After I began the six small paintings on the lighter weight paper I decided to see what the heavier sheets could do. I also wanted to get back to my process of generating new paintings from previous work. The smaller paintings had not followed that process, instead they were just about playing with the material. In this way those six small paintings are related more to the process of the Residuals, What comes next paintings made this past winter and the Water-downed Facts paintings done this spring.
Interestingly, I did not choose to begin with previous paintings for the larger work, but selected two works that I would consider more asides or even detritus from earlier parts of my process. And they both grew out of images of work I have not posted here on this process website.
With both of these larger, 26 x 40 inch/65 x 100 cm paintings I wanted to try scaling up the earlier work I was beginning with. The scale is different, so I knew that from the start this would shift reference. I’ve been thinking of ways to do this, and a projector of some sorts seems the most logical. But I didn’t have one and was not in the position of investing in one at that time. Also, I wasn’t sure what kind of projector I wanted … digital or analog. A friend suggested I look online for a website that scales up, or just tile print the digital file myself using Photoshop. I took her suggestion and a quick search led me to a website, The Rasterbator, which enables one to scale up an image file to David Hockney mural scale in minutes … and then save a PDF to be printed on standard 8 1/2 x 11 inch or A4 paper at your leisure.
I selected my image, a monoprint/drawing on vellum that exists only as a scan of two drawings sandwiched together and derived from the Two Sides to the Story paintings:
After scaling it up, downloading and printing the PDF I decided to just mount the sheets of paper together onto a piece of the 130 lb paper. Of course, this meant the edges and seams of the paper grid would become a part of the painting. But, because I am just playing around here I thought, why not? I used acrylic matte medium to mount the printouts to the heavier paper and gave the whole thing a few additional coats to seal it in preparation for the oil paint that would eventually go on top. Then I added some layers of acrylic color, using Franzi and Petra ways of working as a guide. Then the painting was taped up to the board on the easel where I began to add oil in ways similar to the paintings I was doing this past winter and spring. The tape allowed me to keep the first layers of acrylic visible from the oil layers that followed. There was sanding. And then the painting was taken down from the easel and brought back to the table in the basement for some final touches. Because this was about finding out how the paper responded to the paint and my process I will say that for the most part I like it. However, I noticed the 130lb paper does tend to roll up on the sides, perhaps due to the weight of the paper and paint at its center. The second painting on the larger paper I did on the 200lb paper and it does not roll up at the edges. However, that painting does not have the additional weight of the paper and the paint is in general much thinner than what I applied on the 130lb.
the second painting I actually began before the first. I decided to scale up the drawing by redrawing freehand — no grid, just winging and eyeballing it — one of the drawings Petra and I have been working on the past two summers. I haven’t photo-documented any of those graphite pencil drawings yet, but they are derived from frottage drawings Petra did of the Black, White and Blue paintings. Unlike the first painting, this painting began with the sheet of 200lb paper pinned to the studio wall — in the vertical rather than horizontal position. I drew with pencil and then painted with thinned Lukascryl paint. I took it down, sanded it a bit on the basement table, and then taped it to the board on the easel. From that point the process became the same as with the first painting. I don't feel that the heavier paper needs to be mounted like the smaller, lighter weight sheets. The rolling of the 130lb is likely controlled by not mounting the other paper to it. The idea of tiling up to a big, mural size painting has given me much to think about in terms of how I might use all this paper. And I think I will invest in a digital projector soon as I would like to draw on the paper rather than rely on a program or app to do the work for me.
I’ve decided not to post any images of the making process here as it is more how the paper responded in the end that interests me. I will just post a picture of each painting along with a few details. The photos were taken in indirect sunlight on a bright and sunny day.