I had mentioned that I am experimenting with making some of my works have an "oil painting" feel and I had posted an example on my last blog. Here is another example of that. I am biased of course, but this is so far my favorite. The subject matter and the composition is akin to the western painting feel and this piece of work lends itself very nicely to this transition. I took this picture off center to show the gleaming quality of the paper/canvas/varnish.
For those of you who are familiar with mounting Xuan paper, you know it is delicate work. I shall describe a little bid of my process of mounting Xuan paper on canvas.
When we mount paper on paper, the difficulty of the task is to be sure that all the wrinkles are out so that we have a piece of perfectly smooth and taut painting when dried. As we lift the wet Xuan papers with glue applied, we just have to be careful in the lifting process, so that we are not tearing off the corners by mistake ( I've done that, and I found out how many swear words I know). Papers you can lift, but how do you lift a framed canvas ?
As you recall, my first experience was with the work submitted to the Audubon society when they asked for a 6x6 work on canvas. Since the framed canvas is small, I could easily lift the entire frame from the mounting surface without too much problem. As the frame gets bigger, the task becomes exponentially more difficult. A large, wet, flat surface creates so much suction and the fact that is frame is rigid and not flexible like paper, makes it almost impossible to lift the canvas frame. What I have done is I used small piece of clear acrylic ( any hardware store should have it.... this is better than glass because it is light, and safe to handle) and as I am ready to lift the canvas frame, I turned the whole thing over, i.e. so now the clear acrylic is sitting on top, over your painting, which is wet and glued to the canvas frame. Now I can slide the acrylic off the painting, with care of course. The clear acrylic allows me to see if I am sliding too fast to create tears in my work. The acrylic also has a little flexibility in it, so I can bend it a little bit to break the vacuum.
After the acrylic is removed, then I worry about brushing off any inadvertent air pockets and now I shall wrap the edge of the Xuan paper around the canvas frame to give it that wrap around look.
After drying the painting should be flat and taut, no different from Xuan paper on Xuan paper.
I now brush on either satin gel or gloss varnish according to my desire.
The problem now is what do I call my work, or how do I label my work. Is it oil, acrylic or mixed media? Any suggestion??????????
