Linocut in Progress: The Semi-secret Project

As I type this we're getting ready for our first significant snowfall of the season here on the coast of Maine and I find I'm actually looking forward to it. I've got hot cocoa in the cupboard and wood piled next to the stove... and plenty to do in both the studio and the office. Staying in and getting work done sounds fabulous to me.

It's not quite time to reveal the ultimate goal of the project I'm working on at the moment, but I think it's okay to show you some work in progress. I've been carving, printing, and painting a dozen individual linocut birds. When finished they'll be part of a larger image with a potentially huge audience, so it's all rather exciting.

I'm printing the birds on Arches 140lb watercolor sheets, and I've found that it works best to use damp paper. That's different from my usual working method, but once I found the right level of dampness and the right press pressure the printing process has been amazingly smooth. Maybe it's the fact that I'm just printing one color that makes it seem so miraculously painless. No 15-color-pass headaches in this job.

Of course I'm on a deadline, so to expedite things I added some cobalt drier to the ink. This is something I typically try to avoid, for a number of reasons. I dislike the smell for one... and if used over multiple color passes I dislike how it changes the sheen of the ink. But what I really hate is that it is toxic stuff, and I have a solvent-free studio. But sometimes you've just gotta do what you've gotta do.

The whole project needs to be done before the end of the month, so there's no time for messing about. Stay tuned for the big reveal and announcement, probably right around Christmas.

First week of January... It's time to think about the SUMMER!

We're "enjoying" a full-blown winter storm here in the Heart of the Rockies today. Howling wind, single-digit temps, horizontal snow.

So of course it's a great day to think about a sunny island off the coast of Maine, where I'll be an instructor for a couple of programs in June and July!

Registration is underway for all the programs at Hog Island Audubon Camp: Ornithology programs for adults, bird and marine studies for teens, family camps... and my personal favorites – Educators' Week and Arts & Birding. Scholarships and early registration discounts may still be available, so be sure to check out those links as well.

Program descriptions below, but feel free to contact me if you have any questions. I hope to see some of you on the island this summer!

2016 Arts & Birding guest instructor and National Geographic illustrator
Jonathan Alderfer helps participants understand bird and feather anatomy.

Arts & Birding 
June 11-16
Immerse yourself in the sights, sounds, and rhythms of life on an island on Maine’s stunningly beautiful rocky coast! You’ll find plenty of creative inspiration in the company of artists who share an enthusiasm for birds and nature and you’ll be able to learn from some of the country’s best photographers and artists. This program includes fun birding adventures, as well as more in-depth study in your choice specialty of photography or sketching/painting.

We’ll explore the island’s spruce forest, tide pools, and striking vistas, and take a boat trip to Eastern Egg Rock to see Atlantic puffins. The week includes opportunities to learn new skills through your choice of workshops on photography or sketching, journaling and painting. We will also offer longer blocks of time for you to immerse yourself in your art. This program is ideal for beginners as well as avid birders, artists and photographers. No experience or talent needed! Just a desire to experience and enjoy birds in fresh, new ways.

Hog Island tidepool

Island view as the tide recedes

Sharing Nature: An Educator's Week
July 16-21

Learn practical approaches and add inspiration to your environmental education curriculum during this action-packed program. Our experienced and enthusiastic instructors share their favorite approaches, methods, and activities for engaging both children and adults with nature.

Workshops using techniques in art, music, theater, journaling, and other disciplines will be presented, as well as a host of classic Audubon Camp field trips, including a boat trip to the restored Atlantic Puffin and Tern colony on Eastern Egg Rock, intertidal explorations, and hiking through Hog Island's unspoiled spruce-fir forest. These experiences provide a wonderful opportunity to be learning outside in a beautiful setting, while also considering how you can take back some of these insights and methods to your students back home. We'll be exploring citizen science, creating some inquiry-based lessons on birds and other topics, and demonstrating both low and high-tech methods of teaching.

Fieldwork...ummm... Fourth?

