More Art, Less Housework

I get very emotional on Remembrance Day.  I think of the soldiers past and present who fight in terrible wars, who go into harm’s way in the name of peace and I don’t want us to ever forget the sacrifices that they make.  I don’t want this to just be a “day off” for my kids. I want them to understand what it’s all about.

Today at 11 the kids and I will watch this video.  And I’ll try to explain what it all means.  And I’ll take flowers to my friend who’s brother died in Iraq.

mushrooms… sketches… a new print, maybe?  Inspiration came from a few different places today;

-   a couple of months ago I took a bunch of photos of mushrooms on a walk through the inland coastal forest at Ocean Shores.  I finally uploaded them to my computer.

-   then I saw amazing paper cut mushrooms on page 38 of Anthropologie’s November catalog.

-   and yesterday I was reading Jill Bliss’s blog.

We’ll see what happens.  I’ll keep you posted!

These journals are amazing.  Each time I visit the site I pick about eight that I would love to own and several more that would be perfect for friends.  Such a simple idea, and cleverly executed. 

Each journal is made from an old book, but not just the cover.  The makers have kept several of the inside pages and intermixed them with the blank pages.  A friend has one and they are even nicer in person.

See, here is one for my husband.  His new boss is a physicist.  I’ll bet this would really impress him if Derick used it to take notes in a meeting!

My daughter could use this one as a sketch book in class.  Her teacher’s will never know ;-)

This is a cool little technique that I learned in my printmaking class.  I nice way to add a bit of color to your prints, especially when you are primarily working in black and white.  I used this to turn my little skeleton man into a ghoooost.  (Miss R drew the skeleton and I transferred it to a safety-cut block and carved it. )

I’m going to try to explain how I do this, but if you have any questions, let me know!

1. stamp your carved block on a piece of cardstock. 
2. cut out the shape that you would like to use as the colored portion of your print.  This becomes your template.  I wanted the body of the skeleton to be white so I just cut out this portion.
3. using your template cut out pieces of paper that will add the color to your print.  I used white mulberry paper.  Mulberry and tissue papers are “traditional” chine colle papers but honestly, you can use anything.
4. ink up your stamp. 
5. paint glue (I use nori paste, again a traditional paste for this technique but any thin, acid-free glue will work) onto your cut out pieces.  This is tricky, your piece of paper is going to lie on top of your stamp then your final paper will go on top of everything. So in effect, you are putting paste on the right side of your paper.
6. put the glued piece of paper on top of your stamp.
7. put your paper on top of the stamp.  press down using either a baren or the back of a wooden spoon.
8. lift the paper up carefully.  Sometimes the thinner paper will stick to the stamp instead of adhering to the paper.  If this happens, lift it off carefully and place it onto the heavier paper.  This is why you make lots of copies, just in case.

After thinking about the intaglio prints that I did last year and comparing it to the results of the prints this year I concluded that the root cause of the problem is trying to use the MDF. 

I carved too deeply and expected the paper to be pushed into the deep grooves to pick up the ink.  Instead it picked up the ink on the sides of the grooves, as per the diagram (it’s a wonder I think of myself as an artist).

The result is that the lines are doubled, and in some areas, very faint.  You can still see some of the embossing along the edge though, which is nice.  The final problem is working with wet pencils, wet paper and wet MDF, it all starts to blur a bit.  The MDF is getting all frayed and so the block is likely to be put out to pasture, or get a hook on the back for hanging.

Back to shellac intaglio for me.  But in the meantime, I’ve a bunch of small woodblocks that need printing.  Stay tuned.

once again printmaking has shown me that (a) you never know what you’re going to end up with, and (b) sometimes the mistakes turn out to be better than planned if you let them sit over night instead of putting them directly into the recycling bin.

I was determined to do another sugar skull print this year.  Last year I did it using a shellac plate and intaglio process with water soluble colored pencils. 

This year I thought I’d try it using MDF board scavenged from my next door neighbor’s wood pile.  You know, a wood engraving style woodcut.  The carving went swimmingly, MDF is hard but not impossible to carve using standard linoleum carving blades.  Next, “inking” it up.  First I tried water-soluble pastels.  The result was less than stellar so I went back to water soluble pencil crayons.  The results, not what I expected.  Having said that, and after taking a couple of deep breaths, I realized that the results were pretty cool.  I pulled a total of eight prints.

So two will go into my etsy shop.  Have I mentioned it?  www.moreart.etsy.com

And three will be given away, right here on my blog.  Just send me an email at d _ rogal at hotmail dot com and I will pick three random winners.  Given how many people read my blog your chances of winning are excellent!  Deadline is October 15, winner will be notified by email.  Subject to rules and restrictions at the whim of the artist.  Not legal in Quebec.

** For the printmakers out there, come back tomorrow when I will critique the process and tell you what I think went wrong/right with my print.

I recently opened up a shop to sell my prints.  An etsy shop.  As I put on my profile, long time shopper, first time seller.  For those of you who haven’t heard of etsy (Dad!) it is an online community of artists, crafters and sellers of various and sundry goods (vintage items, craft supplies, and so on).  I’m really excited because now I can sell my prints to a wider audience and have a place to point people when they ask if I have my prints online.  Why yes, I do! 

So what are you waiting for?  A link or something?  Go visit my shop and please let me know what you think!  More items coming soon.

www.moreart.etsy.com

The kids and I sat down to build a castle today because we have two bags of gray Lego.  We soon realized that we’d have to add brown.  And black.  And red.  It takes a lot of Lego to build a castle.

On a related note, we are going to go to Brickcon this weekend, thanks to the heads up given to us by our friend Iain. 

P and I are most excited about seeing Zombie Apocofest!  Yes, an entire city scene dedicated to zombies and zombie movie references.  Too cool.  The picture below is from The Brother’s Brick who are organizing this awesome event…

Today it finally felt like fall.  Time to think about a few meals that aren’t cooked on the barbeque. 

Tonight it was mushroom and butternut squash risotto.   I sort of used Martha’s recipe but didn’t make quite as much because it was just for the kids and I. And I fried mushrooms with the rice.  And I par-boiled the squash and used that water to add to the risotto.

A big hit and enough left over for my lunch tomorrow.  yay.

for those of you who are participating in my little adventure at the moment (vicariously I know since I am making only rare social appearances), you will love this quote from a chapter in the book Pure Drivel by Steve Martin…

Artist Lost to Zoloft

The use of Zoloft in the artistic community has a worrying effect on art dealers selling to the “anger market”.  “I can sell antiparent symbolist stuff all day,” said an unidentified derler, “but the artists aren’t delivering it anymore.  Once artist, who used to give me birth canals with fangs, now sends me painting of dogs playing poker.”

Thank you Liz, for sharing.