Category: Canvas

I decided that I would throw up a work in progress for you, since I have been throwing up sketches left and right recently. Unfortunately, due to study commitments, the ability to find enough time to go and paint at all has been difficult. Nevertheless, before the work-load got too over the top, I was able to get started on this piece of work.

A while back, I did a series of artworks which involved a lot of experimentation… some of it worked, some of it didn’t. What I did find during that series, however, was a technique I think I will be coming back to again and again since the results were so ideally perfect that I was literally bouncing up and down clapping my hands after I put the final coat of glaze over the piece. Long story short, the technique is just a particular method of building up colour and producing a fine texture across the work.

When I discovered this pre-stretched canvas along with all the rest, I knew it was a perfect opportunity to play with something along those lines again. The canvas has a rather pronounced imperfection which makes it unsuitable for ‘regular’ artworks. There is a huge gouge in the smooth surface of the canvas which just makes it unworkable for me (which can’t even be seen by this far-away shot of the canvas… its there, trust me). When I see something like this, however, I can’t help but feel that it is an opportunity to play with it, to turn this imperfection into something beautiful rather than shunning it for marring a perfectly otherwise-useable canvas. Its a canvas that is going to make me work around it, rather than the other way around. Quirky, but fun, because I think we’re going to be challenging each other a bit along the way.