Still Life with natural objects

For my natural objects I decided to paint rock crystals I collected at various times over the years which I had in the cupboard, because I liked the challenge of depicting their shine and transparency. To help familiarise with the objects and make the composition I did several sketches and took several photographs as below -

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For my support I wanted to experiment with less conventional materials, and when working with pastels and charcoal in the past I had used newspaper collage as my support. In Drawing One my tutor had suggested I look at Valery Koshlyakov’s Grand Opera, Paris, which was done in gouache on cardboard, and although the style did not appeal to me I found the use of cardboard to create a dramatic piece of work very interesting.

I decided therefore to use recycled cardboard, which, as I was going to use WM Oil, had to be primed to avoid the oil soaking in too much and to maintain the colour and texture of the support. As this was an experiment I wanted to use what I already had rather than buy more material.

I didn’t have a clear primer or gesso but I had a bottle of Plextol 498 that I bought after attending a Clare Wilson workshop in London. Clare introduced us to Plextol as a strong adhesive for photo transference, and reading up on it it is described as a pure thermoplastic acrylic resin with high transparency, lightfast resistance and weathering stability, commonly used as an adhesive for canvas lining, and as a binder for consolidating primers and paint layers.

https://lascaux.ch/dbFile/4708/u-fd46/Lascaux_acrylic_dispersions.pdf

Although I was a bit concerned that Plextol is dilutable with water, the fact that it has high transparency seemed likely to give strength to the painting so I decided to use it as a primer for my recycled cardboard. One problem I found however is that after using it, when I tried to erase unwanted charcoal marks with a rubber I couldn’t do so, and had to paint over them to try to match the colour of the cardboard.

To create interesting light and shadow I put a lamp to the right of my composition and replicated the shine and the final result was -

Conclusions on the final work

I think I managed to get an accurate depiction of the colour and shine in the stones and the transparent effect of the pink and white stones. I like the composition, and think the colour combination looks good against the Yellow Ochre background in the cardboard, and that the shadows underneath the stone make it look dramatic.

I am not quite sure yet of Plextol 498 as a primer. It did work well when I was using thinner to dilute the WM Oil paint, but when I used WM Oil neat I found it a bit difficult to spread the paint so next time I will try clear gesso.

Using cardboard as a support really appeals to me however - I think it looks very interesting and can produce dramatic effects. I’m also interested in climate change and like the thought that using recycling cardboard can help, even in a small way..