Friday, October 23, 2009

Gessoe Rack


No painting to post today. ive been working on commissions all week and then it was cloudy all day today, so i did some gessoeing and dropped off a painting at a gallery. thanks for lunch Ray!
this is my homemade rack i just made that can hold up over 40 panels on a card table. i took peg board i had left over from my painting storage rack (yesterdays post) and put one over the other with a 1x2 in between. then i stuck dowel rods in where i could stand up panels after i coat them with gessoe.
i love this homemade setup. i used to lay them around to dry and it took up A LOT of room and got gessoe all over everything. now 40 panels fits in a 2'x2' space.
they say "necessity is the mother of invention"
i coat masonite with four coats of gessoe and sand that last coat to make it nice and smooth. the gessoe allows my underpainting to soak in and stain so i can lay other colors on top and not mix. sometimes i'll underpaint the sky orange. if you lay blue on top of orange and it hasnt soaked in, it'll gray out the blue and it'll turn to mud. not good. but with this gessoed panel it doesnt do that. plus i love the fact that my paintings are all handmade from start to finish. i get consistency and that gives me confidence that every panel will act like i want it to.
oh yeah! did i mention that i can get 50 panels for a $15 sheet of masonite? but if you know me personally you know that had absolutely nothing to do with it. yeah right!

2 comments:

Victor Errington said...

Hi Mike. Love your work. I have just started to paint with a palette Knife, and find it very difficult to store them, ( They take upto two weeks to dry ). Your
idea of storing your new panels is great. I don`t suppose you could explain in more detail could you?
I hope that you don`t mind me asking, and that I`m not asking too much, but I am desperate.
Thank you Mike, and all the best.
Vic.

mike rooney studios said...

victor

just put one piece of pegboard over top of another with a piece of 1"x2" lumber inbetween (use the 2" width) and screw it all together.
then cut pieces of 1/4" wooden dowels into 8" pieces and stick em in the holes of the pegboard all the way thru both sheets. the holes are about 1/2 " apart so it makes a perfect standup rack for your panels. good luck