In the bottom drawer of the reference file cabinet at the studio, I have a mishmosh of different substrates I've collected that the older students can choose from for their work.
Heavy cardboard, plaster, canvas in all sizes, birch, and then I had a few wood pieces I had picked up awhile ago.
One teen was doing a focus on a model she admired, Allison Harvard. She wanted to work on a painting, so started looking through the bottom file cabinet. She got pretty excited about this piece of wood and was happy to use it for her work.
That is until I told her it would need to be treated with gesso and of course the only gesso I had on hand was white. (note to self, buy some clear gesso)
She didn't want to lose the natural wood surface so she began to use prisma pencils instead.
As my mother would say, she started walking down the garden path to wherever that may lead.
And by allowing her plan to change and by making decisions as the choices presented themselves, she ended up with this piece below.
Pencil, acrylic paint, and then glazes.
My 22 year old came home from University for the weekend and walked into the studio to say hello. She spotted the work sitting on the table waiting for the artist to make her final touches and fell IN LOVE with the work.
Beautiful and dark is what she called it.
The purple just glows on the work in person.
The student was very happy in the end and that makes me very happy.
I thought it was a very nice combination of materials. And since I had never thought to combine colored pencil and acrylic together this way, I was quite happy to follow her down the garden path to see where the artwork would end up.
Which was somewhere lovely indeed.
portrait of Allison Harvard, 14 year old
acrylic and colored pencil on wood
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