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Strawberries and Colored Pencils

One over-filled gallon box of fresh-picked-that-morning strawberries. And the field is only about a quarter mile from me. They are beautiful, sweet and so many big ones!

Now most of them are in the freezer packaged up in servings for one.

The last few mornings have been frosty walking to and from the gym.

And now back in the studio and the struggles with the dragon scale book illustration. I tried, I really did, to get the right colors and mood with the colored pencil collection that I have, And when I put the guide drawing up to follow for the next section of several half inch exposed fore edges, I realized the plain graphite was better…somehow better….

So I took my kneaded eraser and daubed at the pencil drawing of the first full page over and over again to take the color back, way back.

The softness of the image seems to go with the softness of the paper. It felt more “comfortable” for me. Odd choice of words but if I have to spend so much time sitting over a project I set up for myself, I might as well be comfortable with it.

Putting color in only to take it back out was driving me to think the whole idea was beyond where my capabilities now lie. But for right now I am going to blame the colored pencils. Some just have too much pigment in them and you don’t realize how much until the mark is made. The whole bunch will be put away as soon as I see this through.

Then I went back in with the oh-so-much-better graphite pencils and finished it up. Anyway, I think finished. But on this side only.

It is a dreamlike image of the river flowing by. BUT what goes on the back side when I flip all the folios back to the left? The larger page will be on the right…opposite the way we “read” left to right.  Should there be something on each page if they were turned individually like a normal book? Seems like a dumb idea for this binding designed for continual movement.

I thought of making the “backside” a long image of what is under the water. Decided not to. Too much drawing! So maybe, just maybe the large exposed full page when flipped to the left will be a poem about the river. That appeals to me if done in cursive, using a graphite pencil.

Now, how to present it? I will likely do what it was intended to do in the first place, and make it into a scroll. And if I only have the poem on the back side, having another long image expected to lay flat will not be an issue.

But best of all, when I finally finish this I will have learned the following:

  1.  Pick your challenges carefully.
  2.  Keep your limitations in mind when you make the decision in the first place.
  3.  And never, never quit until it is seen through.

I will write the poem over the weekend and roll it all up with a tie to hold in place. Then I will get my table space back to work on something new and SMALL.

Til later…

Plants, Porch and Picking the Right Rabbits

Seems I have been “fluffing” about these past few days. I spent so much time on the internet looking for rabbit statues for the garden. Did you know there are one heck of a lot of rather “not quite right” rabbits to choose from?

The shop in town where I had been admiring a pair from their rear ends finally was open when I went shopping. “Yes” they were for outside as well as inside. One that had all four feet on the ground was $52…his mate, sitting on his bum and back feet was $75. I told the lady that I thought about her rabbits every night because I could find nothing else that seemed so right. I also said that the price difference was rather odd. She went to get the owner who claimed since I was giving them a good home, having trouble sleeping, etc., I could have them at the lower price each. I could not wait to get them home.

So many rabbits for the garden are very English looking, meaning they are a choice if you can’t find a subtle garden gnome. Is there such a thing? All the others looked cartoonish…cute but cartoonish, or like oversized jack rabbits waiting to pounce. And yes, I did see plenty of the “moon gazing” posed rabbit that seemed to be sort of ridiculous in broad daylight.

So, first came the new pots. The tall white ones. They needed planting. So off to the garden center.

It didn’t seem quite right, so back to the garden center to buy two more pots of various colored calla lillys. The young girl assured me that they would politely die at the end of the year so I would not have to “winter them over”. Once those were in place, I put those perfect Japanese-looking garden rabbits where I could see them.

Then I added my stone partridge to a pot to give him something to do besides Christmas duty. I love seeing them all from the porch.

The neighbor across the way has many bird feeders and therefore many birds. But they fly over here to have a bath or get a drink. Yesterday beautiful blue birds showed up.

After settling the pots and rabbits, I decided to give myself more privacy on the porch and also get the neighbor’s gas tank out of view. I took one of the two shoji screens that were around my jacuzzi in the old place and popped it in the corner after pulling the shade halfway down. A very cozy corner for reading.

My neighbor across the road gave me a jar of her freshly made strawberry jam and told me of the market here near town where I could buy not only strawberries but all sorts of produce grown there. It is just outside of town but in a direction I have never been. Tomorrow I am going there to ask about the berries and Roma tomatoes. All the ones I roasted with my herb salt and froze have been eaten.

In anticipation I made up more herb salt today using rosemary, thyme, parsley from my pots and garlic and green onions. All finely chopped fresh with coarse salt.

When it has completely dried out I will jar it for those tomatoes when they come in. Also today I made up 12 more savoury scones with ham, spinach, green onion, and parmesan cheese. One for lunch before freezing the rest.

One of those with a glass of vegetable juice makes a perfect lunch.

This large, and not so attractive, iron sculpture was something I did not want to burden new owners with. Certainly the people who bought our house had a different aesthetic. So I convinced Patrick to take it north with him. It bounced around in the back of his truck to the point that he named it “The Free Radical”. I have asked him to bring it back. It will be perfect facing the Japanese garden from between the two sets of windows out back. I will put a pot in its head to give it a bit of “hair” during the growing season. It was a gift from Philip Kuznicki, an artist from California that Lee and I rented a house to several years ago. I loved it more for having come from Philip, whose work I have in my house. It needs to come home and not be a burden to Patrick as he wonders what in the heck to do with a welded, rusted, ceremonial looking head.

