The Hundreds for November

Alrighty, then! Whew... I made it to a hundred little sketches for the month of November. This doesn't seem like such a big deal when one does the math: 100 sketches in a month is 3-4 per day. The trick is that if one somehow misses two days, then suddenly there are 10 sketches to do!

The hardest part for me is deciding what to draw. I want these sketches to be fast... responsive... interpretive... not careful pre-linocut drawings or long value studies. To that end I tried to stick to pen; if I used a pencil my inclination to go all crazy with subtle values would lead me down time-consuming paths.

I also want to work from life as much as possible, but it's November (now December). Daylight hours are short (especially up here in the north country) and there's rain and cold (and soon snow) to contend with and I am a wimp. So at the moment this means a lot of drawing indoors... interiors of coffee shops, my house, the laundromat. I did find one nice day to go to the Maine Wildlife Park before they closed for the season, and a couple of nice days for sketching landscapes near home.

To break things up I also worked from movies and a YouTube video described as Cat TV. (Footage of birds coming in and out of a feeder station.) I'd watch for an interesting frame, hit the pause button, and draw as fast as possible. The temptation to slow down and try to get a likeness on movie frames was huge, but I kept reminding myself my goal was to get the idea down quickly and move on.

It was a satisfying adventure, but rut ro! Now it's December. Here we go again!

In the meantime, here's a little flip through the sketchbook... I think I missed turning a couple of pages, but you get the idea. This month I'd like to be more deliberate about overall page composition, so we'll see how that goes. Onward!

The Return of The Hundreds

Five down, 95 more to go for November.

After a summer of almost zero studio time, my work groove has felt... well... not groovy. Both my hands and my thought processes are rusty, and I have been frustrated with my lack of creative grace.

But then I remembered The Hundreds.

Unbelievably, more than a decade has passed since my friend Tim Deibler and I challenged each other to make 100 thumbnail sketches every month for a year. Even though our success with the challenge waxed and waned, I managed to fill two sketchbooks with compositions and ideas... mostly from life, but sometimes from the television and videos.

It seemed a fine idea to take up the Hundreds challenge again, not only for tuning up my skills, but also for helping me get to understand Maine better. Believe it or not, today is the two-year anniversary of my move here from Colorado, and in a lot of ways I still feel very much a stranger.

So I relaunched my Hundreds effort in mid-October and managed to get 50 sketches done by yesterday, so now I'm off and running on the start of a new month. It's been blowing a literal gale here (more power outages, but so far not in my area!), so today's sketches are a mix of life drawings from inside my house and compositions derived from photographs I took this morning outside. I gave myself no more than ten minutes to find each composition and sketch it in ink before moving on to the next one.

Carrying a sketchbook with me is a long habit, but giving myself an assignment and a deadline ensures that I'll take it out and use it regularly. It feels good to flex both mental and physical muscles... so, hey! Why not grab a sketchbook of your own and join me?

Planning for printmaking

Believe it or not, planning does happen here from time to time, and right now that's where my printmaking energy is going. Honest-to-goodness planning. Or at least conceptualizing. Please try not to faint.

I think I mentioned that I'm collaborating with a local poet for a haiku exhibition at the Salida Regional Library. Most of the time when I'm responding to text it's an illustration project that calls for something more literal than interpretive. It's refreshing to start with poetry and think abstractly for a change.

The "haiku of haiku" that I'm interpreting is a seventeen-stanza long piece, with lots of imagery that sparkles and glistens. My first inclination is to work in shades of white (does that make sense to you?) with some embossing and maybe even some reflective mica flakes added to the ink. None of which I've done before, all of which will probably be wretchedly difficult to show on camera as the work progresses.

Given that I don't know how much I'll be able to share as this piece develops, I thought it might be interesting (or at least amusing) to share my version of what choreographer Twyla Tharp calls the scratching phase.

For me the first step was to identify some of the root imagery of the text: trees or branches, flowing water, footprints, leaves, and the sparkling/glistening aspect of all of them. The title and the structure of the poem are also circular. I expect these ideas to evolve as I work on the piece, but it's a start.

The funny little set of six squares on the top right is a flipbook idea. What, am I nuts?

With these broad ideas in mind I started making some sketches... just simple line drawings to work out a possible structure. (And yes, this month I'm counting them as part of the 100 Thumbnails project.)

The embossing idea really intrigues me, but since I've never done embossing by hand (long ago I did some with a press) I did a couple of little experiments. No point in getting too excited about the idea if I can't make it work, eh? I used a block from a previous print as the "mold" and tried 3 or 4 different papers. I liked the results of two papers (Hosho and Stonehenge), so the initial experiment was deemed a success.

