Smile! - 28 Jun 2024

What happened with this one

Ok so this is the story.

I was experimenting with using gesso to create texture. Also to try and get like pools of colour with varnish or something? I don’t know anyway so I put this pattern of half circles with a dot in the centre. It looked like this:

Smiles half-moon with dots gesso canvas base

Intentionally uneven pattern, naturally.

What then?

The I painted with various primary colours in different directions to try and build up colour combinations varying over the underlying pattern. This kind of worked, with lots of adjustment and re-adjustment. It ended up … alright … but not necessarily what I wanted:

Smiles painted in colours

Oh and at this point I had already put black ink across it, to try and merge things? Or hide things, I guess.

How did it end up?

So as often occurs, I got irritated with it, and decided to cut into it. Thus the name:

Smile cut into the gesso

The underlying original gesso-covered canvas is exposed here. I actually like how it looked now, although it’s a little silly.