Patrick and Marla will be here in July and I will post a picture of The Free Radical back with me.

But I will say, looking back through the pictures of our old place to find this picture, was not easy for me. So many sounds and smells and memories come through those images. I am happy here with kind neighbors and arranging things to my liking. But we sure did have a full on life at that place we came from. It is now in the hands of the perfect people to care for it. Hopefully I will be able to see what all they have added and taken away. At least The Free Radical was not something they had to deal with.

Til later…I am going to have another glass of Aussie red…

Rainy Day Options

Two days ago I walked home from the gym in the frosted  grass of the meadow. Invigorating!

Today it is going to be a day of rain. The cats are happy to wait it out.

Maybe tomorrow they can get back on the porch where they love being so close to the flitty little birds who like being near the small pond. For myself, I am trying not to pass through this door with a bowl of popcorn to watch a British crime series. Tempting though it is on this dreary day.

Instead I am staying in the studio to work on the pretty-much-finished base drawing for the dragon scale book.

I have taken elements from my photos of the river near here.

Just pass this stump in the water there is a moss/grass bank that drops off into the river as it flows to the end of the scales on that side. Left to right.

Now I need to cut the drawing in the sections to fit into the exposed folded folios. So it will be one 11″ x 9+” for the first and the rest cut into 11″ x 1/2″ strips. as I go along. The drawing here is dark enough for me to see through the sumi paper and duplicate it on the page before coloring with colored pencils. That is the plan.

After that side is all finished, I will make another drawing of an underwater river scene that will read right to left when all scales are flipped off to the left. Only then will I decide how to bind it. I am not keen on doing the traditional rolled up version. That creates too much memory in the curve of the pages and would make it difficult to see the expanse of the image on either side. So binding it in a landscape book board seems the only way to keep it flat. But something else might come to mind as I work on it and actually see how flexible it is.

I also have a need to get back to poor little Burke and Wills. They have been stuck in their sketchbook waiting for me to figure out how to write the text of the story. Rhyme seems appropriate. But I never wrote anything in rhyme. But that doesn’t mean I can’t do it…just that so far I haven’t.  Robert Frost makes it look easy. So I will use him for inspiration. And stop reminding myself that Beatrix Potter just told her stories of small sweet woodland animals with no rhyme.

The mail lady just drove right past my mailbox! Nothing today to get wet for.

So off to the big cut for the first drawing transfer. Isn’t it funny how easily we think things will be just because we can see it in our heads? Well I suppose that is exactly how things get done. Just follow the steps to get to what you see in your head.

Til later…

 

 

Early Sunrises

It is now light enough at 6:30 in the morning for me to walk to the gym. Here I am at the end of my street ready to step into the meadow and cross to the gym with the light in the window on the edge of the picture. It was a beautiful morning.

I went off to buy different ferns for the mostly shady front of the house.  Now they are in pots by the garage door and under my windows of the studio.

Still waiting for my yard man to schedule the stone pavers between driveway and grass and mulched areas and grass. I would love to find a stone Japanese garden rabbit. Mostly they are the smaller cartoonish ones. Not what I was hoping for but will keep looking.

My walks have been mostly around the neighborhood and visiting with neighbors. It is so interesting to live among people. The other day I accepted an invitation to join some of them for wine. It was fun to listen to women chatting away and stroke the hostess’s cats while sipping a nice red. They found me entertaining and will ask me back again.

In the studio I have been working out how to color the delicate paper of the dragon scale book about the river. Watercolor bleeds too much and would be seen through the translucency of the page behind so I think colored pencil is my only option. It stays “soft” looking. I have also cut and pieced a paper the exact size of the spaces where the river scene will go with its opening page and all the half inch strips added on to the right. On that I will do the base drawing and then cut off to fit between the pocketed pages to copy the drawing onto the pages to be colored.

It takes several different layers of different colors to get the dimensional look needed for the river scene. So i have pulled all the colors I will need from the various boxes of pencils and placed them into a large cup to select from when I actually start the coloring of the drawing on the scales.

And a bit of catching up on the Sticks and Stones Book.

There is not much else new. I will spend the weekend on the usual. Laundry. Vacuuming. Cleaning counters.

Speaking of cleaning, I purchased an old fashioned (but brand new) Fuller brush sweeper to pick up the endless supply of cat hair gathering on floors and carpets. It is smaller than the ones from the fifties but works amazingly! I no longer have to “moon walk” on the carpets collecting cat hair as I walk backwards to a corner where I can pull it off my rubber soles to toss in the bin. This little sweeper picks it up as well as the tracked cat litter that ends up far from the litter box. And it grabbed up my crumbs from baking brown sugar oatmeal cookies yesterday. The vacuum cleaner is getting a well-needed rest since the Fuller arrived.

So off for a walk, maybe to the river and back home for some libation before a dinner of vegetable juice and a savoury scone.

Til later…