That wasn't so bad

I definitely print better in my pajamas.

There's something about rolling out of bed and straight downstairs to a waiting print setup that seems to make everything go smoothly. Maybe it's just that I'm not awake enough to see the problems, but I don't think so.

Anyway, the first color is down and the second carve has begun. AND I had ginger pancakes to celebrate. Heck, my day was a success before noon... how's that for good living?

I tried to darken the image of prints on the rack so you could maybe see what the first pass looks like. Kinda. Sorta. Maybe. Close. Not quite.

Baby steps

I'm experiencing an unusual amount of trepidation over the beginning of this new linocut. The trickiest bits seem to be right up front in the first few carves, and I'm much more accustomed to having the first color or two provide a bit of a "warm-up." It always seems to take me a little while to get in to the groove....

But not this time! Jumping in with both feet required, which must be why I'm dragging mine in a big way. First pass is carved, paper is torn down... all that remains is to mix the color and start pulling prints.

So, of course, I'm tidying my workspace, doing laundry, washing dishes, making salads.....

At the moment the plan is to set up tonight before bed so I can just tumble downstairs in the morning and start printing before I am awake enough to be nervous. In the meantime, I'm going to have lots of clean clothes and organized pencils.

It's all your fault

Really. I'm not kidding.

If you, oh adored readers, had not been so supportive of the crazy process of High Tide Detritus, I might not have been inclined to try THIS. But here we go.


The biggest challenge of this piece (I think) happens with the first carving. Argh. Those large, semi-open spaces are melting snow. Delicate, lovely shapes in real life... but precisely how I'm going to get that quality in lino is completely theoretical at the moment. The first carve will be for the whitest portions of these shapes, the first color to print will be an oh-so-pale blue -gray. After that? We'll just have to see, won't we?

During the arduous drawing-up I kept thinking that a wise person would do this image in black and white and be satisfied with the drama of all that line. 'Nuf said.

Where, oh where, has our printmaker gone...

Oh where, oh where can she be?

Distracted by contract work, that's where. Finally it's all over. At least until Monday. But the rush job was wrapped up this week and I'm back to having brain cells enough for more than one occupation! Hoorah!

Case in point: I have FINALLY finished the little sketchbook for the Art House Sketchbook #3 Project. I had the idea that I would build one of those nifty little slideshow thingies to show you all the pages, as Jafabrit has done, but for reasons which shall remain safely my own secret, I decided this was perhaps a little less than prudent. You caught a glimpse of the big foldout page, which takes up the middle of the book quite nicely, thank you very much. Here are a few others.


I found the entire project to be surprisingly challenging. Most interesting to me was that I ended up working the book outwards from the center in both directions.. and not in a particularly tidy fashion. As someone who primarily does reduction prints, it's imperative that I work in a steady, more or less linear mode. There's no going back to change something once it's carved! Random page generation seemed... I don't know... so... RANDOM. But, hoo-ee! Once I got going it was quite fun.

I'll be packing up the little beast and sending it off this week (deadline is next weekend!). The first exhibition of the collected sketchbooks will open February 27 at the Art House Gallery, and from there they are off on a grand tour. I would LOVE to see the show, but the closest scheduled venue at this point is Chicago... a bit of a commute. Hopefully they'll do some fun things with it online.

And speaking of exhbitions! Yikes! I've been a little entry-sending and show-organizing monkey lately. If it all comes through, well, I don't even want to think about it. There are a couple of local things coming up in March: I'll be hanging work at Mother's Bistro* in Buena Vista (opening date still TBD) and doing a stab-bound bookmaking workshop in Salida (March 14). Specifics to follow shortly!

* Yes, this is the place where the DM has a regular Wednesday night gig. Your Surrogate Cousin got some great press last week. Too bad they got the DM's first name wrong. (It's Dave, Beverly! ;-)

Sunday night miscellany

As anticipated, it was back to work for the DM and I today. As I type, Your Surrogate Cousin is practicing in the dining room, and I am tucked back in a corner of my studio trying to keep tunes from getting stuck in my head. (This has become an unexpected hazard of living with a musician. Who knew I'd dream the same song over and over and over and over if I didn't exercise some auditory caution on rehearsal nights?)

No real progress on the new pine cone lino this weekend, but I did tend to some other projects. At present I have a contract job which is requiring me to reach well out of my comfort zone: I'm being called upon to make "whimsical cartoony images"! Trepidation levels were high at the start of this process, but to my surprise and relief I'm actually enjoying the challenge. I'm not ready for the funny pages, but I don't think I'll completely embarrass myself.

I also spent a little time working on the Art House sketchbook project. I confess I've struggled mightily with this "assignment," but it's due in two weeks and I'm feeling compelled to get something accomplished.

The first issue was that I was unfamiliar with the paper in the little Moleskine cahiers, and it turned out to be completely unfriendly to any of my customary approaches. In the end I've yanked out half of the sheets (completely legal, honest!) and am tipping in papers I like much better. The most amusing to me is this accordion-folded sheet of watercolor paper with, surprise! "whimsical cartoony images" of some of our friends. The theme of the project is "everyone we know," and this page celebrates the fact that just about everyone we know has multiple occupations. We know biologist-writers and farmer-musicians and researcher-event planners and, well, you get the idea.

