And all Because......

...one of the pieces of music I used for my slideshow was called 'I believe I can fly' and as I listened to it over and over again while I was putting the slideshow together, an idea for a painting popped into my mind.

My daugher Rebecca has been learning to fly  this past summer. Her tuition is on hold now over the winter months but she is looking forward to the spring again when she can complete her training and finally be able to fly solo. She seems so young to me still,  but I know she is growing up fast. She is so full of ambition and motivation to succeed. Its wonderful to see.  You know the saying 'the sky's the limit'... that is certainly true for her. I didn't want to put her in a glider for my painting though because I also wanted to encorporate the more imaginative side of her personality into the portrait too.

She is just like me in that way...she has such a vivid imagination so it was easy to get her 'to believe' in my idea for the reference photo shoot.

" Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the things you can think up if only you try!"– Dr Seuss

.... so I placed a chair in the middle of the basement and a  fan beside it, gave her a summer dress to put on and told her to sit on the chair, feel the summer's breeze through her hair and imagine she was on a swing high in the sky, above the clouds. 

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.  ~Henry David Thoreau

yes, I know she only really had the floor to look at, and a chair instead of a swing but  her imagination could fill in the rest and hopefully my pencil and brushes can bring to life what was in her mind. (fingers crossed)

The outline is drawn onto watercolour paper and stretched on a board. It is another big one... I just couldn't resist it. Its 24 by 33 inches.

Ona

Going larger with gallery wraps!

Hi everyone:)

So you all know I have been working on developing further the gallery wrapped paper idea for watercolours over the last 8 months or so.

In case you are new to this blog here is an example I did this summer mounted in a floater frame and HERE is the link to my post back in October which takes you through my version of the gallery wrap process

Up until now all the ones I have done, like this one, are small ones but I am now gradually trying and developing the technique for bigger gallery wraps. When I did one of the two baby duck gallery wraps which was14 by 14 inch I found that with the constant wetting of the paper (because I glaze) the foam core 'sandwich' had begun to bow a little. It was hardly noticable at this size, but it made me think about what I could do for larger paintings. I would like to get to the point when I can do a 40 by 40 inch gallery wrap. So....

.... this brings me to my current experiment. I have been sensible and not gone too big yet so I have just wrapped a 20 by 20 inch one (half the size of my goal size).

To stop the bowing/ sagging of the foam core I am trying sandwiching 2 layers of foamcore between the paper and stretcher bars. I stuck the first , as usual to the stretchers with double sided tape and then repeated this with the second layer of foamcore stuck to the first one and then wrapped over the combo. My theory is that while my top layer of foam core will still get very wet, the bottom one will stay dryer and support the top one. I like the slightly deeper more gallery style effect that the double layer of foam core gives me. I did a quick wet on wet experiment at this size and then took apart the gallery wrap to look at the foam core underneath. The experiment worked well.

I will have to think of something to paint this size now :) I'm not sure how much painting I'm going to get done this month as I am working on developing some ideas but in the New year I'm definitely going to try a bigger gallery wrap!

Ona