book #9

Frontspiece in my newest journal.

handcoloring workshop

Spent the day playing well and sharing with others - teaching a handcoloring workshop at Viewpoint Gallery - a fun time had by all.

Students discovered how to layer different media on black & white darkroom prints as well as on inkjet prints.

The biggest lesson for the day: don't be afraid to experiment and just have fun!

foothills drive

Fri, Feb 22
midday
French Camp Road - between Latrobe & Shingle Springs
Rainy, cool, out with Wendell
I've got my new bag, so everything fits -

What Wendell calls "roadkill" - a shot from inside the truck - while driving, no less. I want to take a "real photo" so we stop & I get out. Wendell's impressed by the beast of a camera I'm using now, handholding a 4x5, zone focus, no light meter -

So I use up a piece of film by under-exposing,

then shoot it again and get the shot of the day - no more shooting necessary. Only get moderately wet in the drizzle.

But another shot presents itself - a way down the road - it starts to rain a bit more than a drizzle & I take shelter back in the truck, dry off the beast while Wendell shoots more.

I continue with roadkill shots, inside the dry refuge of the truck -

The ultimate roadkill shot, wet windshield and wipers fully evident. It's just raining a bit much for my taste now - but we plan on being back here for more real photos in about a month - should have fresh green leaves on the oaks and we'll try to catch a drier day -

k street tree

Feb 21, 08
nearly 3 p.m.
K Street, Sacramento
waiting to look at potential studio space
saw this great tree while still in the car

lunar eclipse

Feb 20
about 7 p.m.
lunar eclipse
nearly full
wet ground
break in the rain
chilly

8 p.m.
red-orange moon & star

work work work

I love my work, today I finished twenty-three canvases. This morning they all looked like this.

Well, mostly, because I shot this a couple days ago and last night I stamped an insect on a few of them, but today I put on layers of acrylic glazing. Then this evening I added some writing, the description for quercus lobata nee, the Valley Oak, which is the kind of tree they are. So an individual that looked like this

Now looks like this

And I have changed my working title from "Forest" to "Quercus Woodland" which is both descriptive and more poetic.

A couple more panels, I might scan them all, but we'll see - then I guess I'll need to start the process all over on a new batch.

blur

So the days fly by - but I take little snapshots of time so you can see what I've been doing -



As you can see, it's all a blur for me, at least that's what I looked like Saturday night attending Sacramento's Second Saturday art receptions, where all the galleries in town open their new shows.



Often I can be found in the company of my longtime friend & fellow artist, Joe Finkleman.

But today I was more focused, I've collected myself some real acrylic paints and glazing medium and set out to practice on an old canvas that I had collaged some Polaroid transfers onto some time ago. I had never really liked it, had stopped half-done, and had propped it on a hanger on the studio wall, waiting for something else to do with it. Playing with the paints and stamping on it was fun & I figured out how I want to finish up my forest canvases...



it even looks pretty cool close up



Tomorrow will be even more fun.

out with the crown

Feb 7, 08
morning
American River, Arden Access (near William Pond)
sunny & clear, slight breeze, not too cool

My first outing with the Crown, using two bags until my new one comes.

Water gurgles over shallows, mallards chase at each other, forage, make soft noises.



The cumbersome process and gear certainly slows me down & makes me much less prone to just start shooting anything. I almost left this particular spot without making an exposure at all, but I was enchanted and wated to capture a sense of the serenity here.

An egret sits nearby, nearly center in my image, but looking much like flotsam on a piece of debris in the shallows -

A pair of Canadian geese decide to check me out, I catch them on slide film, maybe a transfer later. Not offering food to them, they move on.



I'm wandering with Theresa, lost in her own creative world, we get a little farther down the footpath, see tiny finches in trees, another view of the river catches my eye -



Down again to the river's edge I'm drawn. The shore is largish river rocks, six inches to a foot across, with water between many - a good storm would put them all under water - the constant rush of the water in the shallows here puts a distance between this place and the bustle of humanity just beyond. Here the bustle is all geese honking at each other.



We start over the bike bridge - the view is wonderful, if hampered by protective bars - here humanity buzzes by on bicycles, skate, jogs, walks by with four legged companions. The birds sing out regardless and the sun warms my back: all is right with the world.



South side of the river is Goethe Park - bare cottonwoods stand like sentinels, keeping watch until warmer weather brings more people to this spot.

planting a forest

Well, I've been a pretty busy bee but just not blogging it - actually I got so caught up in the creative process that I didn't want to do much else -

I'm working on the Forest, part of a tree show I'm participating in this coming April. I made a bunch of Polaroid transfers for it last week, then the canvases came a couple days ago, smelling like fresh primer as I unwrapped them all. At this point there are 24 canvases and 23 Polaroid transfers, which isn't quite how it's supposed to add up, but I'll get more of both later. I wanted to get it rolling before I dove into all the supplies. Besides, it somehow seems better not to spend it all at once - faulty logic, I know, but I'm an artist, not a CPA, okay?

So I did manage to take a couple photos the other day when I first started laying out the transfers on the canvases -





You can see I'm adding leaves to the mix, too - all different kinds of oak leaves, since the images are different oak trees - I've been handcoloring each of the transfers with pencils, then laying each one on a canvas with the leaves, in a semi-random pattern. The idea is that there will be repeated images, but none exactly the same, each on different paper or whatever, and Polaroid transfers never come out the same anyway. And of course, there are all different combinations of images and leaves.



Today I colored the last of this first batch of transfers & started the collaging, using gel medium. This is all a total experiment for me, so while I wait for the first two to dry so I can see if anything unexpected happens, I'm writing this, sort of working off the excess excited energy. I've got ideas for the rest of it, but I'll wait to tell you and just let the plot unfold...

studio work

So I did manage to get more done the other day but didn't get it into the blog. I managed to do some more coloring, and got my daughter to take photos of me doing so.



Seems I've been needing photos of myself working in the studio, so I figure it's good to have current ones and Deidre likes using my new digital camera that I got for Christmas.



You'll notice that I seem to hold my hands oddly while I'm intently working...



And the fruits of my labor that evening, "Tree Lovers," edition two of ten. I also finished the Garcia Bend piece, maybe I'll get it posted here later.

(If you're curious about what I was doing in my studio last night, you can pop over to my Visions of Heaven blog to see that.)

And then today I've been busy in the studio working on a couple Polaroid transfer projects.



The first project I was working on is a series of florals that I'm calling the Flower Garden. I've got six initial images for that series, that I'll publish as pigment prints. I'll post them here when they're dry and colored.



The second project I began is called the Forest, which will be maybe as many as fifty 6x6" canvases each collaged with one of my tree images and whatever mixed media my inspiration leads me to - it's still percolating but I got about twenty tree images in Polaroid transfers today, which is the start. More on that project later...