Tag: frisket

Weeds Behind La Purisima Mission

Last summer we ran away from home, up the coast, to La Purisima Mission in the area of Lompoc, California.  It’s a small town with a wonderful secularized California Mission, La Purisima, restored by the state during the Depression.  It has gardens, outbuildings, a wonderful historical center, and is a lovely place to walk around on a sunny day.  I took my camera with me, and today’s painting is based upon the photograph below.

This little patch of weeds is located on the backside of the mission, and I found it so charming.  The weeds are typical California plants – hardy, drought resistant, resinous.  Grasses and flowers.  Furry leaves.  All these help keep the plants from drying out in the relentless sun and low humidity.

I am not really sure if I caught what I wanted to do with this photograph, but I am pleased enough to put my name on the scan  I used a lot of the techniques I learned from Rick Surowicz’s Fall Lake video.

Putting on the frisket was scary.  I was so unsure about it, but knowing the only way to learn was to do, I did!  Blobs, lines, sprinkles and splatters of frisket.  Paint.  Paint some more.  Finally I arrived at a point where I just didn’t think I could go any further, and it is at this point I stopped.  And then removed the frisket.  More paint added here and there, lines, whatever.  The final result is below.

 

Holiday Cards: Laundry

Another practice study from Peter Sheeler.  Here he uses masking tape – painters tape – to create a frisket.  He tore pieces of tape and pressed them into the paper, as a resist to the dry brush technique he used to create the sense of a very windy laundry day.  As a kid, I remember those days, pegging the clothes and sheets.  It was a lot of fun, a lot of work, but always worth the smell of fresh air on your sheets when you went to bed.

First, here is the picture with the “laundry” masked with randomly torn bits of painter’s tape.

And here is the final picture.  To frame the picture, I used more tape around the edges of the picture.  If you watch the video, you’ll see why!