Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Studio Action

It seems to be around this time every year that I find myself with inked fingertips and a yearning to cut up my (dwindling) stash of old medical books, gathering a pile of clippings to be carefully tweezered over and glued onto new art pieces.




















Ready to be towed through the escalating pour of evening darkness, I started this piece a couple nights ago and it has been slowly (slowly) progressing, as they generally seem to do. One of my favorite things about mixed media is that I don't have to work as quickly as I do with block printing. I can shuffle my scraps around throughout the course of the work and nothing has to be entirely trusted until it's glued down or penned out...and even then, I can always undo the liars.

 




































A few scraps have been added since taking this photo, but now I'm pretty much at a standstill as I broke my almost $30 nib. Uuugh fckshtdmn. I'm not sure if I'm more bummed about the fact that I have to shell out $30 that I will have to wait until my next paycheck for or if I'm bummed that I have to wait in general. Probably both. I got to a point last night that my ideas seemed to stream together and I was excited to start drawing my raindrops. Ah well, worse things have happened. Like the time a customer at my work said "I really like that shirt!" and I replied "Oh, thank you!" only to realize she was talking about the one she was buying. Rather than playing it off like any halfway decent person would, she had to make it awkward for me. Come on, lady.

























And speaking of ladies, Moonshadow is my studio mate and she excitedly follows me to the basement every time I go down there. She really likes to be involved and seems to enjoy when I'm doing things around the house, whereas Clementine is more of a couch kid and would rather me stay on the couch so he can lounge on me (as he's attempting right now.) Plus, Moon likes to go down there because it's musty and she can find piles of sawdust and cobwebs to roll in. I like to call her Pigpen. Sometimes I envision those little squiggly lines following her around like they did to Pigpen on Charlie Brown.
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So anyway. Other than art stuff, I've been doing the year end yard thing. I have to admit-- I am so very glad that garden season is over. I left the garden high and dry sometime in June or early July...I think I mentioned that...and really haven't had the desire to go back out there all year. I avoided it like the plague, unless it was dark out. The yard generally seems to overwhelm me, which is really quite a drag; it's 1.68 acres and there is always a bunch of shituff to be done. Of course, I don't really *have* to do most of these things. But that's the problem- in order for me to be able to chill out and enjoy the space, it seems as though things have to be a certain way, and for things to be a certain way takes up almost all of my free time and by the end of the day I don't want to sit and enjoy what I've just done, I just want to get away from it. And then I resent it. It's a vicious circle, really. I hate it. I think that will be my next goal in self improvement, although I am a bit nervous as it's kind of a far-fetched goal. We'll see. For now I'm going outside to attend Ganglefest 2011. So far I've cut down 5 juniper bushes and have 7 or 8 more to go...I have no idea where I'm going to get rid of all these branches. They're huge and prickly and would be a bitch to cut them smaller and an even bigger b to set flame to. 

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