Harriet
Elliott
These are old, probably from 2003. They were in the case with the camera I found, so I know I had to’ve tested it ages ago. I thought they were kind of fun, especially the Harriet whipping her head around, so I scanned them.
Day: November 27, 2007
Bartlett Pear
Bartlett Pear (detail)
I took some serious liberties with the color on this one (Bartlett pears are bright yellow), but I really like how it turned out. I did a bit of a collage-y foundation, with torn bits of pages from an old patent book, glued down with acrylic matte medium. Then, I cut out (tore, actually) a pear shape from another piece of the same paper and glued it on top. It has a slightly 3D effect that’s nice.
More Rust
I leave little (and sometimes not so little) piles of junk on my coffee table, with the intent of sketching or taking photos of it. The most recent pile of junk is a bunch of humongous, rusty nuts and bolts and washers (frankly, I’m not sure what the square things are). I found them in the bottom of a closet in an old house I lived in.
Spillage
The list of really stupid things a person might do surely includes shaking a nearly full bottle of black gesso without first making sure the flip top is securely closed. And bonus points if you do so while walking across the carpet.
Luckily, I still had just enough Spot Shot left to clean up the mess. And, more importantly, I was able to find it before the gesso had dried.
Things like this make me laugh at the fact that I had just a $140 damage deposit for me, but had to pay a whopping $300 for the dog. I’m the one who’s apt to wreck the place, not the dog!
Studio Cat
Pan was asleep on my drafting table, surrounded by journals and sketchbooks. I’d pulled them out, because I didn’t do a good job of including information for older images at Flickr. When recreating my Coppermine database, I had to go back to the original source for things like media and dimensions. So, there are stacks of books everywhere. I haven’t pulled out the canvasses yet, but I expect that’ll be even messier. I also expect that Pandora will insert herself right in the middle of everything, because that’s what she does.
Ur Colds, I Has Dem
I woke up this morning with a sore throat and somebody’s wool blanket stuffed in my head. I am not amused. And worse, now that I’ve been up and out with the dog, I can’t get back to sleep. So I’m cruising Flickr, looking at other folks’ photos.
Michigan City Lighthouse, Michigan City, Indiana
Michigan City Lighthouse seen from a sand dune on Washington Park Beach, Michigan City, Indiana
Credit: Tom Gill, published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license
This was “our” beach, when my family lived in Michigan City. We lived on California Avenue, which was just a few blocks from Washington Park and the Washington Park beach. We could walk to the park via the beach, then cross the road and go to the Washington Park Zoo. The dune grass is sharp, and will cut you if you aren’t careful. We used to run around and play in the grass, and I remember getting long, razor cuts from it.
Sometimes we’d go to the lighthouse and walk the pier. There were usually old guys lined up on the pier, fishing. While the grown-ups were walking, us kids would scramble around. I remember climbing up on the center section, then down the far side. There was a narrow walkway there, and when the tide was out, it was easy to climb on the rocks. I was a chicken, though, so I only stepped on rocks that were right next to the walkway, and only those that were near the shore.
Frozen Shore by Meghan Linehan published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license
I remember going to the beach one winter and seeing, beyond the hurricane fencing, huge frozen waves. I was probably 6 or 7 years old, and I couldn’t figure out how water could freeze so quickly that it kept its wave form. Years later, I remembered those waves, and by then the solution was obvious. It really puzzled me at the time, though.
The photo doesn’t give a good idea of scale. These waves are enormous. And the ones I recall had wonderful, bizarre formations.
red paper boat 