mikela and i in 2006 at my show at skoufa gallery in athens
2:46 PM: as i said yesterday, using this high quality cotton canvas for this genre of painting was a gamble. i originally purchased it to use for my gaze series acrylic & collage paintings, reserving the far more expensive portrait linen for more delicate work, along the lines of the oil interiors. how would it be to work on this cotton surface? i started applying color before even finishing the drawing, so anxious was i to find out!
with the very first brush strokes, i realized that, not only is this canvas just as good as the portrait linen; it's better! because it's less absorbent and whiter, the colors are easier to work with and pop more. easier to work with because sfumato, or blending of colors and tones is far easier when the colors sit on the surface and are nor immediately absorbed into the canvas. and last but not least, it's about 1/3 the price of the portrait linen & i have almost an entire 84" wide roll. have provided a detail of oil interior 1, to show what i mean.
now some might read this, and some of my other posts, as say "tarlow, what are you doing giving away all your secrets?" to them i say: knowledge, in whatever form, is to share.
tomorrow we have meetings in edwards, a 3 hour drive. we plan on going & returning in one day. a long day, but at the end we get to sleep in our own bed! so no studio tomorrow.