Welcome to another Studio Closeup here at carolkroll.com. Let’s travel to outer space! Why should the billionaires have all the fun? Today is a work in progress that I started a couple weeks ago. I wouldn’t say the underpainting of this piece is quite finished yet. I still have a lot of wrestling to do with it. The diorama inside is cut from a 1964 children's book illustration of space travel. The top and bottom borders are painted with black gesso. That’s right. Black gesso. Until a few years ago, I had no idea black gesso even existed! The black gesso I currently have in my possession is not chalky. And until this week, I had no idea that my new and improved chalky gesso guys ALSO make black (hopefully chalky) gesso. So a bottle of that is currently in my DickBlick shopping cart. In the meantime, I’ll probably experiment with chalky tempera paint on top to tone down the shine of The Universe.