DSFDF COLLAGE

I hadn't done one of the Different Strokes from Different Folks challenges for quite some time and had been thinking about doing the latest one ever since it was offered; but with the woodblock due and paintings to finished, and numerous other things, all I did was just think about it.... every few days I'd go over to the site and see what had been done... and think about it some more. I knew when I first saw the photo that I'd like to do a painting with some collage in it. Thinking the deadline was Thursday night, I pulled out the collage stuff on Wednesday and started cutting and pasting and kept it up all day. I ended up covering what painting I'd done completely with collage. Luckily I looked at the site that evening and saw that I was wrong about the deadline.... it was Wednesday, not Thursday night that it was due...I rushed to the studio and scanned what I'd done and cropped to just part of it which is here. Maybe I'll work on it some more... how I love cutting and pasting. But I'm back to less fun things now. I cut mats all day today and tomorrow will do some framing. Much to do in the next week before I take off for a two week trip to Washington and California.

NASTURTIUM PRINT

I finished the nasturtium print for the Baren Exchange 42 last Sunday. Here is a bit of some of the process:

I decided to do something a little different..... use linoleum for the key block.I had never printed with lino using the Japanese method (pigment, water, and paste) and was planning to do the key block with oil base.... but happily found that the watercolor and methyl cellulose that I'm used in this worked fine.

And I also was surprised and pleased that I could do somewhat fine lines using the linoleum. I have never been able to get much detail with wood. And it was so easy to cut and my arthritis didn't flair up at all, though by the time I'd cut all the wood blocks I had a pretty painful blister on my middle finger.

Most of my prints in the last few years have been reduction. This is a small print and I'd at first thought I'd might do some reduction, but like the idea of doing more prints later. I might do some reduction later in a final edition.

After trying different ways of registration, I find the following gives me the best results:

I cut my key block and then cut my kentos in all of my blocks before transferring my key block to the additional blocks.



This poor picture shows me rolling oil base ink onto my linoleum key block. I will print onto a piece of tracing paper.


Here is my piece of tracing paper on the lino block after I have rubbed the back with my baren.
You should print a new piece of tracing paper for each color block.... If you use the same one the ink will build up and make the lines print on the block wider than they are.... I found this out and it caused problems on one of the blocks.


On the bottom I have placed the printed tracing paper face down on to the block into the kento marks that I'd already cut. The kentos aren't very evident in this picture. I will rub the back and it will off set (transfer) from the paper onto the wood. I had already offset the key block image on the other side of the block (on the top of this picture). You can see the kentos better in the top one.

I was taught to transfer the kento along with the image from the key block and cut along with each color block. But when I did that, I seemed to always be off on the registration.... its easier to get the paper in the kento correctly than to cut a kento correctly. After I cut each block, I clean the oil image off with paint thinner. (I had of course cleaned the key block and roller off after printing the tracing papers.) Some of the oily ink image stays on the color blocks (you can see some in the following pictures of the blocks) but doesn't affect the print.

I didn't take pictures of the prints in each stage, but here are the blocks.


No need to say what color they printed. The yellow and the aqua combined to make green. The while speck is something on the scanner.




I cut a seventh block with just the bloom on the bottom and the bottom of the larger bottle.




TA-DA......


Here is the final print.... at least what I hoped for. Thanks to my too thick lines when I reused the tracing paper when I transferred my image I had some mistakes in the background block .... I've corrected it here some with a brush and watercolor.

Since my finger was in no shape to cut anymore, I decided to leave out the yellow background for this edition.
It wasn't just the yellow background block that wasn't right....the stem just below the yellow flower is the most obvious which I thought I'd fixed but made worse and didn't realize until I was done.

I used a product that I'm sold on..... DAP PLASTIC WOOD CELLULOSE FIBRE FILLER. I corrected several little mistakes and will fix the background block. I don't know if it will adhere to the linoleum, but will try it as there are a few slips there too.

Now the printing things are put away and I'm back in painting mode.

BELLADONA AMARYLLISES AND A BIG CABBAGE

I have 2 big pots of belladonna amaryllises which bloom often and are often the only thing blooming around here. I painted the flowers last year and did the jar and background this week. I'm thinking I'd better put a shadow or maybe paint on a table to ground the jar and flowers... or maybe not.

