"The most beautiful book of 2016"

"Burr acorn", Prismacolor colored pencil on Stonehenge Kraft

(click to enlarge)

When I draw things found in  the natural world, it forces me to really look closely at them, and I can't help but be amazed at the fascinating patterns that I see. The concept of the Fibonacci sequence, and the golden mean are well-known, but the science behind these patterns goes way beyond that.

I recently came across a review of Philip Ball's book, Patterns In Nature: Why the Natural World Looks the Way it Does, and I knew I had to find it. It's a pricey volume, so I found a pristine, new Publisher's Weekly called this book "the most beautiful book of 2016",  and I couldn't agree more.

The acorn in this drawing is from the Burr Oak. We were visiting Texas for Christmas, and my daughter brought a handful of these into the house one morning. (Everything is, indeed, bigger in Texas!)

Armchair eagle-watching

"Sauces Canyon - 2016", linocut, 6" x 6"

I recently realized that I'd never written a post about this linocut that I did last year. It's based upon an image that I grabbed from the webcam footage of a nesting bald eagle out in California's Channel Islands National Park. My son is a wildlife biologist and works with the Institute for Wildlife Studies' bald eagle project out on Santa Cruz Island; this print was his birthday present. 

It's particularly timely that I started writing this post now: thanks to new-and-improved webcams, we can see that this season's nest building is getting underway! I hope you'll take a minute to check out the footage; seeing these natural wonders up close is something that not many people are able to do, but we can share in the experience thanks to today's technology!

http://explore.org/live-cams/player/channel-islands-national-park-sauces-bald-eagle

Here's the screen shot I grabbed while watching the live video...amazing, isn't she?

Then, I did a drawing, simplifying the image. (Oops, forgot to save that!) In a reduction linocut, you don't use separate blocks for each color, you carve away parts of a single block between each layer. At the end, you're left with just the block for the last color; there's no going back to print another edition in the future. 

To start, I carved away the parts I wanted to stay white (the paper color) before printing the first of 5 layers - this blue-green that you see in the upper right of the final piece. 

Then, while those dried, I carved away the area stays THAT color and printed this medium green...

and so on.  (Sorry for the bad lighting...)

I'm still relatively new to block printing, so things didn't line up perfectly on all the prints, and "real" linocut artists would frown at my somewhat splotchy coverage, but I think it adds to the rustic, outdoorsy feel that's appropriate here. I made a little "stamp" to add the yellow beak, so actually, it's a 6-color print.

In the end, all I'm left with is this carved-up block:

and this! (The best of only 8 that were worth keeping.)

I can't wait to see what happens in the nests this year!

"Brown paper packages tied up with string"

Prismacolor colored pencils on Stonehenge paper

approx. 14" x 14"

Walnut shells appear as if they're hiding something wonderful inside. It's no wonder that miniaturists have used them as fairy cottages, or beds for mice, and that silversmiths have outfitted them with elaborate hinges and clasps. 

There's nothing miniature about this drawing—the live image is about 7" x 10".  I have it sitting on a ledge in my studio next to this piece; they work really well together:

Mine sort of evolved as a version of a "brown paper package tied up with string". 

What do you suppose is inside?

Here are some progress shots; I kind of experimented with ways to render the walnut as I went. (I found it to be much different than drawing one at its actual size!)

A book-lover's dream house

Prismacolor colored pencil on Stonehenge paper,  5.5" x 8"

(click to enlarge)

Sometimes an image niggles around in my brain until I just have to get it on paper. I've been sketching this little book house, in one form or another, or sometime. When I started to get serious about this drawing last month, I quickly reverted back to my old architectural drafting days. (It may seem like overkill for a little sketch like this, but when the perspective isn't right in a drawing, I find it really distracting.) I initially thought about making a linocut of this, and I still might.

I couldn't quite decide where each "layer" of the main color would fall, so I played around with blocks of color digitally as a bit of a short cut before applying lots of color to my drawing.

Working on this cozy little piece during the stressful presidential election was the artistic version of eating comfort food. I felt the influence of two of my favorite illustrators: I have been looking at the recent work of Jungho Lee a lot lately, and was certainly inspired by the color palette and dreamy quality of his fantasy book world. The soft pencil lines and hatching were Brian Selznick-inspired, as is the fact that it seems to want to tell its own little story.

So, I may have to listen a little more closely to see what story it is trying to tell, maybe I'll find out who is inside the house and why...!  Any ideas?

Of pine cones and advent calendars

Once upon a time—six years ago to be exact—a sort-of-artist started a blog on December 1, with a simple post. She shared this drawing and talked about her love of pinecones and advent calendars. Years passed. She wrote another 220 posts and shared lots of drawings, some block prints and a watercolor or two. 

But lately, she started thinking, "Maybe blogging has run its course for me. The world is going effing crazy different in so many ways, maybe it's time for me to do something different, too." 

She remembered a quote from her high school French class: "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" which, loosely translated, means "The more things change, the more they stay the same." 

She thought and thought, and ate some chocolate. She finally decided that, because the world was going effing crazy changing, it was more important than ever to keep posting her drawings. 

And she will.  

And she hopes that you will too. 

The End (but not)

Author's Note: Giving nary a thought to this blog, or what I posted about in my first-ever post, or 19th-century French journalists, I bought this a few weeks ago:

Pinecones and advent calendars. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Pinecone advent calendar handmade by the very talented Crankbunny.