I did a trial run of some homemade texture paste the other day. I mixed joint compound, acrylic paint, white glue, and water together to make a nice "Royal Icing" frosting-esque viscosity of paste that I was happy with. I'd planned on making a thickened version that was more like Butter Cream.Then I sealed it, intending to come back to it later, and promptly forgot I'd made it in the first place. I wasted half my materials.  But it was a blessing in disguise. I discovered more recipes, did more research, and learned that maybe I should add some different stuff in different amounts.   So today, I got those supplies, plus a bunch of tools I was missing to accurately measure, mix, and store it for a short while. I also got stuff to then clean my tools afterwards without using my sink and perplexing the literally ancient plumbing in my Queen Anne Victorian house. I'm feeling good about it. I've got less and less of an excuse to finish the endeavor I've been thinking about for a vey long time. I'm yet another step closer to creating work inspired by one of my art heroes, Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh. I already glued the burlap onto the substrates I was gifted by my friend Squeaky as sample canvases (like MMM did). But I've also gessoed the surface to sort of pull the color of the burlap back toward white, using contemporary acrylic gesso which didn't exist when MMM was doing her work. I have a LOT of new materials that I'm going to be substituting for the materials she had at hand.   My biggest hurdle all along has been the texture paste. MMM used traditional gesso, prepared in a way that I can't do. She slaked Plaster of Paris, then let the remains dry to a powder, which she then dissolved with melted rabbit skin glue and whiting (which was essentially gypsum powder). In other words, she did her work using stone minerals held together with glue.   Not something I can do. Her pieces were heavy. I mean--HEAVY. Like, 40lbs for an artwork, which is much much heavier than the average person today can hang up on their own walls by themselves.   I dunno about you all, but I don't have the skills to hang a 40lb. piece of art on my wall. Let alone construct a frame which could hold it. So I'm passing on that. My current plan is to use a recipe that looks like this:  A Plaster of Paris base mixed with water to pancake batter consistency white Elmer's Glue-All white acrylic paint additional joint compound to thicken things (USG Easy Sand 90) and finally contemporary acrylic modeling paste to smooth things out Acrylic paint retarder to extend the storage longevity of the paste Water on hand just in case things get too thick I have a rough idea of proportions, which I didn't have last time, so I made far too much.  But I learned that the mix I made didn't dry white, which is important. I need it to dry in a tone that isn't gray, because I don't think I can go back over it with white gesso afterwards to pull all the tones together. I will absolutely need to layer more paste over the top of layers beneath it, and it will need to adhere to those layers without gesso being in the way. So no overpainting.  I'm excited. I've seen so much wonderful stuff done with texture painting, and I'm really hopeful I'll be able to pull off the effects I'm interested in achieving. I have glass and rhinestones to embed in the paste in different places, and I've purchased a short caulking gun tool that uses small 10oz. refillable tubes that I can hopefully fill with my paste mixture. I need a more controllable and consistent way of extruding lines of a thinned version of the past onto the canvas without putting in years of practice doing cake decorating with an icing bag (which is what MMM used).  It's all terribly fascinating and now I just have to do it. I'm happy with my paste recipe, and I'm very curious to see how it works.  But what I'm most excited about is the capacity to express myself in a non-digital way. All my life I've worked in fabric and costume crafts, making physical items. It'll be nice to step back into that world once in a while, away from digital.   

In which I discuss feeling overwhelmed, reassuring myself I'm not, and a new owl print.

Fairytales often contain themes that can speak to us across the ages.