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These are the three strips of Fabriano paper that were placed between tiles, then bundled with muslin and tied. The muslin is mostly mottled grey patterns caused by the resist of the string and wrapping.

I treated myself to the only bunch of Eucalyptus at the grocery store just so I could feel closer to friends down under this week and decided to go further and do some contact prints on the paper and the old silk shirt that has now been ripped into useful pieces.

Pretty nice aren’t they? Thank you Lorraine for your suggestions to get a better contact on a better quality paper. Right now the pot has more of the silk shirt pieces and another full sheet torn into five strips. I cook them in the same water I added onion skins and Eucalyptus leaves and stems to for two hours and then take the bundles out to sit for another forty-eight before unwrapping.  I did reuse all the leaves and seeds plus a few fresh ones in today’s bundles.

It smells like Australia in here and makes me very happy.

Here is the Bush Book all covered and with a contact print collar to keep it together.

And the drawing a day haikus.

I am now onto

little spoons in the drawer.

This one fun to draw.

 

Here’s another spoon

and it has a matching fork

that’s on the next page.

 

Another small fork

found buried under other

very useless things.

 

Simple Saturday

drawing of just one silly

collection of knives.

 

And a couple more watercolors in the six way book.

That’s enough for today. I am going to now bury my nose in the dyepot results.

Til later.

It has taken a couple of weeks to get the first set of Bush Book prints from the printer. Making color corrections takes time, communications between computer and printer also takes time. Then there was a scanner break down and Lee had little patience to sit in the car and wait it out. But yesterday it all came together. And because Lee had his helper company in the afternoon, I got to trim all the pages, crease folds and assemble the book.

You can see that the copies are just a tad more pinkish than the originals. And of course there is no pocket at the bottom of the pages…only the image of that pocket.

I am going to ask the printer to resize the saved images to one half inch smaller in each direction. It isn’t much but will “tighten up” the images and make the very long book just a bit easier to handle. I thought of binding it in fifteen single folios but the fun is stretching it all out. And then I would have to paste the white backs of the pages together. That could get messy!

I will ask him to just do ten sets of pages and take his time because I know he is tired of looking at them right now. And I know he must be tired of me saying, “Can we make another one with a better brown in this section?”.

But today I will find a good paper to make the front and back covers. Yesterday I had to order more book board, gesso and a recommended printmaking paper in case I want to try contact printing again this Spring.

Thank you for the positive response to my last blog about Lin and her work. I will do another one about an artist and what they did that stuck with me later on.

Here are the last four days of Drawings a Day.

Who really uses

a heavy steel nutcracker?

Buy nuts without shells!

 

One more nutcracker

for crushing the shells into

desired nut meats.

 

Hor d’oeuvres utensils

used to be so important.

But now, not so much.

 

What appetizers

were these tiny forks supposed

to bring to our plates?

 

I moved from the kitchen drawer into a dining room drawer. More interesting and full of the memories of dinner parties around the table here. And I have not thrown one thing out…just tossed it back in after drawing. I will need help in disposing of things.

I am not holding things up and asking myself if I love it. Even though I do have the book telling me to do that. I don’t love the nutcrackers and appetizer forks. I tolerate their presence as long as they stay out of sight. Closing drawers and shutting doors is therapeutic.

I am in therapy right now and will catch up later.

Til then.

I counted the pages in the six books in one and found there are over 400 paintable surfaces. Filling it up with small watercolors will take some time…lots of time. But it is such a nice meditation time to put some pencil guidelines down and then wet the brush with color.

After the dandelion came these.

The brush strokes of the gesso affect the lines and edges. I need to constantly remind myself to go lightly and layer color from very pale to intense….I just need to be better at doing this and having over 400 pages should give me time and space to improve.

The Drawings a Day continue. The kitchen drawer is getting boring. And also a reminder that I have several things in there that I don’t use. Why do we save this stuff? If I lived in an area to have a garage sale I could get rid of so much! But we are at the top of a hill at the end of a dirt road. As soon as our kids and friend come down, I am going to load them up and they can have their own garage sales. They have been warned.