Me and my 25 pound cabbage. I made sauerkraut out of most of it.

NASTURTIUMS

So far, this and my other blog have been just current work. Well, today I am starting showing some things from the past. I just haven't been productive enough to keep this blog active.... just not much enthused to get much work done. My little postcards are about all I've managed to do all summer. Well, hopefully my looking and thinking about these older things will get me going in the right direction again.... at least in some direction.


But first I do have something new to show. I finished this painting today. The flowers were painted from life a couple of weeks ago. It took me a while to decide how to do the back ground. I had first painted the gray with gouache, but decided it needed something more, so added the design today. This is the way I approach most of my floral still lifes.... paint the flowers then decide what to put around them.

And the name of this post is Nasturtiums, so I've found a few old paintings of them.


This was a small study I did of the same flowers and jars.... if you follow my Watercolor Postcard blog, you would have seen it there.

This is the oldest of the paintings here..... it was probably done about 15 years ago. The color is way off in the photo and its blurred. The black is gouache, painted after the flowers.

This was painted from life in the Gustavus Inn green house in 1996.

This has a gouache background too.
This one is small, though the image here seems big compared to the others. In all of these but the second one, the flowers are pretty much life size, so you can kind of guess at the size of the paintings.

The top of this one was cropped in the photo.

I don't know what to say about this one.

And lastly, this one which is my favorite.

Looking at these, I'm remembering that most of them were done about this time of year...... when nasturtiums were the only flowers left in the garden and usually a somewhat productive time.

RHUBARB

At last after a couple of months, I finished this,

and this. They were both done from the same photograph.

SUMMER FUN

If I wait until I've got some paintings to show here, its going to be more than the month its already been since I last posted. I've got some things in the works, and have been somewhat faithful with my watercolor postcards. And I've also made a few books. But all in all a very unproductive summer.... but for the garden which I must take some pictures of and show soon.

Here are a few photos of time with friends.

This beautiful quilt was made by a group of local women and is being raffled to raise money for our local clinic. They make one every year and they just keep getting better and better.


It was unveiled at a party at the Gustavus Inn on one of the beautiful days in June. Most of these ladies worked on it.... not me though.

Another party in July at the inn to celebrate my and Nadine's birthday... which are on the same day, I'm a year older. Here is the cake that JoAnn made. It was a lovely garden party on another beautiful day.


About a week later, another birthday party, this one on Kate's birthday, on Kate and Fritz's boat, the Great Sea.

We spent a perfect day watching humpback whales, enjoying friendships, and walking on Pleasant Island.Here's everyone but me.

Kate and her cake.

On August 8, yet another birthday party, Carolyn's 60th, a surprise party at my house. Carolyn on the left with Annie.

Cakes tart and pie. Yumm.

Just one more photo:

New PostThis little guy has been hanging around a lot with his mom. When I took this picture, he was eating my flowers and mom was on the other side of the path to the car and I was ready to go somewhere. They pretty much ignore me when I try to shoo them away. So far they haven't jumped the fence to the vegetable garden.

A WOODCUT AND HOT SUMMER

I've been waiting to at least have one piece of art work before posting here. It finally happened last week.... I finished the woodblock I started over a month ago.

The paper is 10 x 15 inches. Its a reduction print with 6 states printed one on top of the other, using Japanese technique...... I gotta take a better photo and will tomorrow when the light is better.....
this is better, a scan with some of the border cropped.
I used Lenox paper from Daniel Smith, an inexpensive alternative for Japanese paper. The paper is kept damp throughout the printing process and I put it in the freezer for 3 weeks to keep it from molding while my grand daughter visited. I once had a stack of about 50 prints develope mold half through a reduction print..... I gave up printing for a few years after that.

44 of the prints were keepers and 31 will go to a Baren exchange. The theme of the exchange is "My Window" and my print is "Window View."

I had a wonderful visit from my grand daughter, Alyssa, for 3 weeks. I had a miserable cold, but we managed to have lots of fun. I took oodles of pictures of her, but this one my friend JoAnn took and I love it.


Fun with her new friend, Desire, on the 4th of July,

More fun on the 4th... the all girl Hootchy-Cootchy band... Ellie, Jessie, Susan and Kate.


Yet more fun on the 4th....


