wha?

My amethyst print made it to the front page of Etsy yesterday and I didn't even realize it 'til just now. COOL!

Thanks to Leah from BlankStairVintage for featuring me in her treasury!

crystal portraits finished!

clockwise from top >> tibetan clear quartz : tangerine quartz : amethyst

I just finished up my crystal portraits this morning! The black outlines on the tangerine quartz prints are drying as I type.

After a few failed attempts at realigning the old Tibetan quartz linos I scrapped them and started over. (So much better!) The newly carved blocks were much easier to register. It's very subtle, but I snuck a little yellow into the white ink along the bottom half of those guys and love the way it turned out.

Today would be a good day to take them out for listing photos as it's sunny and fairly dry, but as I said before, the black on the tangerine quartz is still very fresh and I don't want it to get all smudged and ruined. Dang. I really wanna get that part done. I'm definitely going to sell them as a set on Etsy, but can't decide if I should also offer them individually as they're quite small.

in progress :: crystal portraits

I've been working on my miniature linocut crystal portraits again and I think I totally nailed it on the amethyst!

I am so happy with the way these came out, even better than I hoped and definitely better than I expected. (They're only two and a half inches square!) Before I started the amethyst prints I had completed a run of Tibetan clear quartz, but now seeing the quality of the amethyst I'm going to re-carve and print them.

Each print in this series (a third stone is coming, tangerine quartz!) will be printed with two blocks, one for the shape and one for the outline. I've already carved down the outlines on the Tibetan quartz so the line weight is thinner and I'll reprint it in black, the shape will stay white but maybe with a little pop of yellow somewhere. Lining up the registration on the amethyst prints was fairly easy because I made sure the carved images on both of the blocks were positioned identically, unfortunately I didn't make sure of this on the Tibetan quartz blocks and the images are positioned at slightly different angles making proper registration much more difficult. Hopefully I can find a way to compensate for this with out having to carve one of the blocks again. I've posted this image before, but here are some of the drawings that started these portraits.

August?

I've been very much in the mood for doing and being over showing and telling lately, hence the deserted blog. Sorry! I'm going to attempt to catch us all up here, but I have to say, sometimes it feels really good to forget about all this internet business. Anyway, I haven't posted anything since July and now it's September, and in between it was August - month of endless funtimes and also my birthday month! You can see why I might be preoccupied. Besides, it's summer - who isn't preoccupied?

First thing I have for you are pics from my birthday camping trip to the Wilson River. Johnnie and I met Mike and Kari there for some free camping and splendid swimming. Kari fished while Mike and Johnnie constructed a bow and arrow from river sticks and fishing line (it actually worked!). I observed and failed to thoroughly document. Birthday girl's privilege. We stayed one night during which it rained, and so we constructed an impromptu shelter from one 5' x 7' tarp, two lengths of twine, one tie-down and a bungee net. Well done us! We then proceeded to feast under it like true camping champs.

Earlier in the month I finished watching Battlestar Galactica, reading The Return of the King, and got a new ID - all in the same day! Mundane events, yes - but together like that it really felt like the beginning of a new age. Here's the cover of ROTK to complete the set:

This cover lets us know that in this, the final chapter of the saga, shit's really gonna hit the fan. Raging volcano, BEASTS, banners and more BEASTS?? Methinks perhaps a war is on. I love the scratchy texture and line work we see on all three covers, it makes me think maybe there was some scratchboard or at least scratchboard technique in the making of the illustrations. If I can manage to find more work by this mystery artist I'll definitely share it here. 

In the realm of art projects, I rode the wave of my make-ation and experimented with block printing on fabric and started on some portraits of crystals from my personal collection.

I still need to test wash the horse patches to see if my inks will set properly on fabric. The crystal portraits I haven't been able to work on lately but I'm really excited about them. I was hyper critical of them right after I started, but since I've had a break from them I really like what I'm seeing!

I bought myself a new sketchbook as a birthday gift and it seems really huge! Like 300 pages huge! I was fretting over what sort of commitment I'd got myself into after purchasing it when I found my horoscope in The Stranger which read:

"Science writer K.C. Cole asks this question: 'How would you hold 100 tons of water in thin air with no visible means of support?' Here's her answer: 'Build a cloud.' What you have before you right now, Leo, is a comparable scenario. Your assignment is to materialize a phenomenon that from a certain viewpoint may appear to be laughably impossible. And yet, with the proper attitude on your part and nature's help, the project at hand is eminently achievable. It won't necessarily be fast and easy, mind you - but you wouldn't want it to be, because then it wouldn't be able to teach you all the precious wisdom it has to impart."

Quite applicable to small specific goals, like my sketchbook, and to larger more abstract endeavors!

Hmm, what else? More recently I went blackberry picking with my friend Elliot --

YUM -- and in a failed attempt at fostering, adopted this troublesome troublemaker, Miss Ralphie Starbuck.

More on her later, when she calms down a bit.

I still need to photograph and list much of what I accomplished during my make-ation, I also have supplies and packaging to find and purchase, but I'm still very much in the mood for art projects pure and simple and experimenting with new inspirations and ideas. Maybe as fall begins to roll in I'll catch the spirit of the new season and begin tying up loose ends and preparing my stores for winter. We'll see!

Nature shrines.

I finished some new autumn light boxes at the tea shop. They're inspired by more of my childhood collecting; I loved to gather and stash rocks, twigs, shells, feathers, nuts, seed pods and anything else that caught my eye. (My bedroom and school desk were subject to occasional raids by my parents and teachers clearing out moldy, decaying refuse.) I found myself revisiting this old nature fetish and looked for a project to apply it to, the light boxes turned out to be a perfect fit!

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And yes, those are wood veneers that I ran through the sewing machine!

MT. SI

 

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