I create a fascinating parallel universe with the collective memories from all of us.

Pieces of Thoughts

Sally Chan's blog for thoughts.

Using Gesso to mute colors

As I am overwhelmed  with my latest web design project, I have to slow down on the blog now but I guess sometime, less is more. I will instead focus on sharing my art techniques.

Lately, I have been focusing on create more natural and realistic tone. I found that by mixing paint with Gesso, I can easily leverage my painting tone to achieve a more natural look. I used to paint the canvas with a pure layer of white Gesso and let it sit dry, now I just mixed and painted it with other colors directly on canvas as the background, and then let it sit and dry overnight. By doing so, it creates a very smooth finish from the start and it has fastened my painting process a lot. The canvas 's surface also holds color better and far less messy than before. As I have more control of the paint flow, I can simply focus on creating details.

I love this newly found technique and I have a feeling that it can improve my art drastically . 

The figure painting, "Wish" and " Evergreen Dreamscape" are the results of this Gesso technique

 

 

Sally Chan