Until a few days ago, we've hardly had any rain this summer.... It most surely has broken records for lack of rain and high temperature. We spent a few afternoons at the beach and the gravel pits.
We took an evening walk along the Goode River where elves and fairies have been seen. We didn't see any but we did see a fairy village and a porcipine.

Here's Alyssa with her Grandpa rowing out to the Apex (our fishing boat on the far right).... Van was home for a few days and we went out and caught a few humpies one morning.

So that's it for now. I'm hoping a surge of inspiration is on its way and I will be getting lots of work to show here soon.

RETURN

This won't be a recap of the last 2 months, just a few art related things. I got off track art wise after getting home from Florida.... just too many distractions. I even stopped doing my daily postcards. We had an unbelievably beautiful spring, very few rainy days. The great weather has continued into summer. It might be over now..... it rained this morning but the sun came out for a while this afternoon.

Van has been out fishing since mid-May. Last fall and before he left, he doubled the size of my little gallery. I did some painting inside and have gotten things out there.... was afraid I wouldn't have enough to fill it up, but I have.


This is the way it looked before...



and this is it now. It was quite a job to raise that roof. I've been opened a few days.... its just a matter of putting a sign up out on the main road when its open and taking in down when its closed. Not getting many people in though. The inns and B&Bs are way down in guest this year.


I mounted some of my watercolor postcards to show at the school last winter and put them up.... these were all done in 2006. These are not for sale but sometimes I will give one away. Maybe someday I will sell them, but now I think of them as sketches in my journals.


These are some of my woodblock prints.


The weekend before last, I went to Juneau and attended a 3-day plein air painting workshop with the Plein Rein Painters taught by Fairbanks artist David Mollett. This is David doing a demonstration with acrylics.

I had tried oils a couple of times years ago and decided that was what I'd work in. The weather was sunny and scenery beautiful. My first days attempt was an oily mess that I wiped out at the end of the day. The second day I used less paint and learned a lot.... didn't finish it and might work on it some more.


I went smaller the 3rd day. Just the mechanics of the painting with oils was a challenge.... like where to put the brushes. The first 2 days I worked in the shade. This was done in the sun and it dried much faster which helped a lot, but I had trouble with the values. It was frustrating but I enjoyed it and want to continue with oils but haven't since I've been home... so much to do, so little time.

I'm now working on a woodblock print. the only prints I've done in the last few years have been for exchanges.... I'd probably do more if they sold well. This one is for a Baren Exchange..... I was way down on the waiting list but moved up recently. I've had a image in mind for months, but after getting started, decided on something quite different.

I'm hoping to get it finished in a few days. My grand daughter, Alyssa will be coming out from Juneau for a while.... maybe I can get some painting done while she is here, but maybe not.

TAKING A BREAK

We have left Cedar Key and will be home in Alaska by the end of the month. I'll get back to posting then.

MORE FUN IN THE SUN

Too busy to paint much, but taking lots of photos. I'll put what few little paintings I've done on the other blog as soon as I get photos of them.... Its much easier to scan them, but I don't have the scanner here. Anyway, Here are some of the photos.

I visited my cousin Madelon and Aunt Lou in Palmetto again with my cousin Jill from California. We made another trip on the water.... here are Madelon and Jill in the canoe. I was in a kayak. We went up Frog Creek, out of Boca Ceia Bay. It was a maze of mangroves which thankfully someone had marked the way with orange tape.

Back in Cedar Key, Van took Jill for a ride.

Last Saturday, Van and I rowed to Atsena Otie Key, only about a 35 minute row from our place on the bayou. It was a beautiful day.

There was a community and pencil factory there in the 1800's. We walked on a trail that ended at this grave yard.... most of the graves were from the end of that century.

We found this eel at the edge of the surf. We pushed him back in the water, but it came right back. We watched another passer by do the same and it came back. Guess thats the nature of the beast.
On Wednesday, we drove to Manatee Springs, about 45 minutes from here. There were 6 manatees there. The water is always 72 degrees and they like to come and warm up from the Suwanee River.


This boardwalk goes down to the Suwanee. We found out while there, that the Suwanee will be flooding next week. It was already rising. From what someone said, this boardwalk will be underwater.
Walking on one of the trails, we saw some deer.