I'm also thinking about the symbols that will be part of this piece: a tree, a river, footprints. I try to remember to bring my camera along on walks so I can "collect" shapes when I don't have time to draw.

And, of course, I make some more sketches. I'm also going through my paper drawers, thinking about surfaces and textures.

It feels like the next steps will be narrowing down the "symbols" and starting to think about the color palette. I'm feeling fairly confident that I want everything to be quite subtle with lots of spare white space (a departure from my usual approach, for sure!), but the imagery is also seasonal, so I think some color would probably not be amiss.

So that's where I am... scratching. Playing with ideas, collecting possibilities, and manipulating materials. Don't tell anyone, but planning can be fun.

January thumbnails update!

After a nudge from Lisa at Seaside Studios, I realized it was past time for an update on the 100 Thumbnails project.

You can see from the scorecard in the sidebar that I came up a little short in December. My only excuse is that it was.... well.... December. Everything tends to go out the window in December.

I'm a bit behind the game for January, too, although if this "unseasonably" warm and dry weather keeps up I might find myself a little more motivated. Sure, I can (and do) work from photos and the TV and the edge of my sofa, but given the choice between drawing from life and working from a flat image...

Oh, who are we kidding? It's really no contest.

Not that it's always easy to get myself out the door. I'm the first to admit that I can be a "fair-weather sketcher." Cold? Uh uh. Wind? Don't wanna. Maybe I should take my camera. Binoculars? Maybe I should pack a snack. An extra sweater? I don't want to get out there and discover I'm cold/hungry/thirsty/missing a new bird ID! I can spend a lot of time wandering around the house with a half-provisioned backpack, trying to get myself in the "right headspace" to go draw.

Even when I finally get out the door, the waffling doesn't necessarily resolve right away. My sit-down-and-draw self wrestles with my go-see-what's-over-there self. I wander around. I sit down. I stand back up. I wander some more. I look at animal tracks. I watch birds. I dodge deer poop. I grumble about the people who leave their trash by the side of the river. I wonder if I should be home doing XYZ or ABC.

Eventually I settle down and open my sketchbook. "It's just a 2x3-inch sketch," I tell myself, and once I start moving my pencil I realize it's the action of drawing that gets me into the right headspace... not the other way around. It happens every time. In fact, the scribbled notes on one of these pages say that very thing.

After a while my attention starts to wander again... to sounds and smells and whatever else is going on around me.  I realize that even though I dislike wrestling with ruffling sketchbook pages, it is the movement of the air that makes these drawings real. They were not made from my wind-proof studio or my climate-controlled car, but from the lee side of a fallen tree in a sunny spot by the river. I got more than a few sketches... I got stickers in my socks and dirt on my pants. I got the indifferent pip of a song sparrow, talking to itself for lack of stimulating company. I got the constant flow of the river. I got a little sunburn. In January.

Thumbnails. Funny how something so small can be something so big, eh?

Thumbnails: Twigs and Trek

I am forever picking up "stuff" when I take walks. Sticks. Stones. Dead bugs. Leaves. Several weeks ago I picked up a small branch from a cottonwood tree and brought it to the studio, where it's been languishing.

Anxious to do a few thumbnails, I finally put that branch to work. And after I had exhausted my interest in twigs, I did a few sketches from a DVD. I don't often try to draw portraits, so it's a good stretch for me to work from character-driven cinematography. Likenesses are challenging to me, especially in a 2x3-inch format. I think this one came close, anyway.

Thumbnails with old friends

Muppet.* Fan.

Hang around me long enough and you'll add those two words to your list of personality descriptors. (And hopefully those won't be the only nice words on the list.) Cookie Monster and I grew up together, as I was able to remind him in a letter that was published in "Sesame Street Upaved" a few years ago. (Seriously!) I've been told I was part of a test survey when Sesame Street first aired in the 1960s, and I mourned Jim Henson's death as the loss of not one but of many dear friends.**

So it should come as no surprise that among my December rituals is the repeated airing of "The Muppet Christmas Carol." My now-decrepit VHS tape needs replacing one of these days, but so far I've managed to eek out the 2010 screenings without serious mishap.

What IS surprising is that until last night I hadn't ever tried to draw a Muppet character. Not one. What the...?

I am pleased to announce that I've now at least partially amended that oversight. (As well as accomplished a set of thumbnails.) I can also say that Kermit is way harder to draw than it seems he should be... especially during the amount of time allowed by the pause button on the VCR. But may I introduce you to The Great Gonzo as Charles Dickens and Rizzo the Rat as literary commentator?