So here I am, less than 48 hours from departure for several teaching gigs on the east coast. The to-do list is FINALLY in the single digits (although it keeps wavering up a few tasks and then coming back down again), and my house is a riot of indecisive packing. I have only two small "carry-on"-sized suitcases and six weeks of gear to take for multiple events. Last week I shipped two small boxes of workshop materials... and it looks like tomorrow I'll have to ship one more. Ooph.

Yesterday, however, I was feeling secure enough about my available time (prematurely, it turns out) to take a little hike up a favorite local trail, Greens Creek. It's lovely and lush in there right now, and we got out early enough that my friend and I were headed back down the trail before we encountered the steady stream of weekend adventurers.

The hike inspired some field sketches of blooming flora.... hooray! It's been too long.

I intended to create the aforementioned sketches in my journal before I realized I didn't have a current one! I did the little watercolors on loose sheets and then spent all last evening making a new journal for them. Because I have time for that sort of thing right now.

New pages, new journal. Embiggenable with a click.

The good news is that by taking time to do some fieldwork and build a new journal I feel more like myself than I have in a long time. The less-good news is that it might mean I don't get another color on the lino before I leave. But going back to the good news: I'm close enough to departure that I've almost reached that "no-more-time-let-it-all-go" stage. Almost.

I didn't just build a new book, I built a PRETTY new book.

The leather needs to relax a bit, but since it's about to get crushed in a suitcase I'm not worried.

Is it any wonder I got inspired?

Greens Creek, or Green Creek, or Green's Creek, depending on which map you consult.

In the high desert, lush riparian areas like this are just YUMMY.
It rained the night before, so everything looked extra-rich.

A rare "brush" post for Brush and Baren...

Perhaps I should have titled this post "Where-the-heck-did-she-go Wednesday."

The answer is that she got chained to the drawing table for the past week. Trip to the Front Range? Cancelled. Mostly because of weather, but also because I had multiple illustration deadlines in head-on collision. The good news is that I have work, the bad news is that it's keeping me away from the press.

Illustration in progress for an interp panel in the local state park.

In between bouts of sitting at the drawing table I've been sitting at the computer. (How dumb is THAT?) A major overhaul of my website is underway! It's going to be great when it's finished, but right now it's just tedious. I'm switching everything out of Dreamweaver and learning to use WordPress... trading one persnickety beast for another. But as I said... it's going to be great when it's finished.

I sent files for two jobs off to proof last night, and as a reward for good behavior I started prepping paper for a new print. Going to make the leap to a slightly larger image this time: 12 x 18. And something landscape-y rather than birdy. Can't wait to get started!

We interrupt this linocut

Yeah. Illustrations due. Can you tell by the state of my work space? Those are watercolors and brushes (shudder) on my table, and reference photos everywhere. The print bench lies in sad, lonely darkness. I should be done with this project at the end of the day and then we can get back to printmaking, okay?

This blog DOES say "brush" in the title, after all

Brush and Baren. There was a reason for the title, 'way back at the end of 2006 when this blog began. At that time I was still spending time wielding a brush and sloshing paint– at least more than I have been lately.

This week I'm back to being a woman of many hats: printmaker, illustrator, writer, painter, photo researcher, administrator, and even vintage magazine seller while a friend is out of town and her online store needs minding. Thankfully at least one of those tasks will be finished after tomorrow. I'm feeling a bit... stretched.

But I was pleasantly surprised to have some watercolor illustrations work out as well as they did over the weekend. A few shorebird beaks and their different foodstuffs were the topic, and by golly both brushes and pigments (not to mention eye-hand coordination) were cooperative.

It's back to the lino illustrations tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Unexpected perspective

Well, here's something you haven't seen in a while...

Illustration-in-progress. Hey, where's my printing stuff?

I'm in full-on paint mode for contract work this week, which feels a little odd. It's been a while since I've had any "brush" to share on Brush and Baren, because it's been weeks since I've had paints on the table and a brush in my hand. A couple of months ago, in the midst of another illustration project, I experienced an astounding revelation:

I quite dislike brushes.

