Creativity evolves from Crayolas to gesso
(PHOTO | LOGAN COUNTY ART LEAGUE)
I love Crayola crayons. I like the way they feel and I like the familiar Crayola smell.
I still have the aluminum kitchen canister filled with my childhood crayons that my nieces and nephews used when they were at Granny’s, and that my own kids used there and at our house. It was where the crayons I brought home on the last day of elementary school each year went to be replaced in the fall by a new box of 24. (My teacher mother would not get me the coveted box of 64 with the sharpener in the back because she thought the box took up too much precious book space in my elementary school desks.) I was very careful not to break them and I disliked torn paper wraps.
I summarily dismissed my elementary art teacher Gary Stuart’s suggestion we color with nubs of crayon and with the round edges of the crayons, not just the points.
What was he thinking? I continued my infatuation with whole pointed crayons, thank you very much.
Perhaps I should have chosen to use crayons in my Not So Bad Art By Good People fundraiser project for the Logan County Art League.
But, alas, I did not.
It is not my first foray into something along the lines of art. I especially enjoy paper collage and have created a number of papercrafting projects, including greeting cards and scrapbooks. I have what I refer to as my “work room” in an “empty” bedroom upstairs where I can create to my heart’s content with no one bothering me and I can just get up and walk away from my mess. And I have — often. But, from time to time, I finish things and they have pleased me and I have cleaned up the mess.
Perhaps I should have chosen to go with what I know and created something with paper and embellishments.
But, alas, I did not.
Instead, I used acrylic paints on canvas. But first, I coated my canvas with gesso, a white paint mixture consisting of a binder mixed with chalk, gypsum, pigment or any combination of them.The use of that product to prepare the canvas has intrigued me and I thought it looked interesting.
An online search for a description of the mixture quickly turned up someone’s review of a particular brand of gesso as follows:
“This gesso is suitable for amateur works, studies, class room and projects where one does not care about the quality of the final work.”
Ouch. I don’t know that I used this brand on the night I started my project at the Gallery, but the “amateur” status certainly applied.
I loved the texture of the gesso when it was wet. I put it on thickly in spots and applied bright acrylic color to it with the back of a plastic spoon as Woody Amidon suggested.The spoon was just what I needed to create. I felt like I could be involved in such artistic endeavors feasibly for the rest of my life as I worked that first night, I thought, quickly ditching my sketched idea of computer keyboard symbols in some sort of a collage manner, perhaps with some ink stamping, another craft I’ve practiced. Instead, I started applying color here and there abstractly as the spirit moved me, mixing paint together to create my favorite shade of chartreuse and adding other bright shades. As I stepped back to look at the canvas as a whole, I was not displeased.
I quickly found myself on a roll and it was satisfying and emboldening, and I thought maybe I could own the world and, certainly within a reasonable amount of time, have a one-woman gallery gala sharing my creations with that world. I had found a calling certain to allow me not to go gently into that good night.
I thought I could set up an easel, get an edgy but suitable work apron that I looked good wearing (my hair will not tolerate hats of any kind, so no beret), arrange a nice selection of acrylic paints and other awesome looking, feeling and smelling art supplies and organizers for said products in such a way that rivaled a display at Hobby Lobby or the Container Store, and willingly adopt a multi-faceted disciplined schedule of creating. It would be worthy of the basis for a novel that, yes, I would write and sell the rights to for a screenplay I also could write and — why not?— play the lead role in what then would become a TV and Internet series sensation and would lead to my own line of art supplies and paint aprons designed and sewn by me. Maybe I would have the time (sleep is so overrated, ala Martha Stewart) to develop a how-to painting show that would rival Bob Ross and his happy little trees. I would serve up joyful gesso globs.
I was on the cusp of a life-altering vortex.
Then, the gesso and paint dried — along with my dreams.
As I eagerly retrieved my creation from storage the next time I attended open painting, reality quickly crashed down on me. What had been gentle crescents of glistening gesso globules highlighted with bright acryclic accents, now were dull, dried and cracked craters. What was to have become my bold creative signature statement catapulting me to the stratosphere looked like a blindfolded tantrum-throwing toddler had smeared fingerpaint on a canvas while wearing mittens.
How now to salvage my masterpiece? Could my tears improve it?
No stranger to adversity, having been told a few (thousand) times by my mom that sometimes I have to do things I don’t want to do, I rolled up my sleeves a little higher, took a deep breath, squared my jaw and shoulders and slapped some broad strokes of color on that canvas. This time I used a brush for a different texture and incorporated some bolder colors to create some depth and dimension and diminish some of the cracks. I’m not sure I accomplished all that, but that was my goal. I kept at it for a bit, then I determined enough was enough, less is more (as well as some other idioms), and I deemed the piece was done.
Truthfully, what I had envisioned the piece to be is not what the piece is, but I am not going to label it a failure. Instead, I will chalk it up as another experience from which I can gain some more knowledge about myself — or not.
It can be just a fun diversion from the mundane intricacies and disappointments of life and that’s plenty enough. And, like a color selected from the box of crayons, I, too, can choose my reactions, viewpoints and expressions as I navigate those mundane intricacies and disappointments I’m faced with in life.
Maybe that’s the whole point. It doesn’t have to be overthought. It is what it is, as they say, and I can enjoy it for what it is and then face life with an improved attitude.
I’m still keeping my day job for now, but as a result of this project maybe I’ll break out some supplies from time to time for a little fun diversion, and color my world.
However, if I choose to use the box of 64 Crayolas I now possess, I guarantee no crayon will be harmed in the process.