Julie's Morels~Complete

SOLD

I just completed this and I'm pretty happy with the outcome. I stayed with my original palette and continued to play until I was satisfied. It's fairly easy to adjust color on gesso as the surface isn't terribly absorbent so lifting is easy. I'll probably wind up float mounting this in a black frame.

Julie's Morels~WIP 1

Two things came together to inspire this piece..morel hunting season(soon to arrive here in northern Michigan) and an idea I recently hatched to embed leaves and grass in gesso to create texture. I love working on gesso with watercolor and I love lots of texture.

Julie Christianson is a fabulous local photographer and I've known her for many years. She had posted an image on Facebook of a morel she snapped, probably last hunting season. Since I can no longer traipse through the woods to hunt them myself I asked her if I could use some of her images as references and she generously obliged. For my visitors that have never heard of a morel mushroom I found this on Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morchella

I'm working on matboard, the size is small...roughly 5" x 7". I applied a light coat of Liquitex acrylic gesso to the board and used a palette knife to create some background texture. Then I coated dry leaves in gesso and applied them to the board while it was still wet. Today I added a second coat of gesso thinned with a little water and let that dry. Afterward I penciled in my mushrooms and protected them with masking fluid. My palette so far consists of DS Undersea green, DV raw umber, DS Quin gold deep and a little Prussian blue.