Ah, Saturday

This is a medallion I made for a sign in book at a show. It's funny, with my cut tree works, the big decisions are made at the bases of the trees and ultimately decide the patterns that follow but near the canopy the pattern becomes homogenous.
It's a really lovely day over here and I'm going to try and dig some of my garden beds later but I really hope to get more done on the Octopus painting. It's turning out quite nicely if I do say so myself. :)

A New Home!

I'm way excited (and pooped) as there have been some recent events that put good stress in my life. I'm so glad I found my lost cat but I'm still worried for her as she is so skinny! Hopefully, the loads of food and cream shoved at her will work.
Also, this past Tuesday, I got a studio at the McGuffey Art Center!!!! This means that I can finally have a working studio and that I can start teaching classes. The above photo is of my Chandler and Price Pilot Press that I acquired in Niagara Falls. Thus far it is the work horse of my studio as I have no room for my Vandercook. The poor Vandy is in various areas. The roller is in my dining room. The bed and bench is in my garden shed. I'm real excited to reassemble it and start cranking on some larger pieces! Unfortunately, the move is not going to happen until around July but boy, do I have something to look forward to!

Celebrate!

Much has happened in the last few days! I was going to go look at studio space this past tuesday when I got a phone call from my neighbor. Apparently, she found my 16 year old cat raiding her cat's food which was great news as she had been lost since February! I nabbed her and right now she is pretty scruffy looking but she is mondo thankful and pigging out on soft cat food and cream! This past Tuesday was a VERY lucky day indeed.

Squiddles

So, as promised, here is my little Squiddles woodblock ready for proofing. I think I want to have some light salmon coloured shadowing under a red key block. I'm a little leery of how this edition will run as this is a piece of shina from the McClain's grab box. It is the All Shina and is roughly 3.75" X 3.75" and I usually don't carve key blocks out of plywood as they tend to shed veneer easily but I was really surprised at how this held together. I still have yet to see how it will perform during printing as I've had plywood shed veneer from wetness too. I shouldn't have packed that much detail into such a small block of plywood but the Etsy Squid bug was fast upon me and those tentacles were just too much fun to draw. I've started to paint the Octopus and it's turning out quite nicely too...

The Octopus

So, I'm somewhat new to blogging. I had a site before on live journal but that fell to the wayside. I hope to post once a day so everyone cross their fingers for me.
Lately, I've caught this bug from Etsy. It's the Cephalopod Virus and all that seems to come out of my pencil are cephalopods. I bought a crochetted pink squid from an Etsy seller and have fallen in love ever since. Anyways, this is a pencil drawing of an octopus that I hope to paint and then maybe later I will make a woodblock print out of it. Maybe tomorrow I will upload the squid woodblock I carved.