Drawing Muppets is like drawing any other living creature. Gotta get the eyes right or it's all over.

It was a fun way to spend an evening and it dispersed some of the anxiety that starts building when my inner border collie*** isn't getting enough exercise. (***Thanks, Patrick... it's a useful image.)

Solstice countdown: It's TOMORROW NIGHT. 'Nuf said.


(*It should be noted, of course, that Muppet characters and all their attendant paraphernalia are copyrighted and trademarked and all that sort of thing. In no way are my little sketches intended to suggest any sort of ownership or to usurp authority and they are certainly not for sale. It's just practice, eh? And a bit of hero worship.)

(**At one time the entire memorial service at St. John the Divine in New York was available on YouTube. It doesn't seem to be there now, but there's still a wobbly clip of "One Person" that will break your heart. And Big Bird singing "Bein' Green"? Ach!)

100 Thumbnails update: November

It's 7:44 pm on the last day of November and I have just squeaked out the last of my 100 thumbnail quota for the month. Whew!

Things got trickier this month... Cold, windy weather made me disinclined to hang around outside. The DM has been on injured reserve for almost two weeks... also feeding my disinclination to go outside. And I had a contract project in the myriad-small-details-at-the-end stage... so even when I did want to go outside, I felt I couldn't go far.

All of this meant that getting through the 100 Thumbnails project got a little more challenging. That's okay. That's the point. So this month, in addition to compositions made in the field (or from the car on the side of the road), I drew from the collections of "stuff" that I bring home from walks. And I drew at the zoo. And I drew from photos. And I drew from the movies.

Really.

It's kind of fun. 

I'm assuming that most DVD and VHS (for all us old-skool types) players have the same features mine do: When you hit the pause button you get 2 or 3 minutes of freeze frame before either the screen goes dark or the little bouncing ball comes on or something. Perfect for quick sketch-making.

The other night I popped "Winged Migration" in the player and spent an hour or so watching for interesting screen compositions and/or bird postures, hitting the "pause" button, and drawing as fast as I could. All from the comfort of my cozy sofa, with cup of tea close at hand. It's not exactly drawing from life, but I find it an interesting exercise to analyze videography and screen composition. And besides, how often do I get to draw gannets and red-breasted geese from the middle of the Rocky Mountains, anyway?

Oh, okay. Some thumbnails. Just because.

Our freakish warm weather continues... crazy to think that it's the end of the first week in November and we're still running around in shirtsleeves! Makes it very difficult to stay in and get other things done... plenty of time for that.... later.

Last week's crazy schedule put me behind on my thumbnail sketches for the month, but today I caught back up. The wind made an appearance mid-day and I had to do a few of these from inside the car. (Not a bad deal, really... warm, no pages flapping in the wind, a non-tipping place to set my tea, and NPR for company.)

This afternoon I made granola and the DM made ginger-squash soup AND chicken soup. And then it was dark at 5:30pm. Rats. It really IS November.

I'm still scratching my head about the next color on the lino. I know what it IS... I just don't know how much of it I want. Next day or two. Promise.

100 Thumbnails update: mid-October

Today is a big day, for several reasons. First of all, it's our "meetiversary"! Three years ago today (is it really only three?) the Darling Man and I crossed paths for the first time. The second time we met he brushed me off, and no, I'm never going to let him forget it.

It's also mid-October... more or less. We get thirty-one days this month, so finding the median point isn't quite as easy as divide-by-two, but SHEESH... am I THAT... erm... fussy?*

(*Repeat after me: Printmakers are a tad obsessive-compulsive. Just go with it.)

ANYWAY... in the world of the 100-thumbnails-a-month challenge October 15th means I should have 50 sketches done, and I'm pleased to report that I have 55. Presented for your perusal, sketches 46-55, created during some of the most stellar autumn afternoons I can remember... from a perch just across the Arkansas River from town. Hopefully the Blogger embiggen feature is working again and you can click to see the pages at actual size.

I finished another milestone today, too, but it's a longer and more sordid tale, so I'll save it for another post.

Technical difficulties, please stand by

It was one of those weeks, and the current linocut sat neglected for way too many days. Between the too-dry inks on the page and struggles to get just the right ink consistency for the next pass things didn't go entirely as planned. I got some decent prints, but I also lost several to slipping and other annoying maladies. One more color to go, but unfortunately it's going to have to wait a few days again. Keep your fingers crossed.

In the meantime, I've been keeping up with my "100 Thumbnails" project. Let's see, it's October 11... I have 39 sketches at the moment, and there are still a few hours left in the day.

