Finally underway

As if we hadn't been spending entirely too much time away from home already, the DM and I traveled to Boulder this weekend to celebrate his birthday. It was nice to check out the scene at the Boulder Art Fair and David got to visit a bit with renowned Stick player Bob Culbertson, who was doing his Chapman Stick schtick at the fair.

This week the annual Audubon Adventures project gets ramped up to full speed and I need to give some attention to a couple of commissions, but I got tired of looking at this forlorn and neglected linocut block sitting on the table. Image drawn and first color carved, but not printed. (Sigh) So, I took advantage of a little schedule shuffle yesterday afternoon and got the first color down on paper. At this point it looks as if this image will be 7 or 8 colors, unlike the 10 of the last print. I am most looking forward to printing a couple of shades of green, which I don't seem to do often enough. Green is always a challenge, I think... in any medium!

More carving this evening whilst the Darling Man is off to a meeting. I hope to print color #2 tomorrow.

Maine postscript

Two more images to add by the light of day. "Seabird Sue" Shubel was kind enough to sift through 8 or 10 cameras to take this shot (over and over again) of the motley Audubon Leadership Week cast and crew on the last morning.




And those infamous puffins. Cute, aren't they? I think maybe these were taken by Bob "Big Lens" Schamerhorn.

Back to unpacking/laundry/repacking.

They're hee-ere!

Hot off the press, the new issues of Audubon Adventures arrived in the mail this week. This is a project for which I've done illustrations for several years... and this year we took on a completely new format. (Courtesy of the amazing folks at Cataleno and Company.)

Also exciting, my first soup-to-nuts project for the Adventures program: Sherrie as writer, illustrator and designer! "Nature Journaling for Everyone" is a little booklet written for youth leaders of all stripes who want to start nature journaling with kids. Yippee!