“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Over the past year or so I’ve been exploring going bigger in my art. I have been painting and collaging in books since at least 2008, the largest pages of which have been about 11 x 14 inches. Creating single, stand-alone art — as an alternative to a bundle of spreads to be viewed as a multiple-paged whole — is new territory, as is experimenting with new materials.
Being used to a smaller, hard surface, attempting to switch to large canvas has been a new learning curve. Canvas has a lot of give, and it pushes me to use a gentler hand — something that ultimately changes the style of my art, I think, for better or worse.
A few weeks ago, though, I decided to try out wooden panels. They don’t come in as wide a variety of sizes as canvas, but is a good place to start broadening my horizons while working on a surface that retains some of paper’s characteristics. I bought some small panels on sale at Michael’s (their website is currently down) and later ordered larger ones from Amazon.
I’ve had a lot of fun experimenting on these. More experiments will certainly follow.
If you work or have worked on wooden panels before, I’d love to hear: do you gesso or otherwise prep the surface? Do you varnish the piece when you’re finished? Any other tips?
