Can anyone tell I'm staying with my mother for break?

Evelyn Evelyn "Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn" Music Video from Amanda Palmer on Vimeo.

Almost forgot....

I need to go back and find the actual book.  The Seven Chairs and Mr. Linden's Library were some of my favourites but this is the one I was talking to Zoe about because her strange rocks reminded me a little of it. Not that I need another side project right now but doing stuff like this.. Creepy drawings and rando titles plus lines of text. Ahaha so much fun.  

The Mysteries Of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg.

 

Post Thanksgiving haze

I dislike feeling overfull. For sure.  Now it's time to just sit around and drink tea in mental preparation for the next week.  Must: glare at panels until they dry faster.  Find more voice recordable greeting cards. Run around like headless turkey (or waddle rather given post-thanksgiving status) finding the people who speak the panels and get them to say a single word normally.
Thought: will they all come to the show now that they know they're in it?
Counter-thought: cars...
Sub-Catagory: Speak to kyle about base for mosaic thingy. I've now got some sweet bottle caps.

Backlogged Postage

Apparently Florida had not yet discovered the interwebs.

The plan was to have some Words With Friends, a happy drawing and another page of the graphic novel done for the crit.  as of now- mostly check.  Need more of the page (only laying out stuff done now.) I love the compositional problems these pages lead to.  I think it takes me about three times as long to plan and lay out a page as it does to colour it in.  

I'm using the grey-scale markers in both warm and cool greys to imply colours and textures, which is about as far as i can go into colour and stay relatively sure of myself.  Colour is scary stuff.

Playing around with angles is much more fun.  Thanks to Mark Wetli for the panels....

The juxtaposition of these is really a little disturbing at times.  The Lady Agnew one is so recognisable...

Kathleen Gilje

decisions decisions

So now that I've become fed up with woodblocks, I'm putting them on the backburner while I continue with the same themes in a slightly different medium.  Right now I'm thinking I'll do a set of nice big 18x24 sheets of the creepy/gory fairy tales.  Lead in with the title in happy technicolour and then illustrate the interesting bits in pen and ink.  Each story would be one sheet.  Arbitrary number of the first series = 4.  We'll see how that works.

Knives and nori and blocks! Oh my!

The blocks finally came in!
Now that they're finally here, I'm hoping to draw in about four by Wednesday, carve through Wednesday and see about priming the blocks for printing a bit before Monday.  Depending on how that goes, I can keep printing and carving for the next several weeks.  Carving is what takes time but the printing can be tricky.  I'm still working on all the quirks with the shina.  Additionally I need to find some sized paper.  Heading down to Portland on the 4th so I can find some then and the real printing can get going.

One of those future projects

At some point I'm going to have to work on my editorial illustration.
Finance style....

September Lucky 13th

After further study of Barry Moser's woodcuts, I reawoke interest in exploring some more woodblock printing.  So many distinct memories of reading his versions of Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.  Admittedly they gave me a few nightmares, thinking that portrait of the Witch, but still.
Need to get my woodblock tools sent up from home and a trip to McClain's for some blocks.  I'm thinking mostly shina in postcard sized blocks.  I also want to try the cherry but need to figure out what I would do with those blocks.  Price check...
In the meantime, I'm going to have to design the prints.  I want to do an overall project with them to begin my illustration investigations, so springboarding of the Moser again, I might do Beauty and the Beast or Sleeping Beauty.  I think designing the whole book might be interesting.  I can try using the cherry blocks as illuminated letters at the head of each page.  Then I can do some calligraphic stuff as well.
Goal is to design and set all that up over the course of the next few weeks.  Depending on when the blocks/my tools get in I may start doing some of the calligraphy.