I haven’t shown my tree specimen book since March. The main reason for this is because I got a bit discouraged. The book has plaster coated pages on canvas that were meant for sketches. But the pages are very rough so I needed to get more gesso to apply on top. I also decided to get some charcoal to use for a bit more “rough” sketching. I got my supplies, painted all the canvas pages with gesso, let that dry for a while and then tried a sketch.
The pages are still very rough and are difficult to sketch on. I was disappointed with my sketch and really didn’t enjoy the process. So that discouraged doing any more sketches. The book sat for quite a while with nothing added.
Then when I was painting other things, I had leftover paint. I hate to waste paint so I decided I would start painting the canvas pages. Then I could add more on top and there wouldn’t be that intimidating white page (that I didn’t like the feel when sketching).
I showed you this one before but I added the definition of tree to the bottom. The fun thing about this book, is that you can keep adding as you go.
Here’s another print of a thicket of trees that I added.
And this one is a print of a tree stump and some little blue leaves that I got from one of my friends. Thanks Christa!
So I haven’t given up on my book. I’m not sure it will ever be “finished”, but that’s OK. I will continue to add bits and bobs as time goes by.
I have been continuing to slowly add bits and pieces to my tree ‘specimen’ book. You can see most of the ‘blank’ pages of the book in this post and some pages that have had ‘specimens’ added to them here.
This is definitely a ‘slow’ project that I am working on very intermittently. It’s been fun to pick it up again and just add a few things here and there without pressure to finish it or make it look perfect.
I added some more machine stitched moss to the first page and a definition of mossy.
On this page spread on the left, I had one of my plaster coated pages but it had cracked significantly. I need to get some gesso to paint over these pages but since I haven’t ordered it yet, I decided to try something different. I layered different colors of paint on the cracked surface. You can click on the photo to enlarge it. The page on the right is a torn piece from one of my small sketchbooks. It kind of reminds me of pine needles. It was originally screen printed and I added colored pencil to enhance the look of the pine needles. Torn and messy is the point of this book so I ripped the sketchbook page and glued it down to a lightly painted background page. You can see the dark edges of the next page which is next up.
The page on the right is an eco print on paper that my friend Paula created. She has a big stash of these papers and kindly let me use a few.
This is the back side of the eco print above. I cut a window out of the painted background so you could see more of the backside of the eco print. I added a machine stitched tea bag leaf as well. The right side is another plaster coated canvas pages that needs to be gessoed and then drawn or painted on.
This pine cone on the right was stenciled ages ago. I pushed some kind of thicker medium through the stencil to give a relief effect. It didn’t work all that well and got a bunch of bubbles in it. I painted it green at some point but didn’t like that either. I got it out of my paper stash and decided I needed to finish it. I added walnut ink, sepia marker and matte medium to get it to a point that I was satisfied with it looking like a pine cone. It also needed more strategic cutting out than I had done previously. I glued it down to the painted background letting a little bit of the pine cone stick out over the edge of the page. This is a testament to never giving up on a piece of artwork!
Next to the feathers that I had shown you in my last post, I glued another one of Paula’s eco prints down on to the dictionary page. I can’t decide if this page needs something else but I will just leave it for now. I do want to leave more simplified areas where the eye can rest.
This one on the right is the last page that I worked on this time. It was originally a deconstructed screen print on paper all in the brighter green. When I was looking through the book, this page caught my eye as I saw a leaf in the middle of the page. I used Inktense pencils and then water on a brush to make the darker leaf appear more strongly on the page. I hope you can tell I am having fun with this. It is a very freeing process not worrying about the final outcome.
