Another Painting Sold - Chrysanthemum Mono-Print

Here is a lovely painting that just sold today.  I'm going to walk you through the steps I took to create it. You can click on the pic to enlarge it.

This is a Chrysanthemum Mono-Print.  It means exactly what you think.  One Print.  I couldn't in my wildest dreams create another painting like this.  It's always an adventure working in this medium, and I never quite know what I'm going to get!

My love affair with wood began six years ago when our youngest son was ten.  He wanted to take woodcarving.

My thoughts were that I could either drop him off and go waste time somewhere, or take the class with him, which I REALLY wanted to do.  Picture in your mind eight or nine little ten year old boys, and at the end of the table - ME!  Yep. :)  It was great.  I think I had the most fun, too.

It wasn't long before I realized I could carve wood blocks.  I  began ordering the blocks and dove right in. For this painting, I carved a chrysanthemum into about a nine inch square block.  We don't even want to TALK about how long it took to carve!  It's tiring work for the hands, but really rewarding and enjoyable work, and one of the few types of art I can work on while with others.

This painting was done on YUPO, which is a totally non-permeable 'paper.'  What this means is that the inks and paints I laid down had a chance to mix and do cool things before they dried.  It's basically like painting on glass - very difficult and unpredictable. This one has about three layers of color, iridescents and golds laid down for the background.  The process is messy and fun, very right-brained.  However, the technique is so iffy that this painting represents quite a number that didn't turn out.  I generally have six or seven layers and something can happen during each layer. Sometimes I have a simply gorgeous 'happening,' and the last layer ruins it.  We don't want to talk about THAT.  It's just the nature of this beast, and makes it that much more rewarding when one turns out so prettily.

Once the background was finished, I painted the woodblock and laid it on the surface.  Twice.  After several more days it was dry enough to work the top layers, giving it added texture and depth.  I adore working with warm and cool colors in this way because the cool colors recede and it looks as if the golds and warm colors are literally floating above them.  It really exudes a warm and peaceful feeling.