It's starting to get a little more challenging, as the weather is changing and the available daylight hours for sitting outside with a sketchbook (my preferred thumbnail-making routine) are waning. Thank goodness the DM had a gig last week at Adams Mountain Café, so I could sit in a corner with a pencil and a glass of scrumptious spiced tea for a couple of hours! I don't often draw interiors, so I tell myself it's "good for me" when some complicated view of a corner or furniture turns my 5- or 10-minute sketch to a 20- or 30-minute analysis. The point IS to learn something, after all!

Another challenge that comes with the season change is adjusting to the end of our farm share. We picked up our last bushel box of produce on Saturday.... (sigh).

Yeah, this is how every Saturday has looked in our kitchen since June.

We'll still be able to buy some fresh produce now that we have a little local food market in town, but our Saturday morning ritual will shift. No more rolling out of bed and wandering down the street for coffee, apple strudel, farm eggs, and our box o' veggies. This coming Saturday is our last farmers market day, and I'll be doing a brief hands-on printmaking adventure at the Shed Fest celebration in the afternoon. And then? We'll have to come up with some other routine. As long as it doesn't involve shoveling snow, I guess I'll adjust. Like the ink. And my prints. And my thumbnails. Eventually.

Countdown to the first 100

Only ten more thumbnails to go for the September 100, and then start over for October! Woohoo! So far I've been sticking with value sketches but I think some color is about to creep in, too. I'm feeling good... fairly limber with the pencil and always challenged to find five more sketches. (I've been doing them in sets of 5 mostly, because that's what fits well on a page, it's easy to keep track of how many I have, and it takes just under an hour if you include hunting-for-image time.)

I'm waiting on a paper order and anxious to get a new lino on the table. There's a woodcut in there somewhere, too, but I haven't yet decided what it might be. (I'm a little nervous about trying to do a reduction woodcut by hand after the experience of using a press. Might be a tad spoiled by the speed and ability to use really, really thin inks.)

 Of course I'm still struggling with settling in to much of anything... after one day of rain last week we're back to sparkling autumn weather and I can't keep myself indoors. I'm trying to avoid chastizing myself too much for it... indoor days will be here soon enough.

Update: For reasons I can't quite sort out Blogger has decided to randomly not make images enlargeable. I just reposted this one and the previous thumbnails and they should work now. Or not. Got me. 

A mind like autumn leaves

I don't know how it is where you are, but around here the autumn is a fickle and often short-lived season. So far this year we've been fortunate. We've had a week or two of glorious weather (okay, a little too hot for September, but it will do) and some spectacular color in the high country. But we're all completely aware that one good storm... wind or rain or (not yet, please) snow or some combination of the above and the aspen will be bare overnight.

The Darling Man didn't understand this phenomenon when he first moved here from the Midwest, where spring and fall amble along between summer and winter. My rather manic mid-September insistence that we go out NOW... Now!.. RIGHT NOW to revel in the golden light was a puzzle to him. "What's the rush?" he asked. I heaved an exasperated sigh and said, "Just TRUST me. We have to go out NOW." So we did, and it was spectacular, and three days later it was snowing and blowing and all the leaves were down. The color show was over.

He definitely "gets it" now, which is why we spent last weekend with our faces turned towards the flickering yellow light... rubbing suede-soft leaves between our fingers and inhaling the scent of change. The minute we see that gold skirt sweeping across the knees of the Continental Divide we are outta the house and up into the hills.

It's a horrible time to be trying to get anything done indoors... at least it is for me. So when I realized last night that I didn't have anything pressing (printmaking pun not intended) on the calendar today, I threw my sketchbook in a backpack and put it by the door. First thing this morning I was back up Marshall Pass, and until noon I didn't see another soul. (And only one vehicle... parked... empty.)

For the first 45 minutes or so I just hiked up Gray's Creek, but then I lost the uphill path in a tangle of trees and creek and turned back downhill. I perched on a granite boulder, made 7 or 8 thumbnails and listened to nothing but the splashing creek, the scratching of my pencil, and the breeze in the trees. Perfect sun. Perfect temperature. Bliss. Another stop... a few more sketches. Back in my car, I drove up a road I'd never followed until it turned into a four-wheel-drive track. I made a few more sketches... and then reluctantly turned towards home.

The weather forecast calls ominously for rain on Wednesday night, so guess who won't be able to stay indoors tomorrow, either? Unfortunately I have a phone conference smack in the middle of the day... but I think I'll still manage a quick excursion in the morning. (Oh, the joy of living in the heart of the Rockies... spectacular views are always close at hand!)

I have news about exhibitions and workshops and projects to share with you, but for the next few days you can just expect it to pile up in the corner. I have to go out now. Right now. And if you know what's good for you, you'll go out now, too. Wherever you are.

