Friday Troll Blogging

Here is a little painting of one of the two trolls our friend Jennifer sent us from Sweden several years back. I did this last night using watercolor over a water-soluble 4B sketching pencil drawing, a combination which seems to turn out better than I thought it should. So I’ll be trying more experiments with this choice of media.

More on Pens

We took over a new pen for Karen on Sunday for her birthday, a purple Sunrise Stypen-Up with purple ink. (The retractable fountain pen.) I was happy to see her using it in our kickoff meeting today for the Campus Community Book Project for next year (Kite Runner).

And then Numenius tells me about another pen fetishist out there (Scribbling Woman, nice Zapfino masthead). Safety in numbers. Good. I’m already having anxiety about what pens to take to our Artist’s Journal workshop at the San Francisco Center for the Book weekend after next…

Thanks to all who left notes of congratulation on our second blogday.

Bloom

This is an entry for the Illustration Friday topic on Bloom.

A couple of weeks ago when we went to our friends’ picnic in the foothills of the Vaca Mountains west of here, there were many brodiaeas out on the grassy slopes. Here is a sketch I did of a couple of plants near the top of the hill.

From Romans to the Dark Ages

My Roman Majuscule class is over; the next one in the series is Uncial starting in April.

The story of Western writing is the history of empires that came and went, of striving for perfection and going beyond it to precious and eventual decay.

I don’t know what future paleographers will make of the American empire through its writing (or lack of it). At any rate, I’ve been playing with 4th-century letterforms, some of which have made their way into the new Feathers of Hope masthead. I think we should change this more often than every two years. Walnut ink remains plentiful in the fridge.

Daffodil Summer

The daffodils in our back yard are already getting past their peak. The one I’ve sketched here is the same one Pica was sketching a few days ago; it lasted quite well with a little water in the vase outside.

Exploring negative space

Kurt over at A Blog is a Happening has an interesting piece today on erasure. He was working on a charcoal portrait last night and he started with a darkened sheet and erased highlights to form the image. It’s an interesting piece on the challenge of self-knowledge.

My own exploration this morning of the negative spaces between these rose leaves is prompting thoughts about edges, and how edges can more exciting than essence (or actually define the essence). Nothing about this is original, but it’s satisfying to come to these realizations by means of graphite.

(The ground squirrels outside my window are very conscious of edges; for the males, most of their life is happening on the edge just now, as they guard it with their lives. I’m starting to see wounds: it’s a bloody business.)

And then a look at the Incomplete Manifesto by Bruce Mau makes me question my work, and how I often opt for a safe design because I’m in a hurry. Best not, I think. Tarry in the negative spaces a bit more… Get a bit bloody. I think… our life depends on it.

Foreshortenings

Working through Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain has got me to a point where I need to study foreshortening. I can look at Old Masters like Piero della Francesca and Michelangelo but the most contemporary exaggerated foreshortening I can think of is Frodo reaching up to grab the Ring, an image so iconic that it now gets referred to in other films.

So I put on the DVD this evening and paused at this spot. It’s one of the most difficult things to draw: the human hand, foreshortened. It’s a conjuring trick to get your hand to draw what your eye sees but what your brain is telling you can’t possibly be. I think I’ll be using the DVD player a lot for this exercise; it’s easier than getting a tame model to pose for 20 minutes at a stretch, over and over…

I might post one if I manage to get one that’s not horrible…

On Gallotannate Inks

From Evan Lindquist, an artist and printmaker at Arkansas State University, comes this set of pages about making gallotannate or iron gall inks. The best of these inks begin with a solution derived from oak galls which is then mixed with an iron salt. The resulting solution will then darken over time on the paper as it oxidizes.

Lindquist provides many old recipes for these inks, which are now out of favor. There is even a standard for govenment writing ink, suitable for use in post offices, issued by the National Bureau of Standards, U.S. Department of Commerce, in 1936.

Water, Water Everywhere

Today I submitted my final assignments for my online Roman Majuscules class. One of them was to render on watercolor paper the lines from the Ancient Mariner (and a description of our current weather); the other was to do in gouache a quote of our choice.

My choice for this was the opening lines of Dante’s Inferno, since I’ll be having lunch with an old friend and Dante fanatic on Monday.

The Somerville Gates

Residents of the Boston area who are unable to make it down to New York to view Christo’s The Gates should know that there is an art installation of similar note closer to home. And this time there’s a cat.