New work! Inspired by PBS and my clean (ish) studio

Frigid Winter Day, Sold at Haven Gallery earlier this year...

I'm working on a new collage. I had fun putting together this collage from earlier this year and I'm kinda going in the same direction with this new collage.

To get started I gessoed some Arches 88 (my usual paper choice of Rives BFK was MIA). I gessoed on both sides to help prevent the paper from curling and to get a nice hardy surface. The hardest part is waiting for the gesso to dry. I'm eager to get going and I have to wait it out.







 
This doodle and the PBS special on the Medici family got me inspired to do a piece in red and incorporate drawings of eggs, the dome of the Florence cathedral, and the Galilean Moons.

I started wading through my stash of papers and established a pile to pull from. Then I got to work gluing stuff down. I used Golden Soft Gel as my primary adhesive, covering the back of my papers with a decent amount of the gel, then use a brayer to press it into my Arches 88 to get a really nice adhesion (I use my heavy art books for about 15 mins to press down on the papers if I sense the glued paper wants to ripple). For a huge piece of paper I tried using my 3M pressure adhesive and I have to say, thumbs up! It was easy to use. It's like a huge roll of double stick tape that comes with backing for easy application. They include a squeegee too.

Here's the piece at a stopping point. I put in a silver envelope from a wedding save the date that I had in my stash box. My silver paint will get some heavy use, I'm thinking. I plan on using good old fashioned pencils too when I start in on the sketches.