Book#3: What Makes Me Crabby In the Mary Maxim Catalog by Pear-Shaped Girl

O Pear-Shaped Girl! What a crafting cynic you are! How many of these lovely items were you given... and how many have you given away?

This book, and the two before it, were all made in the style of one page books. If you want to try and make your own, see this blog entry for further instruction---> making one page books.

Pear-Shaped Girl - What a Girl Wants Book#2

And here's the second Pear-Shaped Girl one page book. I think I could make these for a good while.

The Debut of Pear-Shaped Girl

Tonight there's a fundraiser for a local gallery called SAW Gallery and they had a call for sketches or doodles, or drawings, anything informal like that. I decided to enter something and submitted three one page books. I took it as an opportunity to bring Pear-Shaped Girl into the public arena and out of my private domain. I made three one page books for the fundraiser and I hope they are well-received. I loved making them myself and will not stop making them now!

I sold everything!

O Happy Day! I put three pieces into the student art sale and all three have been sold. Wow. I am thrilled. Here's a shot of the print that sold. I can't show you the other print as I am sending another print in the series to a friend and don't want to reveal it here in case he looks at this blog. Do you look at this blog Kelvin? Hmmm.

Now I get to replace my three items with three more. I'm working on that now... and working on getting my stuff together for the Parsifal School sale tomorrow morning. Much to do. Much to do.

Finishing Up

This is my last week of school and I am finishing up my final projects. It's also the time of year
when you get a chance to make things for events and fundraisers all across the city. It's hard to fit it all in, but you just do.

This is not the best shot, but you can see one of my submissions to the student Christmas art show and sale which opened last night. My Moose (ceramic in a white shadow box frame) sold before the doors were open to the general viewing public. Yay! Thanks! I also have two prints in the show, a completed woodblock colour reduction and a lino print. It was a challenge to get things ready for the show but I did it and now we just wait and see.

Saturday Morning

As a treat to myself I bought this book, solely based on its cover (yes I do that) and it's a book I will read and re-read. I took it for the bus ride to school and found myself having to put it away to save it for the bus ride home. I would have finished it in one go. I LOVE THIS BOOK. It put a smile on my face that didn't go away all day.

It's a year in the life of an artist, Maira Kalman, fully illustrated with paintings, handwritten text that doesn't look like the type style you're reading right now, (Times Roman Western), and a sense of angst and curiosity and joy that I love.

I love this book.

But I'm supposed to be talking about Saturday. To my mind, Saturdays are days off so it's hard for me to force myself to really work on Saturday. I have set aside this weekend to make things for my three small xmas shows that start next weekend and go for the next three weekends. No homework or school stuff this weekend. Normally this would be lots of time to get ready but what with all my final assignments coming due at the same time I don't see that I'll have lots of time during the coming weeks to make things so I need to binge work this weekend.

But before I start I am going to leaf through the enormous amount of flyers which were waiting for me on the doorstep when I came home last night, get some coffee while I do that (I really enjoy flyers), and look forward to getting back to my new favourite book. In between though, I need to make things. I'd better start my day.

Woodblock Reduction Part II

So here's the second week's results of my reduction printing project. I carved away the parts that I wanted to remain the first colour of ink that I printed last week. All those white areas won't print again. Now you know why Picasso called these "suicide prints". It's do or die. There's no going back.


And here are the results at this stage of the process. I love the blue and green one. It reminded me of ads from the 70's.. all those olive green appliances, remember those? And I swear I must have spent time in a room with this very combination of shag carpet. I remember my aunt had gold and orange shag and a special rake to bring the shag up after you'd vacuumed it. What a lot of work for shag...but it did hide a lot of crumbs.

After my nine prints we complete with their second colour, I had to cut away my block again. This one was going to emphasize my composition using either black or dark blue. You just sort of cross your fingers you can line things up good enough for the whole thing to work. What's surprising is how off you really can be and it's still okay...at least to my eyes.


Here's what the block looks like now. Lots of wood is gone. The lettering is almost non-existent, and just the kitty (Kitty X of course) is still intact.

This class goes by really fast. before I had to go (the next class was coming in) I managed to carve away the last bits of my block. I'm printing it in the morning and there'll be nothing left after that. I'm carving it all away. Block destroyed.

Here's a look at this final stage. Eyes, ears and remote control buttons. I hope to be done tomorrow. You'll know if I am.

In Love

I didn't sleep much last night. I think I'm in love with this night shooting business.

Like I need another passion.

On the bright side, I am now looking forward to going out at night in winter snow and seeing what I can get. Anything that can put a positive twist on the winter season is definitely a powerful thing.

Pictures at Night

Oooo. I think I've found something I really like. We had a photography class outside tonight. I love it. No one is expecting you to take pictures at night and you can just quietly snap away. It's anonymous and quiet and everything looks different at night to the camera. I am hooked.

Drawings

Our 2nd year drawing class was able to show some of our work in the student gallery at school. Drawing is so challenging, so time consuming and so very satisfying when you finally get it right. My drawings are the two in the center done in black conte crayon.

Woodblock Reduction Printing - stage 1

I had printmaking class today and we started doing woodblock colour reduction prints. Here's a look at the first stage of my woodblock:

I chose an image to carve and carved out all the areas that would be white, or the colour of the paper I am printing on. Here are four prints from this first block, all one colour prints.


The tools for making a woodblock print are decidely low-tech. See here a wooden spoon and my handheld wood-handled carving set.


Next week I get to carve away areas that will remain the colour I have printed, and the rest of the block will be inked up and I'll print right on top of these prints in a second colour, and a third and a fourth etc until the image feels and looks right.

It's been a while

Hello. I've been thinking about my blog and about posting to my blog but everything piled up and then it didn't let up so that's why I've been so quiet. It's not for a lack of wanting to write here. And now that I am posting I am wondering why I thought it was so impossible?
Crazy.

So I thought I'd show you something that I made just last week. It feels like a breakthrough for my painting. We'll see what I do next.