Abstraction with Surface Texture

Our second abstract landscape class with Cynthia Herron focused on abstraction through surface texture. Her paintings include a one or more layers of texture often as the under ground.  We each received a 6x8 inch board already textured.  Layers of green and blue tissue paper were glued onto my board.  I selected a photo of a bird sitting on plant stalks to paint on the board.  Then, I mixed up some hard molding paste with buff titanium and red oxide paint to roughly match the stalk color.  In the photo, the stalks appear to be very textured.

I wanted to simulate this texture-

Next, I painted the stalks and the bird, added another layer with a tissue paper drawing I did of tree leaves.

Other students used different textured boards.  Below, the texture was created with heavy gesso applied with a palette knife-

a gesso layer with crumpled tissue paper on top-

more layers of decorative and tissue papers-

a layer of molding paste-

The local artists Cynthia referenced for our class are Sharon Geraci, who teaches at the Multnomah Arts Center, and Eunice Parsons.  Both use collage materials in their paintings for surface texture.  I'll attempt to get photos of these works in progress as they become finished for the next post.