Moving From Paper To Canvas

Thinking back to another transition piece... this 1990 palmetto (30x48) was an attempt to move my watercolor subjects and style to canvas. I found that factory gessoed canvas would give a good imitation of watercolor washes on the first pass... a second attempt to 'correct' the wash meant forget it, go on to something else. The center, upper background shows where this was successful... probably the lower, center bg was not and other techniques had to be deployed. It was all a huge experiment and it opened the door to new adventures, though my database shows w/c's continued to dominate for some time. I'd painted on canvas before, in both oils and acrylics, but that was earlier, before the intense period of detailed grass series. There was an obvious need for a change of pace but it didn't happen overnight, lots of other, lesser, series were explored, and this was actually one of the last palms to be painted. I tried other leaf patterns and eventually morphed into abstract patterns... but that's for another day.