A MID-SUMMER TRIP

I returned Saturday from a trip to Sitka and a trip to Kruzof Island with 3 friends where we climbed the dormant volcano, Mt. Edgecumbe. We stayed in a Forest Service cabin for 3 nights on the beach at the base of the trail. Yesterday, I painted it in gouache from a photo I took last year, earlier in the summer than now and from the opposite side we climbed.



There was a lot less snow than is in my painting, though I only got a short glimpse of the mountain from afar as I arrived at Sitka on the ferry on Sunday. I didn't get much of a view of it from the top either, though we climbed to the summit of the crater.



Most of the hike to the top was very easy through muskeg with good views of Sitka Sound as we gradually gained altitude. Lots of wild flowers to photograph and enjoy, and even a few blueberries to eat. The clouds were low on the mountain. We kept hoping that they would blow off. Here you can see some snow beneath the cloud.



These are my friends and fellow hikers: Aimee, Sue and Judy


The distance to the top was 7 miles. The last mile was hard, first with these steep stone steps,


and then just above the tree-line the last .6 miles torturous, in scree and what seemed straight up in the wet cloud and was hard to get a foot hold. There were 32 posts to mark the trail, which was a good thing.



Here's Aimee, first on the top. Cold and windy; we didn't stay long. Behind her the crater, full of snow, I presume.


The rain was heavier on the way down the scree. I thought about sliding on the snow chute beside us, but was afraid I'd not be able to stop when I wanted to. It took us 11 hours for the round trip. We weren't really planning to go the whole way when we left, as we know we probably wouldn't see anything, but the first part was so easy and we were so close.

The next day was partly sunny.... should have waited. Our muscles too sore to go again. We did yoga on the beach, sketched (I did this with my gouache, but somewhat thinned out like watercolor), and walked on the beach picking up pumice and driftwood.


Did some walking on the beach. Brought home a bag of drift wood and pumice and other rocks. Here I am in camouflage


Aimee made this on the beach with driftwood. It may still be there for others to enjoy unless the tide took it away.

ANOTHER GOUACHE PAINTING AND LEAVING TOWN

This cool, wet summer continues. I don't seem to have accomplished much in the way of art in the last week or so. I've worked quite a bit on a gouache painting that just isn't going anywhere. And then I did this small one (about 6" x 6") from a photo I took up bay in front of McBride Glaicer late last summer. I had a lot of trouble with the ice.... would have looked so much better done with transparent watercolor. I'm still liking learning how to use these, but wish the weather would cooperate so I could go paint outside.





Here are some other things I've been working on. I started these last year.... or maybe it was the year before. Anyway, they are going to be little accordion books. They are all painted with watercolor.

The weather was pretty nice on the 4th. Harrison Ford, who was staying in one of the lodges, came to the parade and festivities.

I've been keeping up with the garden better this year than last, finally got my kayak in the water last Monday in terrible weather, but it was good to get out.

I'll be going out of town tomorrow and will be gone for a week. I've been packing for 2 days and I'm still not ready.

SUNSET AND FLOWERS

On Tuesday evening, I rode my bike down to the
beach and enjoyed an hour of walking in the beautiful light.











There was a rainbow when I got there.












This isn't a very good composition, but I loved the way the light came through and made the lupines glow.


The sun went down at 10 pm, still north of the Fairweathers.

One last look back as I biked home.



The next morning, I stopped at the lupine field which I had painted last week to go see these rare white ones that someone had told me about.

GOUACHE PAINTINGS

I am quite excited about painting in a new media..... gouache, pronounced "ga- wash". Actually its not new to me as I've used it for years in the back grounds in my watercolor still-life paintings. But now I am using it much as one would use oil or acrylic. paints in a more "painterly" way. I've ventured into other media off and on but always go back to watercolor. Probably because they are so easy to clean up after, don't take up much space, and don't use noxious chemicals. For the same reasons, I gravitated towards the waterbase moku hanga woodblock printing after some years doing etchings and a some relief with oil base ink.