Actually, the word I chose at the time was significantly stronger than "dislike," but since I really do need cooperation from this particular tool at the moment, it seems prudent to call a truce.

My path to image-making has been anything but a straight line (ahem). I didn't set out to be an artist, I set out to be a teacher. Little moments along the way– a nudge here, a pat on the back there– encouraged me to pick up a pencil, then a brush, then etching tools. Even clay and stone. But art was something I would teach, not something I would do full time. Shows you what I knew.

It's interesting to look back and see how a hundred little "insignificant" actions and conversations led me to where I am now. Twenty years ago I started painting because there were learning opportunities available and I took advantage of them... first in oils, then in watercolor. I met other artists– painters all– and hung around with them. I wanted to be them. But while I think of myself as a reasonably competent painter I have never been a comfortable painter. If I want to make a mark I don't automatically reach for a brush. I reach for a pencil. Or a gouge.

It's only in the last 2 or 3 years that I've realized it's okay not to be a painter. I've never been terribly comfortable with calling myself an artist, either (too much baggage attached to the term), but I answer to printmaker as readily as my own name.

Some projects still call for paint, of course, and for some endeavors only a brush will do. It's a nice diversion once in a while, but it's also a helpful reminder of who I really am. I'm a printmaker, and whenever I doubt it all I have to do is pick up a brush to put everything back in perspective.

Moth... RAH!

It's a headline you'll only understand if you, too, share some portion of your life with someone who likes cheezy science fiction films. Or if you are that person yourself.

The other day, enroute to the grocery store, the DM and I found a moth that was in fine shape- other than being dead. Even its antennae were perfect... wide, yellow fans. I held it cupped in my hand the entire time we did the shopping, checked out, and walked home. I don't think anyone noticed... but I don't think anyone who knows me would have been surprised.

A few weeks ago I found a moth of a different species, not yet dead but sitting quite still in the middle of the street. I scooped it up and put it in a safe spot in the yard, but it expired overnight in the flower pot.

They've both been on the shelf since their passive collection, but yesterday I found a page with a painting I'd done of ANOTHER moth some time ago. It seemed a good time to add to the two-dimensional collection, so.... here they are. One is white-lined sphinx moth... I haven't sorted the others out yet.

Mystery countdown: TWO!

How to celebrate finishing a project, redux

Yippee! By this time tomorrow two long, drawn-out, angst-inducing projects will be delivered to their respective clients and breathing room will miraculously materialize. Duration of said breathing time is undetermined, but I can guarantee I will revel in it.

To celebrate, a quickie sketch of carrots from our farm share. This week's bunch was quite quirky... full of two- and three-legged beasties which became salad with raisins in short order. After weeks and weeks of fussy, tight, particularity-driven work it felt grand to scribble and splash a bit. Whew.

Star gazing

I'm working on illustrations for the chapter headings of a friend's new book. Just a little set of eight images of star constellations, a subject about which I know very little. It's been fun looking through books and online images to see some fabulous photography, like this view of the Pleiades in the "Astronomy Picture of the Day" section of the NASA site. (Astrophotography by Robert Gendler.)


I'm going to be off to Hog Island, Maine in a week, to be an instructor for Audubon Leadership Camp. I understand that the Perseid meteors will be in peak shower mode whilst we're there, and I hope we'll get good weather for watching them. (But please tell me WHY the peak stuff always happens at 2:00am. Hey! I need my beauty sleep! Snark.)

Anyway... It's been fun to do some simple little paintings this weekend, instead of bonding entirely too closely with my computer. Reaching out instead of in, up instead of down at the keyboard has been a nice change of perspective, even if it's just a 5- inch-wide imagining of something 100,000 light years in diameter.

Going buggy

In honor of my friend Jean-Louis, and thanks to my friend Margie (she brought me the critter)... today a small study of a moth. I am not so good at subtle, and this beast was very subtle... but it's good exercise to at least try such things.

