There’s a screw in the concrete of my patio.
I made an accordion book out of recycled book boards and delaminated corrugated cardboard. It is very much not an archival process. I am brimful of not caring.
Screw and Book
Tag: arting
Paper Clip
If you’re using a spiral bound notebook or sketchbook, you can tip in items using a paper clip. This allows the item to easily flip independently of the facing pages, and it gives you access to the back of the item.
And yes, I’m obsessed with trees lately.
Asking for Trouble
Folks, don’t leave your iced coffee next to your brush water, especially when they’re in the same kind of cup.
Testing Pens
Red Pear
5 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches
Staedtler Triplus Fineliner on Canson 65 lb drawing paper
The ink in this pen is a bit watersoluble, but not enough to get a satisfying, bleedy wash. it goes blue in a wash, too, which is not great. The pen has a fine, fibrous tip and makes a lovely, delicate line, though. I think it’ll be really fun to doodle with.
X
Sometimes the most interesting thing you’ve created all day is the pattern of ink on the baby wipe you’ve been cleaning your stamps with.
Easily Amused
I waffled about which bit of text to stick in the collage I did, but I was well amused while doing so. “You were expecting kumquats?” was a serious contender, but the runner up had to be “Safety alerts.”
Painty
I broke out the oil paints today and made an unholy mess.
Dried Roses
These are the same roses I photographed a few days ago. They’ve fallen off the stems and are pretty much dried through. I took this one yesterday, so I’m cheating, but I didn’t have a chance to take photos today. I got sidetracked dying paper for a new journal.
My hands are now stained a disgusting shade of brown, but the paper is cool looking, and that’s all that matters. I hope my idea works. We’ll know tomorrow, when it’s dry. Right now, it’s layered between sheets of waxed paper, in my high-tech press (a large hardback atlas and an iron skillet).
And now, it’s time to go watch Survivor and Lost.
Paints
They’re cheap paints, but they’re what I’m used to using. I like Daler-Rowney’s paints a lot better than Winton (Winsor & Newton’s student grade paints). The texture is creamier, and I think the colors might be a bit cleaner. I still have a few tubes of Winton left over from when I was in school. One of them is a gawdawful earthy burnt orange sort of color that I don’t think I’ll ever use up.
This shot was hand-held with flash. I took another with just available light and am kind of amazed at how sharp the in-focus section is. I cropped the second image, and I did some color correction, but I didn’t do any sharpening whatsoever.
At Work
Yes, I’m still painting behemoth pears. Someone in one of the Canon DLSR groups recommended using the timer to take low light photos, so I gave it a try. Huzzah! Today’s photo is much sharper than yesterday’s. There’s still a little bit of shake, from the mirror moving out of the way, but I think there’s a way to lock the mirror. I intend to investigate that this weekend.
Since I’m completely clueless about photography, I’ve been reading up on the basics. Aieee! Physics has never been my strong suit, especially optics, so this stuff is not intuitive to me. It’s going to take awhile before it starts to sink in.
red paper boat 