IF "UNFOLD"

If a rich man

is what you mean to be. Then
forget the autumn evening too

Takarai Kikaku (1661-1707)

Original Version

I have been working on this piece many months. It started out as pastel on Rives paper but ended up as mixed media. The size is approximately 30"x36".
It seemed to fit this weeks subject pretty well.
I approached the subject in an intuitive manner, really just putting marks on the paper allowing the imagery and content to arise by itself. Somehow, it evolved into a form very reminiscent of a Buddha figure.
I liked the face pretty well for a long time, but it seemed that something was missing.
I was quite happy with the background which was a combination of pastel, acrylic and watercolor.
Over time, I also felt that the crown was too hokey, so I trimmed it.

Finished Version

AsI thought about it, I felt that I wanted to add a sense of time in the texture of the primary figure, however, I didn't want to compromise all of the pastel work that I was happy with.

I settled on the idea of adding a white tissue paper over the surface, which would unify the pastel color as well as obscure some of the areas I wasn't happy with.


The problem of adding tissue to pastel is a little complex as the tissue must be added with gel medium and gel medium should be spread on the surface for application. If you do that to pastel, of course you drag the pigment and it begins to blend.


My solution was to coat the very fragile tissue with gel first, and then gently apply it to the pastel surface.


As the application progressed I saw it was obscuring my imagery too much, so I allowed the tissue to dry to a certain extent, and then I began to rub or pull off sections, and reapply other sections...and pull them off after they almost completely dried.

In the end, I put washes of very diluted watercolor on the surface of the unprimed tissue. Because the tissue is very porous, it allowed for a nice spread and diffusion of the color.
I think I am done.
I think..............
Yep, I'm pretty sure!