Endeavors in Traditional Art

It’s no secret I make digital art. It’s my primary mode of creative expression. I have made digital art for years now, and I’m very very happy doing it. it’s really easy to make greeting cards and other print media when creating work using a digital medium, and that’s a big part of why I stuck with it. I felt strongly that I wanted my art to have a practical use; to have a function as well as form.

I’d done the wearable art thing a couple years prior, and it hadn’t been as successful as I’d desired as quickly as I needed. I also felt like digital art was a medium used in publishing, and I was really attracted to the textures and expressiveness of children’s books.

But in the last five years, the world has changed, and digital mediums have changed as well. Programs/Apps have come and gone, entire platforms have disappeared, and we’ve had the birth and death of NFTs and the devastating impact of generative AI.

The world isn’t the same as it was.

My life has also changed significantly since I started doing fine art as a full-time career. I moved, met new people that are important to me, and joined new organizations that have deeply changed me as a person. I’m not the same person I was even a year ago. I live in a different region of the world and I’ve put my past behind me to start a new chapter in my life. Of course I left clear signs where I can be found, but much of what drove me as a person isn’t what drives me today.

I also found inspirational art “heroes” that have deeply influenced me. I had a collection of artists I really admired as I started exploring digital art, but since then I’ve become aware of so many more artists that have a much more specific impact on my work. Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh is one of those artists.

I could go into her biography, but you all have the capacity to do browser searches just like I do. You can look her up yourself. She’s well worth discovering.

I’ve been doing research on her techniques and process. And I’m attempting my own version of them, using contemporary tools and materials and my own eye and inspirations. I’m not interested in replicating her work, but emulating her example.

I’ve been slowly accumulating the tools and mediums I need to make my own creative works. I’ve purchased palette knife sets, various cold waxes, pre-made linen boards, and cake decorating piping applicators. I’ve bought gesso, white glue, and yards of burlap for substrate preparation. And I’ve recently delved into building supplies that might render the effects I want by creating my own texture pastes.

The last couple days I’ve made my own practice canvases by glueing burlap to spare pieces of plywood and sheetrock that a friend gave me after her recent bathroom remodeling. I’d luckily purchased several boxes of binder clips that I’d used to glue notepads together, so I used them to hold down the edges of the glued burlap on to the wood as each panel dries.

The dry time, I’ve learned, takes several days as different parts of the surface of the panels need to be glued in different stages. The front surface is the easy part—the wrapped edges take a series of days. I have to let each glue application dry for 24 hours before unclipping things and moving on to the next step.

My plan is to then create some texture paste in multiple viscosities, then start applying it onto the burlap in different waves depending on what I need it to do. A base coat of highly textured paste will accomplish a nice unifying surface but let the burlap show through in some places. Then I can consider building up specific parts of the canvas surface and create piped lines of interest as well, each with a different thickness of paste.

I’m looking forward to experimenting and discovering what parts of this theoretical process work, as well as figuring out how much time it might take to prep things. I anticipate I’ll need to figure out how to create marking on the paste with paper that I can trace onto it so line work can be mirrored on each half of the canvas. I’ll also need to determine the thickness of the piping lines and how much bas relief I want to incorporate into each expression.

After that, I’ll need to add color with paint. Oy, it’s gonna be a long process!!

But it’s shaping up to be a fun one!! I’ll keep you posted as I progress forward!