Gouache is sometimes referred to as opaque watercolor. Watercolor is transparent; the whites in a watercolor is the paper showing through, and colors are lightened by diluting the paint with water. With gouache, the colors are lightened by adding white paint. I've got a long way to go on the learning curve as its quite different than painting in watercolor. I'm having a lot of trouble with values. Some of the paints seem to dry lighter and some dry darker. And the same pigments that give a hue in watercolor don't seem to do the same when mixed with white paint. I'm especially having trouble with greens.... maybe thats has something to do with the fact that greens are mostly what I've been working on and there are so many different hues and values out there.

Before trying to paint anything, I did some pages of mixtures of each of my paints with white. I learned a lot by doing these and started doing some testing with mixtures of different pigments, but didn't get too far. I decided to just start painting. Here are the first I've done. The first 3 are fairly small, about 4 or 5 inches high.





This is the view out my studio window done on gray matboard. I thought I wouldn't have to get so picky and tight with detail to get the trees looking like trees. I did a lot of working over. What is so great about an opaque media compared to transparent watercolor is that you can paint light colors over dark.






I went out and took a picture of this mountain and painted it on a piece of watercolor paper, a gray toned one, though the gray doesn't show through. I was happier with my greens and trees in this one.




This is a field of lupine that everyone is commenting on this year. I still felt the need to put a lot of work into the spruce trees to get them to look like spruce trees. I made some changes after this scan.... one thing the white spots in the middle tree.

I must be doing something right, because I sold all three of these pieces to people who stopped into the gallery over the weekend. Encouraging!

I was planning to go camping this weekend, but it seemed too much trouble to get everything ready for just one overnight and I really wanted to stay home and keep painting and work in the garden, so I did.






I worked on this piece on Sunday and yesterday with a few corrections this morning. I did the gouache on top of one of the "beautiful papers" that I did in Anne Bagby's class in April which was done with acrylic on watercolor paper. Anne had said to bring different papers to try and several of the pieces are on heavier papers, not too good for collage and this seemed like a good thing to do with it. The top layer of the acrylic is an acrylic glaze media and the gouache will completely wash off with water which made corrections easier. I don't know if that is a bad thing. There is a bit of tooth in the surface and it's not flaky so it should be OK.

Today I cleaned up the studio and did a couple of little collages. I almost signed up for another print exchange, but I think the painting is going to hold my interest for the rest of the summer.


I stopped my writing at about 9 when I saw that the sun was out and rode my bike down to the beach. It was well worth the trip. there was a rainbow and the sun set at just about 10 and it was a beauty. I took a bunch of pictures and will put some on the next time I post.

Spring into Summer

Is the year really almost half over? Well, a little bit of what I've been up to. The garden is planted. This has been the coolest spring that I can remember and we had a freeze on the 9th. I harvested a good crop of spinach and arugula under my a-frame before the slugs got too much of them and I have big pots of lettuce on the porch, safe from the pests. I've set out the cabbages and broccoli and the seeds that I planted are coming up, though slowly with the colder weather and also not much rain. But it is raining now so maybe things will look like summer soon. The wild flowers are late and my favorite little lady slipper at the beach got nipped in the freeze. The lupines though are spectacular right now.

My grand daughter, Alyssa, visited for a week the end of last month which was too much fun. Made a couple of fun trips with friends to Excursion Inlet. Haven't gotten my kayak in the water yet but plan a little camping trip to P. Island this weekend. I'm hoping the wild flowers in the meadows will be late there too.

Van has been fishing Kings in Sitka beginning last month and is threatening not to fish Cohos this year with the price of diesel approaching $5.00 a gallon. If he quits it will be the first time since we've been married he's been home for any length of time in July. I keep telling him he should retire or at least slow down.

I coordinated a print exchange for Baren which took quite a bit of time in May. For the exchange, 30 printmakers plus more on a wait list signed up online in January to make 31 prints and send to me. The 31st print is for archiving. Some dropped out and people on the wait list came on; some didn't get their prints in on when promised which was rather frustrating. I collated them and sent everyone back 30 different prints. It was a relief to finally get the prints mailed out the beginning of this month. I enjoyed the project and made a little colophon booklet for it using Apple Works, a fun learning experience. The prints can be seen here. I did a post on the print I made for the exchange earlier this year.

