Contemplating Motherhood {now complete}

{Contemplating Motherhood – 24" x 18" (61 x 45.7 cm) - Oil on Linen}

Hello,

Yesterday I finished this painting... And thank you to everyone who shared their opinion of how to title it. With your help, I decided to go with "Contemplating Motherhood" and I think it is very fitting because that is how this painting came into being...

Lately I have been experimenting on different painting surfaces, super smooth linen, gessoed paper, gessoed masonite panels, and super rough linen, and for this painting I selected a burlap-like alkyd primed linen from New York Central Art Supply.

{back of streched canvas - New York Central’s Belgique Unprimed Linen, Style "T"}

I have worked on this type of surface before and really enjoy the variety of effects you can achieve with it by varying the thickness of paint applied and using different types of brushes or palette knifes.

{detail of canvas texture and echinacea flowers}

The flowers were painted in several layers, initially with paint thinned with medium using a sable brush to get into all the groves, once this layer setup I would go back into some areas to build up the paint to give a better sense of dimension.

{detail of canvas texture, bird nest, and jar}

For areas of the jar and bird nest, I laid in a thick layer of paint and smoothed out the surface texture of the canvas with a palette knife. Specifically I wanted the central part of the jar to be smooth so the impression of glass would be better conveyed, and in the bird nest I wanted the areas that were deep in shadow and the egg to have a smooth base. By smoothing these areas out made it easy to get a new surface texture so when I would scumble paint across those areas it would be a different affect than when I would scumble across the canvas where the rough weave was still present.

I am beginning to think this is my favorite linen surface to paint on. Though in the spirit of exploration, I would also like to try out a few other rough linen textures to see what offers the greatest diversity. Maybe style "F" and "W" from New York Central Art Supply's catalog pg 174...

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PS. Naomi is 2 months old today!