I've been down most of the day with a nasty headache.
We're having very odd, unsettled weather today and my sinuses feel as though they are going to explode. If it ain't one thing, it's another, eh?

Proto-garden

When we moved in to this house last month, friends began to provide us with the botanical means to make it a home. The very first day we had pots with two new tomato plants, one oriental eggplant, and one basil.

Since then? A mixed pot of herbs and edible flowers, a hugeongous pot of mint (the DM's favorite), another tomato (cherry), peppers, chives, and a pile of native flowers. We've not yet got everything in the ground... still nursing it all in pots and rushing out periodically to cover the lot when we get a ridiculous overnight temp below freezing. (You might expect such a thing in June in Australia, but we're north of the 38th parallel for pete's sake!) Tomorrow morning we hope to turn one of the backyard beds and get some of these little fellers settled.

But two days ago.... miracle of miracles! I discovered proto-tomatoes! On all three (different) tomato plants! Yippee! This is almost as fun (and certainly less nerve-wracking) as finches nesting over the front door. They're small and timid... hiding away under clumps of leaves, but they're there! And this time the rotten deer can NOT get to them. THIS yard is surrounded by 6-foot-high wooden fence. I might actually get to eat these instead of the ones with the Tim Burton stems from the grocery. Which, incidentally, no one can eat right now because of a tomato-borne salmonella outbreak amongst commercial output. One more reason we can't wait for the local Farmer's Market to open this weekend.

You say tomato

Here in the Heart of the Rockies we're still waiting for actual spring. Yesterday the DM and I attempted to attend the opening of the National Small Print Show in Creede, but were turned back a fourth of the way into the journey by snow and wind and fog. Sheesh.

Our friend Susan brought us tomato plants the day we moved into the house, protected in their pots by little red wall-o-waters. A few hours later her husband Richard showed up with a row cover and clothespins, announcing an overnight low forecast of 21 F. Double sheesh.

Since then we've been on a weather roller-coaster... each evening looking at each other and wondering if it's safe to leave our tender proto-garden exposed. We've covered it more often than not.

At this rate we'll be stuck with store-bought tomatoes until October.

I always laugh at the current popular tomato deception. You know the one: tomatoes sold "on the vine." Never mind that these are still industrial, hydroponic, never-see-a-speck-of-soil tomatoes. They're on a vine. They must be better.

In truth they are still hard and tasteless, BUT... we have discovered one advantage.

Yesterday the DM held up this piece of vine from our last disappointing tomato adventure and said, "Doesn't this look like something from a Tim Burton movie?"

Absolutely. And it looked darn fun to draw.

Pointy end down

Pencils. Brushes. Carving tools. All have pointy ends which, when put to their proper purpose, are applied to some sort of surface. Perhaps you remember this, but, OOPH! Seems like another lifetime since I exercised this particular skill.


Our new abode came with a yard that suffers a bit from recent neglect. We started to remedy this situation over the weekend, with a trim to the lawns and an application of H2O. The yard sports a variety of green matter, including two ancient and decrepit (but perhaps willing to fruit) apple trees. It also has two scrubby shrubs which appear near to flowering as honeysuckle. A few minutes tonight with pencil and brushes and water bucket and pallet on a familiar table in an unfamiliar space rendered this little sketch of a not-yet-blooming twig. It ain't great, but it's a sketch instead of a photo of boxes and their contents. Hoorah!

It's going to take a bit for this to feel like my working space, but I think it will be good once I get it all sorted out. The DM is getting his space sorted out, too, and it was nice to make this sketch whilst listening to live background music. Of course, both of us are suffering from weeks of hand and finger abuse: packing, lifting, moving, unpacking, dusting, scrubbing, arranging. The skin of our respective phalanges is cracked and tender, so we sound like two old grumps as we work: "Ooh. Ow. Yikes. Ouch. Ooph."

Bit by bit... back to business.

Still working

More interp panel backgrounds. This one in progress is the lower Arkansas River. Also finished the grassland background this weekend... More on that later.