With no bartender

this fish will aptly open

our favorite beers.

 

Or we reach beyond

the fish and get this rusty

stove tool to do it.

 

This is my second

choice for getting the citrus

juice minus the pits.

 

A while back I was

absolutely sure that I

needed a zester.

I am looking over my blogs and think I would like to talk about the students that I have had and their work that has stayed with me long after they have gone.

Without the art group I miss talking about what drives some of us to make art. Not whether it is marketable, but how in the making of something, the building of a physical form makes tangible the thing, the feeling that just will not stop struggling to get out.

So at least once a week the blog won’t be simply my own record of drawing and paintings in sketch books but the passionate results of things not meant for marketing, not meant to sell a workshop, not consumed by excellence in technical skill, but makes you look and question what you are looking at and why you want to learn more.

And the best part is it will let me revisit those artists that took chances, took advantage of being in a safe place to express their inner feelings.

Some of those blogs will also let me revisit the person I was before…the one I have lost touch with.

Having a minder come in three times a week so I have four uninterrupted hours to be back in the studio has been a good thing. But it is hard to settle into something.

Our son gave me a stack of linoleum blocks for Christmas. I am gouging away to make some sort of textile-ish background for another more solid and contrasting image to print in front of. Australian artist/printmaker, Dianne Fogwell’s excellent book sits next to me. All my carving tools are scattered around. Chips of linoleum are all over the place. My only purpose seems to be to keep busy, make marks, test the tools, let my mind wander down unknown avenues…..

The only thing I know for sure is that I will get another four hours on Monday to see what happens next.

Til later.

 

Remember this six books in one binding that I made last fall? Well I have now decided to not write in it (at least for now) but do my wildflower paintings in it.

There are many, many pages gessoed on both sides in all of the six book configurations. The color glides over this gesso much easier than on the other concertina book I started. So now I have folded that one all up and put it away. Almost threw it away but there is something salvageable in almost anything….so it is tucked in with all my stacked up drawing a day books.

And right this minute there is lots of laughter coming from upstairs as Lee and his new friend, Lilly, get to know each other. She is a physical therapist as well as his part time caregiver. And is scheduled to come three times a week for four hours in the afternoon while I work down in the studio or office with uninterrupted time. Bliss.

So far I have had a good forty-five minutes on my Migun massage bed (a luxury I have not been able to have since Christmas). Now I am downloading photos onto this larger computer where it seems my life is kept in pictures. Next I move across the hall and start to clean up my studio to prepare for some printmaking that has been put off for a very long time.

Lily will help Lee with leg cramps and work with doing exercises with him. She seems to be a very upbeat person, loves cats, showed us pictures of her own, brings her own food, and is getting along great with him.

The best thing is that the long term care insurance that we took out in 1993 is going to cover the cost. Both Lee and I passed our annual physicals this past week….seems we are both going to continue on…..no issues other than his dementia.

I will finish this in the morning when I can add in the drawings a day.

Okay it is now a day later. Lee is outside working on his rocks again while there is no rain. He liked Lilly and asked when she comes back. Tomorrow I will reintroduce him again and soon he will remember who she is.

The last four days of drawings and haiku.

This will crush garlic.

But most of the clove will be

left behind inside.

 

Now this spatula

is used solely to scoop out

orange marmalade.

This can pit olives,

and does a nice job of it –

but pinched my finger!

 

Bean “stringer/slicer”

was found in the back bottom

of a crowded drawer.

The things in that drawer are getting boring. How excited can one get over too many useless things that have no interesting shapes and way too many close relatives crammed in there with them? Soon I may have to find another drawer…then after that just go outside where the really interesting things are just laying around.

I did get the studio put back into a working order. Tomorrow when Lilly returns I might just start designing a print block. But for now while I wait for the butter to get to room temperature so I can make those delicious malt cookies, I might do another wildflower in the book.

Tonight company comes for dinner….a rare occurrence anymore. Puttanesca over pasta and baby spinach. An Aussie red and a single malt to start or finish.

Til later.