Sticks, Stones, and Paper Stew Blog

Mixed Emotions

It’s been a crazy week thus far and it’s only half way through. My brain wants to be emerged in creating art but I have many layers of Estate/Trust stuff to be dealing with. We have hit a couple of milestones. My dad’s truck has sold. Oregon has a “lemon law” so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it doesn’t come back to us. Once we hit Feb 1, we’re good. My brother had to keep dropping, and dropping, and dropping the price. Oh well. It’s gone and I don’t have to renew the plate stickers and the insurance can be canceled. We’ve also got a more serious buyer for the rental house. They placed extremely low bids back in November. Fast forward to January and they popped back up on the radar and are finally reaching a closer level to our asking price. If it works out, great, but I’m not holding my breath. Spring brings the house hunters out in full force, especially those looking for homes for their kids near the university. Now, if we can only get the bank to switch the mortgage payments over to my sister…. an ongoing saga started back in November with no end in sight. Ugh! I hate big banks. Oh, and then the family house…. landscaping needs and more. Will we get it on the market by March 1? I sure hope so! Will I keep my sanity? Probably not!

My brother went on a major binge over the weekend when I needed his experience in the real estate world. The breakdowns seem to happen every 6 months. I’m just glad he didn’t get injured or hurt anyone. Alcoholism is a horrible disease that destroys lives. I’m hoping we can get a good dialog going since he lives in Eugene now. We would love to help him find assistance, but he has to want it first. Maybe we’re there. Time will tell.

So I move back into my small studio world and keep on cutting. One more luminaria almost finished and another started. One might even find a home this weekend. 🙂

Weekend

I was blessed with a quiet house for 30 min Saturday while Dave took the hounds on a walk. I actually accompanied them for a while but returned home early. My body isn’t fully recovered from the recent illness. Nigel benefited from the dog-free house. Cuddles, extra canned food, and love. I’m always amazed at how quickly he settles back into home life, even for a short time. He just flops himself down after checking things out. What a great cat!

Saturday I delivered the maple leaf luminaria to my friend. I met her at the Arts Center and brought along all 4 completed works. She ended up choosing the recent red leaf creation. A good choice! I’ll probably create another 2 before getting them up on my ETSY site. Getting them photographed is going to be the hardest part I’ve been putting off. Oh, and then the labels/assembly instructions. It will come together soon.

Dave caught a few photos of an elderly home we rented 20 years ago. It started life as the school house for the area back in 1911. Now it’s moved about a mile north and will become an interpretative center. A nice end for this place. Love, it will finally get much deserved love!

Finally, we tried out a new recipe from an all soup recipe book. There are 400 to choose from! Sunday night we enjoyed a Thai inspired rice noodles, pork and shrimp soup. Mmmmm it was scrummy! The bowls are by our friend Ted Ernst. Some of our favorites.

Green Leaves

I realized earlier this week the maple leaf luminaria could look just as good in a different color. Red isn’t the only option. After rummaging through the paper stash (there are numerous plus several dedicated flat file drawers) I discovered this beautiful shade of green. When paired with the blue trim it looks quite nice. The completed work is now up for grabs by either my friend or as a donation to The Art Center’s Chocolate Fantasy auction. Tracie, you get first pick!

Papers used: blue iris Unryu, green cover stock 110#, Mulberry

One down

Finished! One down and more lights to come. I really need to hunker down and start the screen printing ideas running through my brain. The blackberry brambles are waiting. Anyway, it’s nice to have one thing completed. Unfortunately illness has stuck and I’ve been laid up in bed since Tuesday night. Today, I’m a tad better, reasonably upright, and able to get back to estate stuff since we have another house bid on the table. Nothing is ever boring around here!

Switch

Saturday we went in search of SUNSHINE! We’ve been socked in for days (weeks) in the valley. Grey days with little temperature change makes for depressing winters. We drove to the coast range and up Mary’s Peak. From the upper parking, situated at around 4,ooo feet, you can look out over the valley to all the mountains. Mt. St Helens (in Washington State), Mt. Hood, Mt. Jefferson, the Three Sisters, and Bachelor were all visible. Mt. Hood is in the image above complete with our long afternoon shadows. It’s fun to see all the lower peaks sticking up out of the fog. Islands among a sea of fog.

One thing I did manage this weekend was to find frame materials for more luminarias. Hooray! The current one in progress only requires extra edging to finish the frames. Almost complete!