More thumbnails

Whew! One more crazy-busy week to go and then I think things will slow down for a while. Of course I always say that and I'm almost always wrong, but I do keep hoping.

The opening of "Underfoot, Overhead" (or, as I accidentally called it on my invitation, "Overhead, Underfoot") went really well, although I learned that hiring the Darling Man to play music during receptions means that neither of us has time to hoist the camera for photos. D'oh!

I've an appointment with "the media" to visit the show again on Wednesday, so I'll try to remember to take some photos then. The Paquette Gallery space is nice... a large enough room that one can get back from each piece and get a sense of the exhibition as a whole. And they've put up a nice little slideshow on their website! (Only two of the images are from this exhibition... oops. I had to turn in images months ago!)

After the chaos of last week it was nice to move rather slowly yesterday. In the afternoon I took my sketchbook down by the Arkansas River, still trying to get "caught up" with my 100 Thumbnails project.  I wandered around, settling in one spot for a few minutes, making a sketch or two or three and then moving on. The river park was busy on a Sunday afternoon... people strolling, reading, poking around on the banks, and two young women with float toys drifting down a short stretch, then hauling out and walking back up river to do it again.

I had been sitting on a rock for about 15 minutes when I looked directly down and discovered this little fellow at my feet. Oh yeah... I am a keen observer of my surroundings. It's a wonder I didn't step on him when I sat down.

"He" was so obliging for this complex pose that I started to worry I might be drawing a dead snake. I gently poked the tip of his tail with a stick and he slowly curled it out of the way. Whew!

Already the discipline and exercise of making these little sketches is producing unexpected rewards. Time spent in the company of a wild creature completely undisturbed by my presence is a marvelous thing, especially with all the other activity swirling around us both. As I was making this drawing a woman's voice came over my shoulder. "Do you actually see that snake somewhere?" she asked me. I smiled to myself because I couldn't decide if she was curious or just nervous about where an unknown snake might be. "Yes," I said, "it's right here below me." I heard a soft intake of breath as she saw it for herself... and then did a little slithering away of her own.

Tonight I'll be making sketches indoors, as today's outside time revolved around errands and a little yard work. I'd like to start a new print this week, but I'm undecided about size and whether it should be a lino or a woodcut! I'm still feeling the urge to work on a larger format, but not feeling that I have the "perfect" image to keep my attention through a potentially long carving process. In the meantime, back to those thumbnails!

100 Thumbnails

A few years ago my friend Tim Diebler and I met for a January lunch and challenged each other to make 100 thumbnail sketches each and every month during the year ahead. Sketches could be pencil, pen, paint, whatever, but had to be FAST (no more than 5-10 minutes each) and there had to be 100. We could work from life (preferred) or from photos (still useful) or from the television (can be fun and challenging, especially when there's a howling blizzard outside). Or from whatever. We just had to draw.

100 thumbnails a month works out to 3-4 sketches a day... or about 30 minutes if you count the deciding-what-to-sketch time. I confess that there were a few months that I got to the 25th or 26th and had to crank out 50 sketches in five days, but I always got them done, one way or another. And so did Tim.

Last month's "Project Woodcut" assignment (15 minutes to collect sketches and color notes as reference for a multicolor woodcut) reminded me of our "100 Thumbnails" adventure, and I've decided to launch another round.

2x3" thumbnails from the front step, September

Granted, I didn't start until Monday, by which time I was already 3- or 4-times-7 days behind for the month of September. I'm still not quite caught up, but I have every intention of getting the first 100 sketches done before October starts.

I christened a brand new sketchbook for the endeavor, which always feels good. (Last time I did this I filled 2 good-sized books with nothing but thumbnails. Raise your hand if you have a backlog of assorted empty sketchbooks that would LOVE to be filled this way.) The first page was horrible, since I started by looking at photos on my computer in the dark WITHOUT my glasses on. Ooph. But here we have page 2, sketches made from my perch on the front step, and I feel much more excited about the process. Thumbnail sketches are a little like weight training- one starts out slowly and ultimately builds skill and stamina.

Speaking of stamina... tomorrow I hang what I expect will be my last big show of the year. (Two days ago I would have said definitively that it's the last, but as of yesterday there's a slight possibility that will change. Won't know for two weeks.) Tomorrow evening we'll go up to Buena Vista for the opening of "5 Lines," an exhibition of drawings by five (of course) local artists and friends. Saturday is the opening for my show and then? An autumn full of opportunities to make thumbnail sketches. 3 or 4 of them. Every day. Can't wait!