I opened my little gallery weekend before last. Its a little cabin that Van and Lee built when Lee was in high-school. It was behind our house, but got moved to the end of our road just before our house. I used it for a gallery for several years in the 90's then closed it when the coop gallery started. Now that the coop no longer exists, I decided to open again this year. For now its just open by appointment. I have several new watercolor paintings, plus lots of older ones, some handmade books, my woodcuts and even an old etching or 2. For the first time I'm showing some of my little collages. Its all my stuff but for the bird flags that Aimee made. Here are some pictures:



I didn't say it was very large. Those are some of Aimee's flags hanging on the left but you can't see them very good in the photo.





I painted the floor in a tile design after coming back from a trip to Mexico. It looks more like linoleum though.






I forgot how I sized my pictures before. I guess that is why they are different sizes.

This is one of my newer paintings, done from photos I took on a kayak camping trip last summer. I think I'll do a woodcut from it.





A view from the hydro road. Might have already posted this one. I really like the sky in it. I have some more paintings I've done in the last couple of months, but I loaded the photos on the other computer.

As mid-year approaches, it time for some new resolutions and one is to start blogging more. I've been working in a new media which I will elaborate on next time.

FLORIDA VACATION PART 2, ART FEST AND BACK HOME

I've been back home for a few of weeks now. I'd better get this posting done before I forget where I was. We continued our travels in Florida to Cedar Key, a beautiful place on the west coast of Florida where we spent a delightful couple of days with Martha and John, enjoying the fine weather and scenery, tasted the local seafood, met some wonderful artists, even went painting with a plein aire group. Van and I are very seriously considering spending a couple of months there next winter.




The area is estuary and doesn't have the white beaches of much of the coast, which probably is why it isn't overflowing with tourists and buildings. This is the view near Martha and John's house. I painted this view, but I like the photo better.



We spent a couple of more days with my brother in Lake Wales, and some time with my niece and nephew and their families. I visited Bok tower which is one of the loveliest places in central Florida and on the highest point on the peninsula.


We left Florida from Orlando on April 1, Van went on home and I sent to the fabulous art retreat called Art Fest which takes place for 4 day at Fort Warden in Pt. Townsend Washington. I took 3 days of workshops,




I did 2 days with Anne Bagby who taught classes in decorating paper. We cut blocks to print with and also used her blocks, stencils and other things to print layers to make beautiful paper. Below are sections of some of the papers I made. I cut the block the was used to prints the top layer of white.








I also took a class with Lynne Perella. where I did a large painting with acrylics and collage and then made in into a book. I am still working on it and will show at some later date..... maybe.

A big part of Art Fest is trading.I did an exchange of 4x4 inch pages for 2 fat books. I painted and collaged the pages (116 in all) in December and January and mailed them to a coordinator who put them altogether into 2 books with 50+ pages in each and I got them at Art Fest. Most of the other participants were there too. Below are the fronts of 2 of my pages. Half were done with the same images (copies of some of my paintings) pasted on with other paper. the backs were decorated too. There was also a lot of trading of handmade things. I made ATCs similar to my 4x4s.






After a couple of days in Seattle, I returned to Alaska in a blizzard. Van met me in Juneau with our boat and we did a couple of days shopping and returned home. Another blizzard dropped about 8 inches on us. It was bad for Juneau which lost its hydroelectricity when an avalanche knocked out the lines.





This is the view in front of our house on April 16. We have since had some sunny weather and there are a few signs of spring. Have been busy in the studio since coming home which should make for another posting soon.

MY FLORIDA VACATION- PART 1

Van and I flew to Florida 2 weeks ago and before we leave on the 5 am shuttle to Orlando airport tomorrow, I'm going to put a few pictures here. We've been visiting my brother in Lake Wales, but made a couple of trips over to the Gulf coast. In Palmetto, we canoed in Boca Ceia Bay with my cousin Madelon in her kayak. I have happy memories of canoeing in these same waters with Madelon when we were kids and it was fun to return.




