Pencil Shavings

NaNo-NaNo

A few winters ago I participated in the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) with the idea that over the month of November I would compete to write a 50,000 word first draft of a novel.  I completed the draft with a few words to spare and was happy to be done.

This year, for some absurd reason I feel like I should be trying it again.  I have no novel outline, I don’t have a vaguest idea of a plot and I certainly don’t have the time.  After all I’m a full time student and the work load for November is already looking unbelievable.  And I do have the Tiny Terrorists^TM to tend to.

So why do I have this nagging desire to start writing again?  It’s not that I’m not being creative.  I am majoring in art for god’s sake.

But there it is, I can’t deny it, I’m hungering for the feeling of keys under my fingers and worlds spinning out from my imagination.  There is something there that I can’t shake.  I really need to write and the more that I try to push it away the less I want to do of my other work. 

I know that I cannot complete the NaNoWriMo, but I am going to try and get a few creative bits out of my system before the end of the year.  After all there are some lovely writing contests to enter in the new year, and it would be great to have a short story (or two ) to fling at them. 

Meanwhile there are still several assignments waiting for my attention.

Mr. J. Rabbit

I worked hard this morning and managed to the get the hand painting done on one of my artist proof prints of my hare.  It’s still drying, but I think it’s done to the point I can be happy with turning it in for marking. 

The way our class works is that we have so many prints we need to turn in for our mid-term portfolio, in this case it’s 7 editions of five prints each, plus we are allowed to turn in bonus work to get extra credit.  I have 3 proof prints I made as I was reworking the hare to the second stage to turn in, plus this watercoloured rabbit that is a “unique” print.

If you are interested in the palette I used for this, it was Daniel Smith Watercolor Sticks in New Gamboge, Quinacridone Burnt Scarlett, Burnt Sienna, Indathone Blue,  and the main colour in the body of the rabbit is Piemontite Genuine.

I like the Piemontite Genuine because of the way it organically settles out and gives that interesting texture that really gives the rabbit some life.
   
The next round of prints are going to be using aquatint with soap ground, sugar lift, marbling, line etching, soft ground or dry point (with the first three still to be discussed in class) We are supposed to do a nature study or a figure study for this one.  I’m still thinking about what I might do.  It's either going to be mushrooms or a portrait of my little super hero.

A Sound of Thunder

I have no excuse and I know it.

I haven’t written in the blog for months.

I haven’t really felt that I had anything important to tell you or to write about.  That hasn’t really changed (and way to go Kath as far as hooking the readers by telling them that you’re boring) but, I do think that I have a few things to say, and that getting back into the writing habit will hopefully help me to become a little better at a few things.

I did discover Google+ and found out that it can be enormously inspiring (that are about 76 Bajillion artists on there) but also completely time sucking, so I need to figure out when it’s OK to let the time suck happen and when it’s not.  My school work has been very intensive this term as well.  Printmaking is just lots of work.  It’s physically demanding, and everything takes time.  The other thing about it is that I can’t do the work from home, like I could last year.  I have to be in the studio working (which is probably just as well, who needs to deal with acid baths, paper racks and giant presses in your 500 sq. foot basement?)

And my media arts class (AKA PhotoShop class) is a giant time vacuum too.  I have discovered that there is nothing in art I can do on PhotoShop that I couldn’t do in a third of the time by hand.  Technology doesn’t always save us time, but it does have that marvellous undo feature.

Wouldn’t it be great to have a giant “Let me take another crack at that” button in our lives?

There are a couple of things I would take another shot at.  Not embarrassing that guy in the cafeteria 21 years ago… that was really not required, and I regret it.  Making a better choice for my vacation that one time.  But I guess really, I wouldn’t undo any of it, because like the butterfly in that Ray Bradbury story, I wouldn’t want my life to have turned out any differently.