Me Neither
Have you ever played with mono printing? It is great fun. Short description: you spread ink out on a plexiglass sheet, play with it with stylus, rubberstamps, your fingers, a brush, until you get an image you want, lay the paper down on it and press it with a brayer, and pull the paper.
This fella appeared after just such a session.
The hummingbird held still for me several times, just so I could take her picture. However, my camera was not as cooperative. I got a lot of blurry shots before this one.
I recently went into one of my favorite local art stores – Utrecht – to price some things for a class I will be teaching later this month. It was actually more of an Artist’s date. Being open to the creative flow, I made a couple discoveries. I love when that happens. The first was that Utrecht and Blick are combining forces. I’ve enjoyed shopping with each of them individually, so I anticipate that I will find this a pleasant merger.
My next discovery was more personally satisfying. As I was nosing around the color pencils, a person that I recognize as a local artist commented on the Utrecht brand pencils that I was looking at. He said, “Oh, now those are great pencils!” He said they had a real creamy and rich feel to them, and that he liked them better than the prismacolors that I always use, because they didn’t have so much waxy build up when layering. I bought about 25 colors to try them out. Today’s image is a result.
There was a time about 30 years ago that I read about a technique of layering prismacolor pencils with a super hard (8H) pencil in an art magazine. It was written by this fella that did super realistic pencil portraits. I tried it, and before you know it I was hooked. I never got to the realistic portrait thing because I fell into an emotionally inspired series that just presented itself to me every time I picked up the pencils and a new blank piece of paper.
I ended up combining some of my Prismacolors with these pencil because I didn’t have all of the colors I wanted. There really is less waxy build up and I am not certain that I dislike waxy build up. It adds to the richness. Anyway, they are nice pencils. I will be acquiring a full complement of their colors and using them with my prismacolors. Never too many good pencils I say.
The Saguro in our neighborhood is blooming again. Everyday my husband monitors it on his way to work, and Friday it was blooming. He called me from work to tell me. It is always a big occasion. So many different kinds of things thrive here. I am always amazed at the variety, which even includes me. Here, now, I blossom – I thrive.