My living room is filling with boxes, as the DM has been shipping belongings ahead. He leaves Ohio and starts his westward journey today, hooray! The canyon panels are due to the fabricator tomorrow and these other two backgrounds are due to the client on Wednesday. The DM arrives Wednesday night after a 1500-mile drive. I expect the reunion will go something like this:

A delighted and exhausted embrace, followed by "Nice to see you. Can we go to sleep now?"

And what's more....

A little watercolor finished today, too.

What lost hour?

I've been so out of touch lately that I didn't even realize until Friday that we were "springing ahead" last night. I don't understand why a) we did the winter change later than usual and are now b) doing the spring change earlier but I am c) absolutely NOT complaining.

Well, maybe I'm whining a wee bit. I'm just not ever convinced that I can afford to lose an hour, especially at this time of year. I went to bed a tad overwhelmed last night... the list of tasks in the week ahead is enormous.

Of course some people seem to able to get more out of the last few hours of a day than others. Enter Amie Roman over at Burnishings. I stumbled on Amie's lovely work at little while back... I think whilst checking out the possibilities of selling work on Etsy. You know how these things go... one click leads to another leads to another leads to hours of wandering about in cyberspace. (At the right: "Where the Lilies Grow" by Amie.)

Anyway, just last night (the short night), Amie and I struck up a little correspondence and this morning I discover she has linked to me six ways from Sunday. She's got techno-prowess AND printmaking genes! A goddess if ever I met one. And of course, now I have to poke around in all the new places she has led me: Squidoo, Wet Canvas, del.icio.us. (Not whining about THAT.)

The weather lost no time in gracing us with some snow overnight. I confess I'm snowed-out for this season, but it could be worse. I could still be in Cleveland, where they've had "the snowstorm of the year." This shot from the window of a house I know well there... and this was before it REALLY started snowing.


For me today it's the start of two new illustration jobs... one in watercolor and one in linocut. Thursday I'm going to take a "Sherrie Art" day... that missing Hosho paper is supposed to arrive Wednesday.

Guess I'd better get busy.

Cleveland weather update: The Great Snowshoveling has begun there. Here in the Heart of the Rockies we've only had a couple of wet-springlike inches of the white stuff. I'm trying not to gloat. I'm told that nice, even little wall of snow is about 2 feet high near the house.

Bad, bad, bad, bad me

Sorry, sorry, sorry. I've been out of town again, and despite my best intentions I haven't been able to post.

As a first peace offering, a sketch in a coffee shop in a city 1500 miles from my own. More soon. Like how about a new linocut getting its first color in the morning?

Defying the groundhog

Punxatawney Phil might have said we had more winter to go, but try telling that to the house finches. And the flickers. The last couple of days have been sunny and mild (for February), and the ever-optimistic members of the Class Aves have been chortling their glee. I have, too, for that matter.

Still, there's no denying that the ochre grass and gray twigs of the winter landscape remain dominant. The conifers are green, of course... but the words "lush" and "verdant" stay filed away in boxes with my summer clothes.

Thank goodness for paint. And photos and sketches from last season to work with. I have cheered myself this afternoon with my favorite native blooms: blanketflowers in red and yellow. Tomorrow, after a brief stint as Virtual Boss Lady (I'm minding the online store of a friend who is out of town for a few days) I think I'll at least get a new small linocut ready to go. It's been too long since one has graced these pages. Not to mention too long since my tools have been busy.

Portrait of an addiction

Okay. 'Tis a tad abstract. But so's the addiction.

It's ginger.

In all forms.

Under any circumstances.

Ginger tea, ginger beer, ginger ale, gingerbread, ginger snaps, candied ginger, raw ginger, sushi ginger, ginger chews, ginger mints, the adored residents of OZ even provide the world with ginger gummi bears. Ginger ICE CREAM. There is ginger to be found immersed in dark chocolate! Can there BE anything more delightful?

Why, yes. Yes there can.

Someone with whom to share said addiction.

And I found someone.

This is my lucky, lucky day.