One Hundred Days!

I've not been writing, but I have been working. I figure is time is short, it's better to do something and worry about documenting it later.

Anyone who knows me in real life will not be surprised to here that the hardest part of making art for me is working with the physical stuff. I'm not a person who is very precise in any part of my life, and that does double for this. I am careless and sloppy and nothing behaves the way I want it to behave. The scissors don't cut, the glue doesn't go where I want it to, the ink smears, the letters are crooked. I fight and fight with the materials. And I'm never really happy with the outcome.

So what I do is to rehearse everything. I will make everything at least twice, maybe more times. At least I get an extra copy of whatever I'm making out of the deal. So, because I'm not very good with the "stuff", I am reluctant to start sometimes. This first picture is of the paper I'm going to use for the pages of my Mermaid Dreams book. It is posterboard from Walmart. It isn't glossy, it has a matt finish, but it is heavier than paper. i cut it into 4" wide strips. That means I am more or less limited to the number of pages that will come out of the strip because I'm folding them, not cutting and then stitching them together like a conventional book. I'm making an accordion book.

 The folding is pretty neat, actually. I have this plastic thing with ridges on it. I set my paper on it, and then use the bone scorer (which is actually plastic, not bone, but bone would be really cool and I'm going to be on the lookout for an old one!) and then mark where I want the fold. For this book, it is every 5". I'm actually better at doing this than any other part of the process. I like doing it too. There is something very satisfying about the way the bone folder works so nicely and the result is so clean. The length of the board, though, means that I don't end up with a book that has both ends pointing in the same direction. So I had to take the end off of one side and tape it with linen tape to the other side. I know that sounds sort of confusing, but trust me that it is what happened. It was the first time I had used the linen tape and I LOVED IT! this is a really weird thing, the linen tape. When I made the first book, I didn't fix the problem of the ends. I just ignored it. But I knew exactly how to fix it, with the linen tape. But as far as I know, I've never even HEARD of linen tape before. I just knew about it. Crazy huh? But there it was in the store, and I knew how to use it. It was really weird but I just went with it!

The other thing I had to do was print the photos. I wanted to print them on satin finished photo paper. I don't know why, but that has become very difficult to locate. I went to an office supply store here, and I saw they had photo paper the entire length of the back wall of the store. But did they have satin finish? No! Of course not.

I also tried at Blicks. They had matt finish, but that's not at all what I'm looking for. Finally I found a couple of boxes in my paper supplies. Thank goodness I'm a packrat when it comes to photographic paper! I also ordered some "good" paper online. I used the Canson to print on, and the result was ok. Considering the difficulty of finding the paper, it should have been a lot better however.

So I got them printed out and cut to size. Next will be to start assembling the book and writing the text out. I've been practicing the writing but it feels too ornamental and fussy to me. I'm not sure if it is the colored ink or the lettering I'm not liking. I'll try writing them in a couple of different ways and see what looks best, I think.

Day 7 wasn't a very blog-worthy day. I practiced my letter making, again. This time to see if I could get it small enough to be able to have a longer poem in one of the books. I was happy enough with the result to move forward. I used my Micron .005 pen which has an almost microscopically thin tip, and with some practice, got the result I liked ok.

Day 8 was a lot more fun. I started out by a trip to the St. Petersburg Farmer's Market. I've been searching for something even close to the Rochester market, and so far I haven't been able to find one. Yes, if I want to buy cloying soaps or strangely sweet salsas.  (People of Tampa Bay: Salsa is spicy. It should be considered an ice cream topping. That is all.) But huge amounts of fresh, in season fruits and veggies have been harder to find. But yesterday I located a wonderful market. I bought sunflowers and some absolutely wonderful strawberries. The berries are so sweet that I don't have any need to add sugar. Luscious!

And then on a pilgrimage to the two good art supply stores in the area. First the one in St. Petersburg. The Art Supply Store (easy to find, thanks to the name! Namers of business please take note!) This store was located in what I think is the artsy part of St. Pete. And by the way, St. Pete is where it's at, IMHO. On the same street were bars, coffee shops,  and funky home furnishing places. The Art Supply Store is (according to the chatty owner) the only locally owned art store in Pinellas County. I think probably for Hillsborough County as well. It was chock full of wonderfulness, interesting handmade paper, three different bone folders. Three! Paints, papers, all sorts of pens and inks. It was wonderful. I think I spent at least an hour there, wantering and rewandering the aisles. I bought a handful of Stabilo .4 fine point pens in purple and blues for the Mermaid Shadows book. I also picked up some Golden brand "Digital Ground for Non-Porous Surfaces" which apparently makes it possible for me to print pictures on non-porous surfaces. Like Aluminium foil!!!!! I'm totally thrilled to try that out. And I got some Liquitex gel medium to try to do a transfer with. I keep being very infatuated with the idea of transfers, although I've had zero luck with any of the methods on Pinterest or Youtube. When I told Simone about these, she expressed doubt. And <laughing> she is probably right -- I just am not ready to give up the fight yet!