In other news, Katherine Tyrell over at the most excellent Making a Mark has made another of her amazing, information-packed posts. This one leads with a response to recent online printmaking buzz, and guess who got a nod again? It was definitely my week for "atta girls."

In the week ahead I shall attempt to live up to all this praise... as soon as the blushing recedes, of course.

Day off

The weather forecast called for clear and sunny, and the studio forecast called for more contract work instead of the new lino, so the DM and I blew it all off and went to Crestone for the day.

'Tis a funky little town... perhaps the Wikipedia introduction can sum it up quickly:

"Crestone is a Statutory Town in Saguache County in Southwestern Colorado, United States. The population was 73 at the 2000 census. It is a small village at the foot of the western slope of the Sangre de Cristo Range, in the northern part of the San Luis Valley. Crestone was a small mining town, but little paying ore was discovered. In the 1970s a large land development, the Baca Grande, was established to the south and west and several hundred homes have been built.

The Crestone area, which includes the Baca Grande and Moffat, Colorado, is a spiritual and new age center with several world religions represented; including a Hindu temple, a Zen center, a coed Carmelite monastery, several Tibetan centers, and miscellaneous new age happenings."

It was pretty quiet today, given that it's the middle of winter, but we had a nice lunch at The Harvest, wandered through the Crestone Artisan Gallery, the natural foods store (nice!), the thrift store, an import shop, and a couple of coffee establishments. It was good to get out of the house/studio/hometown for a bit. Back to the grindstone tomorrow.

(A chorten or stupa outside Crestone. Wikimedia image by Fred Bauder through Creative Commons.)

Art Marketing Workshop Opportunity

Could be it's a serious case of preaching to the choir, telling you all about an opportunity to learn more about online marketing. But maybe not! Especially if you're in Colorado or plan to be this way in May...

Alyson B. Stanfield of ArtBizCoach.com will lead a two-day workshop in beautiful Estes Park, Colorado--the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park. Learn how to effectively promote your art online using email, blogs, and websites!

May 2-3, 2009
Just $165 until March 6
($195 after that)

You’ll learn:
* How to decide which online formats are best for you
* Five email secrets that produce results
* How to use an email newsletter to cultivate collectors
* How to expand your mailing list
* The Dos and Don’ts of artist Web sites
* Where to splurge and where to save
* Why you need a blog right now
* How to start your blog
* What to write on your blog
* How to increase traffic to your blog (and website)
* What to put in your website media room
* Why you can’t afford to ignore social networking sites

Alyson said she's expecting a sellout crowd of 70 artists from around the country, so don't dilly dally!

Save $30 by registering before March 6. See http://artbizcoach.com/estes

More fame and glory

There's Etsy, and there are printmakers, and there are printmakers on Etsy. There are bloggers who are printers and Etsians who are bloggers and bloggers who are ....

Thank goodness there's Printsy.

And, sorry about the redundancy, be it seems to be my week for a little bit of public "atta girl." Amie Roman (Burnishings) was kind enough to interview me for today's installment of the Printsy pages, and the post in all its glory came out today. Thanks, Amie... it was fun to do, and the post looks GREAT!

Payback time

Snowing.

Eleven degrees Fahrenheit and falling.

Bye bye, balmy.

Fame and Glory and Good Information

Well! What a nice little "atta girl" for me this morning! Art Biz Coach Alyson Stanfield featured one of my linocuts in this week's Art Marketing Action Newsletter. If you don't subscribe, you might want to start. It's an every Monday kick-in-your-complacency, just in case you need one.

Slow as molasses in January...

...which would be a good simile except that it's been 60 F here for more than a week and everything's flowing smoothly.

Except my lino, of course.

It's all taking longer than expected, in part because I (GASP!) decided to actually THINK about the image before I dove in this time. I feel a little more virtuous about this method, of course, but it's definitely a new way to work.

I started with a series of photos, some of which I posted a little while back. Complex little monsters, they were. So I pasted copies into the "idea book" and started looking for simpler compositions within them. I found some nice ones, but harumph! What I really want is for this piece to complement "High Tide Detritus," as I ultimately envision a little set of 3 or more prints of the "stuff" under the feet of wanderers like me. In the end I decided that I need to stick with the most complex reference image I have. The scale relates to "Detritus", the intricacy relates... yup. Gotta be the most ornate one.

So I've started drawing the image on the block, but it's taking something akin to forever. It's about half done here....

I'm trying to work on a pre-mounted Speedball block this time. I've had fair success with these for intricate carving before... more so than my typically favorite battleship gray material.

Tomorrow things get a little out of control in the client realm, so I'm not sure how quickly this will progress the rest of the week. I'd say I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a rapid completion of this step, but it's REALLY difficult to keep working when my fingers are in such a position.