I-O, I-O, It's off to work I go!

I'm getting started on a new piece about Io, the moon of Jupiter. I started off with a bit of research--thank you Wikipedia!--after having a little knowledge already after working on this collage on the Medici dynasty.

© 2012 Cathy Savage, Brunechelli's Dome, 22 x 30", pencil, acrylic

Galileo was a part of the Medici court until the whole sun-is-the-center-of-the-solar-system debacle, so I have a fragment about the Galilean Moons shown here. (They are glued onto the wedding invite envelope of artist Carolyn Kimball. No kidding! I save it all!!)

First things first
I gessoed one side of a 22 x 30" sheet of Rives BFK and on the other applied a coat of Golden soft gel medium semi-gloss on the other. I plan on adhering this paper to a piece of plywood at some point. I should do it now, but I want to get started and don't have the plywood cut to size, so I'm going about things a little backwards. The layer of gel medium will seal my paper and allow me to glue it down on that side with much better results.

I traced a (dirty) trash can lid onto my paper this morning so I could go ahead and get started. This morning's art task is to work on the background for space, the final frontier. I was looking through the children's book Louisa: The Life of Louisa May Alcott by Yona Zeldis McDonough and I loved the textures in the illustrations by Bethanne Andersen. The Io drawing/collage will probably end up being a texture fest now that I have my new book on textures and I'm dying to try them out!!