Yers ago whenever my mother finnished painting with Oil or acrylic , she would `clean` her brushes by rubbing all the leftover paints on clean white canvasses. Later she would usec those as base for her New paintings , claimimg this old rubbed on leftover paints gave her painting DEPTH,,, Took me years to grasp it, as another painter looked at my fiberart and mentioned something about my Piled xst ,,,Indeed i do pile at ceratin places , layers of xst with different colors, as i remarked to her taht it gives `depth` to my work ,,, i suddenly thopught of my mother doing it with paint .. Any other personm here working with layers ???
Interesting thought. When I was first taking art lessons, millions of years ago, it was with oils and that building of paint is definitely a technique for depth and light. The thing with oil paints and their opacity is that the underlayers affect how light is reflected through the overlayers, not so much a color mixing thing. But you do get texture and different light effects that way. The master of this is Vermeer - famous for having worked amazingly to have a luminous effect in his paintings that is derived from his technique of underpainting. When there was a Vermeer show here at the National Gallery I went 3 times, and bought a the catalog, and a hefty work on Vermeer - which is filled with technical details. It was amazing seeing nearly all his works (they'd been gathered from around the world) up close and personal - for that glowing, amazing effective lighting.
For watercolorists it's a different thing - the ground - the paper - is what is essentially the base for reflecting the light through the paint layers and how you perceive it. Very hard for myself, and others that I know to switch from oils to watercolors (the dark to light as in oils vs light to dark in watercolors) so layering is a different issue technically altogether.
I've seen some really interesting works done mostly on canvas - with mixed structure and layering to get kind of a stitched, formed thing. IME at the ANG national seminar exhibition there have been some pieces done in layers - including fabrics layered with the stitching. It's interesting. I've thought about it. The closest I've come is some padded stitches or doing specialty stitches that are built up with one color on the bottom level and another on the top.
Thank you Ellice for this wonderful letter , we never stop learning more and more ,, I was lucky that for a while my mother had her class moved into our home, thus i learned a lot by listening , and made some pocket money when they needed a `model` ,,,, Had great fun also seeing how diffferent everyone drew me. In my fiberwork i gained lots of understanding of how colors `come out` or can be enriched or subdued, by experimenting, by looking . Not only how a thread `behaves in one technique , but also , or maybe esp since i used the same thread in various techniques, knitting , crochet , embroidery, weaving and even plaiting and sewing with it .....Because they don`t `mix` like colors , you have to `use` , tiny spaces and openings in order for your eye to get the `mixed/layered ` look . your best excercize will be to choose 2 varigated thread that have 1 common hue Now start with one of your threads and make any form of stitch , but make it looser bigger , = if you intended to work over
2 threads work over 4 or 6 , after you covered the wanted space , change to 2nd thread and make big stitches [ over 4 or 6 threads ] but shift the middle of that thread ,, = if in your first layer you worked
over 12 / 34 / 56 from the end of cloth or form . now you work over 23/ 45/ 67 etc..... you can repeat it with more threads or add another color ,,,, it all depends in the END result you want to get at that certain part of your work. it transforms many an embroidered thing into a feeling of it being almost 3D ,,, it gives a depth to the whole work around it,,, I usually have an idea an image and start workijng with the threads, this kind of work isn`t planned , it is BORN on the spot where i want it , where i feel it is meant to be. But the excercise i described for you will be a good starter. Ater which you will have to listen to the materials and your heart and work till you feel that it is OK. mirjam
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