Second stop in the hunt for art supplies was Blick. Blick is a chain, yes, but I really like their selection. They have a book binding SECTION! And I specifically wanted to get a book with smooth paper to use to practice my lettering. And I had had a print made by my photography Guru Doug Beasley framed and I wanted to pick that up. You can learn more about Doug here. The retreat I attended last summer was life changing. Please don't let the amazingly poorly composed photos of the stores dissuade you!

So Day 9 will be actually making something -- I'm so excited to get at it. Stand by for progress reports!

Today I went out looking for a few more mermaid images for the Mermaid Shadows book. These aren't things like birds or flowers - those are always available here in Florida. But mermaids are a different thing! So I got a couple of things, but I'm not sure if they will actually make it to the project.

I've taken pictures of this mermaid before. I wish I had framed this up a little better -- It is near my house, so I guess I can walk back over and give it a second try if something better doesn't show up.

This second one is more like what I'm looking for, but I'm not very happy with the editing. One thing that is becoming clear to me in this process. My problem isn't the visionary part of making art. It is wrestling the tools that is the most challenging part.

Onward! I hope I can find some new images this weekend. 

 So, the name of the first book I'm working on is called Mermaid Shadows. I come across stains and splotches on the sidewalk that look to me like mermaids. I heighten the contrast a little in Photoshop Elements, and do some cropping and, viola!

I think this one looks like a seahorse, but I've decided that for my purposes, it is going to be a merbaby. After all, who knows what the form a merbaby would take. Are merfolk people? No! So why would one think a merbaby would look like a smaller version of a mermaid? Perhaps they create a cocoon and hatch as a mermaid. I don't know -- this is uncharted territory as far as I can tell!
 The images come in all colors and shapes. Here's another one. You can't see her arms, but her tail is very clear.

I'd like to find a couple more, but that's the nature of collecting these images in the wild. Maybe I will, maybe I won't. I have several nice pictures of the ocean, one in Woods Hole, MA, one in Nantucket, one in Florida. If I must, I'll add some of these to fill out the book. I'll pair the images with lines of poetry or sayings. I'm excited to actually get to work on the book now. Tomorrow I'll cut and fold the the paper for the pages. 

After some sleeping on it, I decided that I could probably make up a reasonable handlettering alphabet and use that. So I did. I don't have any illusions that this is fantastic or anything, but I think it will fit the bill. So I spent time today practicing a little, trying out some capitals and then copying out a verse that I hope to use. Not in the mermaid book, however. In the Love book. What do you think?

So the "little books" -- Mermaid Shadows being one have photos and words in them. I've been collecting short poems and sayings for the last couple of months. The first of the little books was one that I made for Simone, as a Christmas present. I wanted to do something for that one to improve on my (terrible) handwriting. I tried downloading some fonts and writing the sayings and poems out that way, but I was totally not happy with the outcome. The book was so rough and clearly not made by a person who had any clue and the text was, well, computer font. Even the artsy fonts I bought just looked too polished for the book and made all the rest of it look even more clumsy.

So I had the notion that I could learn some faux calligraphy or brush writing and use that. Ha! Don't let the "faux" in the name fool you -- that is hard to do. I started fooling around with pencils instead. They are much easier for me to control, and since the books will have words in them anyway, better I do the words with pencil instead of pens. These letters are more or less my own style, which means they are dreadfully inconsistent but I can do them so that's what it's going to have to be. I'll keep practicing. Hopefully by the time I get to the place where I need to do them, it won't be too much for me to do. And I can buy some more pencils maybe. And paper. That makes me happy! More supplies! 

So, it begins -- 100 days of creativity. I'm a day late getting started, at least on the posting part of this. But I was shooting for one of the four projects I hope to move forward. More about that in a bit.

So, here are the four projects:

Mermaid Shadows, a handmade book art project that combines photographs of rust stains and blots that (at least to me!) look like mermaids combined with sayings, mottos, and poetry about the sea and mermaids.

Love is another book art project that pairs photographic images with words.

If Civilization Collapses, Brunch Will Be At My House is a collection of recipes of dishes that have been forgotten or a usually considered to be too difficult to make at home. I'm exploring cheese making, noodles, bread, sauerkraut and many others that are much more delicious when made at home then when bought in a box at the store.

The last book is untitled right now. Yesterday I had the great honor and pleasure of joining the Women's March in St. Petersburg. We live in strange times when someone like our current president can be actually elected to office. This book will be a collection of photos and essays created over the next four years to document these times and attempt to make sense of them, if only for myself.