On Sunday afternoon I sat down and started gluing. While waiting for things to set I started thinking about possible valentine ideas and played on the back of an envelope. It’s always fun to practice writing backwards!

One idea down and more to come. Hopefully I’ll get back to work on the bird in hand print today.

Ink change

Today, my finger joints were bugging me so I chose to do limited work on the block. Gripping the dry point needle is very uncomfortable. There remains quite a bit to resolve on the bird and fingers but I’m feeling good about the whole image. A proof using thickened oil based ink (a bunch of burnt sienna with a little black) was accomplished with much improvement! The ink remained on the block surface rather than running into the thin grooves. I also mounted the linoleum on a chunk of plywood and it’s much happier! Whew! I don’t think I’ll be using a second block at this point but time will tell.

Tomorrow I get my car back so my week of forced studio time is about to end. This has been way too much alone time with the dogs. Missing critique group last night was horrible! Now I have to wait 2 months til the next gathering. Maybe by then this print will be completed!

More work tomorrow! 🙂

Ink used: daniel smith oil based etching ink, proofed on newsprint

Bird continues

The little bird continued today. The more I work, the more frustrated I become. I seem to recall this sort of feeling when learning new things. The print has started to move in it’s own direction and probably won’t even come close to what I had envisioned, but that’s probably ok. Proof #4 is below.

A stiffer ink and a brayer without flat spots might help the inking problems. I’m also going to mount the lino to a block. All it wants to do is curl and it’s driving me nuts! More experimenting with ink & carving to come!

🙂

Bird in the Hand

I’m back at it for day 2 of trying a new technique. This time around I’m using gold linoleum which certainly cuts differently than the battleship grey. Like yesterday, a dry point needle is the tool utilized and I’m and scratching with the flow of the work. The block is 6″x 6″.

Block is inked lightly and then proofed using mulberry paper.

Not a great impression, but it gives me a clue where I’m heading with the work. I could have just done all this work on a scratch board and skipped the whole printing process, but I guess that’s not me. The subject matter is a little Golden Crowned Kinglet that had a minor incident with our window this winter. I had to bring it inside for 20 min before releasing during our super cold-snap back in December. I knew back then he would turn into a print eventually. Hopefully the Sharp-Shinned Hawk will make it to paper too.

🙂

Trying something new

On Monday I saw a different approach to carving a linoleum block: drypoint relief printing (thanks Rosie!). The artist Warren Criswell is an amazing master of this technique. The results yield a soft drawing quality to a normally sharp lined medium. Going through his techniques page, my brain had a hard time wrapping around the 2 block technique. Rather than stretch “my little grey cells”, I would start simply with one block. It’s Monday so I can start the week off easy, right? Searching through my supplies I found a small 3″x 4″ block and the drypoint needle. It was recommended to use a diamond tipped tool, but I don’t think that is what I have. Subject was something close at hand: my left index finger. Away I went.

The needle draws up quite a lot of burs, so I used my fingernail to scrape them clear. Initial inking was with Speedball waterbased black. First proof is below

So, it does work! More scratching made the block look like this:

I ran several proofs and scratched more to come up with:

So far, I’ve found the ink has to be the right consistency to remain on the surface and not get pushed into the more delicate lines. At least it was fun to play.

It’s done for today and time to move on to something else. Maybe tomorrow I’ll come back and resolve the image a bit further or start anew. 🙂

Materials: drypoint needle, 3″x 4″ linoleum, Speedball ink to start, Daniel Smith water based relief ink for the 6th proof.

Glass

Techniques drop from my brain when they are not used consistently and it’s been over a year since creating a full luminaria. After cutting 3 panels on the self-healing mat and finger joints in pain, I recalled the use of glass. The above image shows a glass cutting board I purchased years back as a quick inking slab for printmaking. It’s been a great inexpensive multi-use addition to the studio. In addition to it’s printmaking life, it doubles as a paper cutting surface. Cutting on glass allows the blade to be easily moved through paper, even thicker stuff like 111 lb cover stock in the above photo. Downside is that the blade dulls a bit faster. Blade tips eventually break off, but it seems to happen less quickly on glass. If I happen to remember to pull out the glass slab, it saves my hands and joints a bit of extra pain.

All 4 panels are now cut and it’s on to cutting the additional paper and wood to cover each screen.