It feels good to tackle a large format for a change.  And, while the project became more of a saga than anticipated, I've reached the end with two big new pieces and a new direction in which to take my work.  Thanks for coming along with me!  If you're in the Acworth, GA area, please stop by Gallery 4463 to take a look at my work in person.  Otherwise, I'll be back again soon with more projects and progress!