This is Van in the back of the canoe and Madelon behind in her kayak. We were heading through the mangroves to the Manatee River but when we got there, the wind was blowing and we had to go back. We saw lots of birds... a roseate spoonbill and ibises amongst others.



After a stop in Osprey to visit Bill Locher, an old Alaskan friend, we went to my Uncle Jean's beach house on Little Gasparilla Island for a few days. There I spent many hours walking on the beautiful beach and picking up shells and did a few little sketches. Here are some of them.











The main reason we came to Florida this year was to attend my Aunt Lou's 90th birthday. We celebrated with her in Palmetto on her actual birthday on the 18th and again on the 26th with a hugh party with lots of friends and family. It was good to see cousins I hadn't seen in years and meet new ones I'd never seen.



This is me with Aunt Lou. Isn't she pretty!



The day after the big birthday party, cousins Madelon, Martha, and Mike and Van and I headed down to Crystal River where we kayaked for an afternoon. I grew up in Florida but never saw a manatee until this trip. We paddled along side of this guy for quite a while.


I'll end this post with a sunset, this one from Little Gasparilla. I have more pictures and places to tell about and will put on another post soon. On to Seattle tomorrow.

REDUCTION WOODBLOCK PRINT

This post is about a print I made for a Baren Forum exchange. The requirements for the print is that it be 10 by 10 inches and there is no theme or subject specified.


I did this little watercolor in 2006 which I thought would make a pretty good composition by adding some sky or beach, but decided to have only 3 sets of piling. I went down to the beach and took some photos.



It was a cold day in February and the tide was out farther than when I painted the picture.


I use the Japanese method of printing and learned using Japanese papers. They are made for this kind of printmaking and but the ones that work well are quite expensive. I have tried several much less costly domestic papers and had had good results with Daniel Smith drawing and printing paper until they stopped making it. I decided to do a reduction print using Daniel Smith Lenox paper. I had used it on my Year of the Rat print and it worked pretty well.

I first cut the paper and prepared it for printing by soaking half of the sheets in a tub of water for about 10 minutes and laying each with a dry sheet of the same in between. An alternative method is to lightly brush water over each sheet. I put the pile between dampened blotters on a thin piece of plywood covered with a plastic bag and put another piece of bag-covered plywood on top and put the "sandwich" in a large plastic bag. I need 31 prints for the exchange and would like a few to try to sell or give away and as with all my editions there are lots that are quite awful and I save for collage or proof on the backs. I was able to get 6 10x10 prints out of each of 8 22x30 inch sheets. One of the sheets was an old sheet of "Lenox 100". I also did about 10 proofing prints on shin-torinoko.

The next morning, I pressed the pieces of paper with my etching press, going over each sheet 4 times with roller. This is to stretch the paper so it will not stretch when it is printed. The paper was the right dampness and I began printing. I print with tube watercolor paint, powdered pigments mixed on the block with methyl cellulose and in the final impression, I used sumi ink.. I print with a ball-baring baren.

This is a reduction print using just one block of wood. There were 6 different states for the block and I printed 8 impressions. After each color, I carved off that section of the block and then printed the next.





This picture shows the block as used for my first two impressions. There are 2 kento marks on the bottom (one on the left corner) for registration. I place my paper in to these slots, drop it onto the carved block and rub the back of the paper with a ball baring baren. First I printed a solid light gray. The sheet at the top of the photo shows it. I printed the whole stack before going to the next step. Secondly, I printed the gradation (bokashi) of blue for the sky.




I then carved away all the sky and water area and then printed the beach. I did a second impression on the beach, another bokashi trying for a pebbled look by not pressing so hard with my baren.




This is the block after I had printed the beach. I had started carving out the beach area.
I printed the image upside down. I've turned the blocks over for these photos.





Here the print is after the mountains were printed.



Then I carved out the mountains and printed the trees.




This is one of the prints done on the "Lenox 100". It appeared to be the same as the Daniel Smith Lenox but didn't print as well.... was pebbly, even where I didn't want it to be.





After the trees were printed, I carved them away and left the dock and the reflections and printed my 7th impression.



And now the reflections are carved away




And here is the final print.