Fall!

A busy week in Artlandia!  I think this week was the peak of fall colors and I took soooo many landscape photos!

First in terms of art-making - I started another kestrel block. This one is slightly larger, 12 x 12," and the goal is to have more options from which to make a series.

New marbled paper with image for plate -
 Feline Assistant, Sr. helping establish scale.

In trying to place the previous kestrel, I also concluded that these need to be a little bigger, so I marbled paper - 3 sheets of 16 x 20" and 2 sheets of 18 x 24." I made a new polyester lithography plate to use in the background...the only thing is that the larges plates I have are 10 x 15," so I made the plate fade toward the edges so I can fill in parts by hand and (hopefully!) it won't be too jarring.  I may also make a block to print on top of it in front (Hmmmmmm.) 

In creature news, I'm so happy my little flock seems to be so well bonded - they eat and sleep together.





















And now...landscape shots. It was so hard to choose!

A few themes emerged: vistas

 Then stand out colors/shapes of trees within a vista

Then individual trees that I like for their color and/or shape

As we can see - it was a very pretty tree week!  Lots of material for future collage landscapes :) 

Birthday!

A very busy week in Artlandia! 

Birthday Cake!

First - it was my birthday :) !  I traveled to New York City and got to spend some time with my family and eat delicious food.  As far as art adventures, I also got to see the exhibitions at the Morgan Library, including this print, one of the greatest large scale woodcuts by Titian, "Submersion of Pharoah's Army in the Red Sea," ca. 1515 (check out the cute and frightened little dog by Moses.)

I also got to stop by the Central Park Zoo and see the snow leopard, which I hope will inspire me as I get back to working on the snow leopard collage. I also got to photograph the Blue and Gold Macaw as possible source material for upcoming blocks.

At  the Feick Arts Center, Green Mountain College -
my work on the right with a lovely book by Valerie Carrigan on the left

Back home, I then had two openings in two days. The first was at Green Mountain College in Vermont for the show "Printmaking and the Natural World," and the second was "Show of Heads," at Limner Gallery in Hudson.

After that, I had work to do in the studio painting and patching a wall that at one point, I had painted red for an installation, but now would like white so that I can work on a collage on it - every bit of space counts!


I also added ink and cut out the first kestrel and then put it over a background to see how it would look.  I like the kestrel and was able to correct the line that resulted from damage to the block. (This background is way too small for it, but I wanted to at least get an idea of how it might look.)

Work also continues on the torso block.

Apart from that, walks with Honey enjoying the weather and fall light.

Surprisingly, (at least to me) the garden still has a few last flowers.

And last, but not least, Mo and Honey have been excellent helpers while I was working on the torso block.

Kestrel and foliage

A busy week in Artlandia!

First up, was delivering 10 framed artworks to 2 different states (whew!) 3 of these pieces will be part of a show, "Printmaking and the Natural World," opening this coming week at The Feick Arts Center of Green Mountain College in Vermont. The next day a piece will opening as part of "Show of Heads," at Limner Gallery in Hudson.  The other 7 works that were delivered will be part of a show at Thompson Giroux, opening in December. 

Once everything was delivered, I should have cleaned the studio...and I did (a little), but mostly I was excited to get back to carving.  I made some changes to the template of the torso of the life scale figure I'm working on (yes, even though I've been working on it for weeks - the more I looked at it, the more I became convinced the right sleeve would fit, so I measured. It does, and so I added it, thereby reducing the total number of blocks needed - yay!)  Progress is being made, but it's slow going, so I decided to carve something that could reach completion in the week. As a reward to myself for getting all the work delivered, I decided to carve a kestrel, since raptors are one of my favorite to carve. 

I thought it was going well...until I proofed it the first time and realized there was a flaw in the block that left a thin line across the whole thing.  It was so tiny I didn't see it when I inspected the block before carving, and it would have been fine...except it went right through the beak. I sanded the block down a little, carved out the background and proofed again.  The good news is, I think it's mostly gone in the beak, but the bad news is, I think it's still visible elsewhere.  Luckily, I think I still may be able to fix it with mixed media after printing.

I also struggled with printing this - the fine lines filled in after printing a few times, so I cleaned the block completely and am waiting for it to dry before trying again - fingers crossed.

First state

second state

Apart from the new block, I also went on some nature adventures - fall is especially pretty here.

 

Naturally, Honey Wonderpup led the way.

I also got an incredibly cute photo of Momiji with a tiny rainbow (I have no idea where it came from since there's no prism in the window.)

Mo is so funny - I love the way he continues to mimic Mini. This week Mini was on top of the pizza box and Mo climbed up right next to her (I'm not sure he realizes that being on top of the warm box is part of the point, since Mini in not inclined to share).

Mini used to do the same thing when she was Mo's age, following Sunny around and copying her - maybe that was on my mind because I think she looks like she's mirroring Sunny's pose in the photo here.

...though Mini is much more affectionate toward the kittens than Sunny was toward her as a little one - they often stick close together (with Mini in charge, Mo wanting to do whatever she does, and Max following a cautious step behind - and isn't Max cute smelling the roses - my fluffy Ferdinand.)