Time spent on the glowing box

Above: Stolen Shadows, finished earlier this year. The paper is eco dyed watercolor paper. Pen and ink drawing.

I have been trying to keep my nose to the grindstone, working in my studio as often as I can, so not taking the time to blog. This past week I had a cold, so spent more time on the computer. Instead of blogging, which was my plan, I started a new website.

I tried WordPress earlier this year and something about the interface made me crazy. The main problem is that there are frequent updates. If I rely on a plug-in for a gallery, which is essential if you have lots of images, it may not be updated when the main part of the program is. Or even ever. Obviously I am not up to speed on the terminology, but I hope you get the gist. The second problem is that I made a website years ago with GoLive, (a wysiwyg program), so the switch to a different kind of interface in WordPress seemed so unintuitive. Friends have asked me to let them know how I liked WordPress, so I have to say two thumbs down. I know it's the best solution for many people, and I love people's blogs. However, I can read html and sort of get it. So I have moved to DreamWeaver. It's pretty easy, you create a file, start making modifications and build it up. My biggest problem is that I don't remember how I did stuff two years later. It has taken me this past week to refresh my memory. Now I'm starting to do the actual work.

I also feel much better, so I need to be in the studio again. I am currently working on a book based on the Golden Book of Astronomy that my brother-in-law had as a kid. He drew and scribbled in it and I love all the marks.

A small celebration

Today I finished my book, "In which our main character has a revelation of wonderment." The idea is that I have these moments when I look around and think "the world is amazing. I am so lucky to be here." Sometimes I feel connected to all of life. Here are a few pages. There is another pair of pages here. I did end up adding a few more pages than expected and then made some changes to them.

When she saw this page, my friend Elise said "he is hoeing the earth and the mountains are growing." I thought that was lovely. Thank you Elise!

Soon I need to set up the good photo equipment and try to remember my camera settings so I can take the "good" photos.I may try to make a multiple, but that opens up a lot of new problems to solve, mainly that my monitor is not calibrated to my printer. I would love to find a tech guru who could come over and fix these kinds of things for me.

Working on a new book

This is probably the last page I need to complete in my new artist's book. I need to make the cover, sew it together and make a box. So I suppose I am half done. I am still mulling over the title. The materials are eco dyed Bagasse paper (discontinued), collage, acrylic paint, pen and ink. The two sketches are printed on tissue paper, collaged down with matte medium to make them very secure.

Crow on black

I have been trying to keep my focus on a book I'm working on. No distractions allowed. No playing with paste papers or gelli plates. No starting another book that I have in mind. If I start on another project the current one will probably be put aside and then forgotten. At least I know that about myself. I envy people who can work on multiple projects at one time. However, to finish this book, I need some drawings. So I can sketch. I have been mostly drawing on the iPad with Procreate. Here are a couple of crows. One will probably be in the book. I am really enjoying Procreate, the ability to draw, erase, draw, erase is very fun.

The crow above was started on a solid black background. There is a lot more erasing than drawing going on here.

this one started with a very loose sketch, I liked his crowtitude so much I kept working on it. The one on black was done after this one. Looking at them now I like the one on black much better. That will probably be the one that goes into my book but I will have to cut out the black background.

Printing on tissue paper

I have been trying for two weeks to print on tissue paper. I'm using an Epson Stylus Pro 3880. The Ultrachrome K3 ink is fairly waterproof on the tissue paper. I can glue the paper down with mat medium, with no running. I'm using architect's tracing paper similar to this. My old notes tell me I taped the tissue paper to the leading edge of a sheet of regular paper and it went thru the printer fine. I even found an old piece of paper that had tracing paper still taped to it. But now the tissue paper bunches up badly when the printer starts to pull it in. I also hear an unpleasant sound that make me think something will break. Not good. I found this video on youtube. This method is working for me now.



I'm also posting photos of the process here in case the youtube video goes away at some point.

To start, cut the tissue paper slightly larger than a sheet of cheap printer paper.

Fold all four edges of the tissue paper over the printer paper and tape down securely. I like to tuck in the edge of the fold so it's very smooth at the leading edge that goes into the printer.

Here all the sides are taped, the tissue paper is very smooth across the front of the two layers of paper. If tape sticks out be sure to trim it off.

Here is my printed sheet. When the paper is first pulled in to the printer I hear tissue paper crinkling. But it does go thru fine. You can see some head strikes on the right, even though I set the gap to "high." I probably need to see if I can make the gap higher.

Edit March 17 - I am using draft mode, 180 dpi now, instead of 360. It's still enough ink and I have fewer smears on the paper.

Above are all my printer settings.

Success! Snow Dance Worked

The day before the last predicted snow, I did this Procreate drawing, titled Snow Dance, and posted it (almost finished) to influence the snow gods. They seem to have listened - we got a nice snow. It was on the ground a couple days, so we went for several snowy walks. Unfortunately we are back to lots of rain and warmer weather now. I'm watching the neighbor's snow man slowly melt. Jim says he has never made a snowman, so I think next time we get snow we'll have to do that.

Snow Dance

As part of my experiments with intuitive drawing, I have been playing with a procedural drawing web page called Harmony. It works on my iPad and my Mac, I think it will work on any device or computer. Below is a screen I produced in Harmony.


It looks like, and is, a bunch of scribbles. But when I stare at it, I start to see interesting things.

I imported it into Procreate and started defining the shapes I liked. Above is an early stage - I selected the things I liked and moved them around to suit.

Above is the drawing, almost completed. I am posting it now because the title is "Snow Dance." It's a dance to attract the attention of the snow gods. We have a storm approaching that at first was forecast to give us around 6 inches of snow, but it has been downgraded to very little snow, interspersed with lots of rain. I do love snow and was hoping for one good storm this year.