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August 2, 2010

waiting for paint to dry . . .

It's been so humid here in New England; the gesso and paint I'm using in my sketchbook does not want to dry.  I put scraps of parchament paper between the pages so the pages don't stick to one another.
And I wait.


My book is part of the Sketchbook Project
Click the link and you can find out the details if you haven't heard about it. 
It's been fun watching artists get started with their book, so I thought I'd show you a little about mine. 


I went through the book and glued the pages together two by two.  I have 20 pages to work with now.  A few may end up having to be removed if the book gets too fat. 

I painted each page, front and back with gesso.  Then added a different water color to each facing page and gessoed over that.  You can see why my book is taking so long to dry.
I've never done this type of work before -  I'm kind of making it up as I go. 

Below you can see one of the painted pages.  The pages are pretty sturdy now and once they are completely dry I think I can put a weight on the book to get the crinkles out.


This gives you a clue about how I will turn my book into a 'sketchbook'. 

Right now I'm using a water soluable stabilizer... 
I think I've heard of an iron out or steam out stabilizer...  Has anyone ever heard of this or used it? 
It might be a better option for this project.



5 comments:

ju-north said...

If you google stabilisers you will find several which you can iron away eg Sulky Heat Away, Thermogaze heat away etc. Hope this helps!

Anonymous said...

I've used the sulky heat away one that you iron away. I think I might have some around here somewhere, I'll pull it out and you can see if you like it. It's very stiff stuff so it's easy to stitch on without using a hoop.

Debra Dixon said...

The Sketchbook Project looks very interesting to me. I don't draw but I could certainly do some other ideas I have squirrled away. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

lisa22951 said...

Hello,
Can you tell me alittle bit about the picture with the pink flowers that is directly underneath your picture and 'About Me'? Thanks,

Lisa D.
La Crosse, WI
lisa22951@msn.com

Shelley: the Dread Pirate Rodgers said...

re the water soluble stabilizer .. yep, machine embroiderers use it all the time.

It comes in 2 flavors: one is a translucent Saran Wrap-like stuff .. very filmy. The other looks like a lightweight non-woven interfacing. A brand name for that kind is Vilene.

It's awesome stuff ... rinse it under running water or let it soak or put it through the laundry ... and *poof* ... it absolutely disappears. If you just rinse it out, there will be some residual to provide a bit of stiffness to the item. If you want ALL of it out, the laundry is the best bet.

You pay a premium for the pre-packed stabilizer (true of anything) and will get a better price if you buy it as yardage.