Monsters and Sloths and Cumming, Oh My!

Just came from the kind of appointment where the specialist smoothly establishes his credentials: treats over 1,200 women, is on board of committee that sets the national standards. He knows I will give things serious thought, that is obvious. An appointment that refrains from uncovering anything new, but which somehow leaves one with renewed foreboding. I think of things I had buried in the background for the past few years. Dig your holes: Still there? Yup, Still there. Eh. As always: could be better, could be worse. Enough. Stop at a cafe, order yourself a precious brown sugar ginger latte, get on with it. And onto the better: Javier's text says the Baby has been asleep for over 70 minutes! Especially good, as she has lately unrolled an early morning wailing session, starting between 2-4 AM.

Also good:

1.) The basement picture book wall*  is bearing fruit in February! I stared at sketch for the design below within the context of its page neighbors, frustrated by how different our young hero looks in this one from his depiction in other pages. Visited this page, among others: sat on the bed by the layout wall, happy to see all my designs and aggravated by them. Drank tea, drank beer, and frowned up at them. I have drawn these characters numerous times, from different angles, but am I a cartoonist? Am I, actually, an illustrator? No. But somehow this recent ruminative period yielded another sketch which brought Quimby's face closer in spirit to himself. Close enough to give the okay to transfer the design on Feb. 8th. Now here we are at the test print stage!

Initial inking showed several letters needed tweaking. Paring down or shoring up with some ennsy wood scraps. Wood glue and tweezers are your friends.

Next up, I reworked an early page. For both, it's the moment in which our monster has found his next cake to snatch. Originally, I decided to show him roaring three times, his silhouette larger as the eyes scanned up the page; the repetition was meant to underscore that his dessert thieving ways have happened and are happening.

...But then I began to wonder whether young readers would be confused -- if there is one monster, why does he appear many times? And his outline looks like an older version of how I feel my monster looks. This page became a thorn in my side. So this week I tried out the sketch at right. I'm liking it -- I think it's cleaner, more effective. But when I mentioned it on Facebook, my (admittedly tiny number of) commenters opted for more monsters! rather than less. Hmm. Either way, it's taped in place on the wall.

And thirdly, next, next up for the carving block.Kind of classic-cartoony-villain-easily-gaining-access-to-the-homes-of-trusting-rubes. I feel happier with something to carve.

*all pages laid out in order, in their various states of completion, on a single wall, to sigh and grimace at.

2. Alan Cumming!

This Scottish jewel should appear on any what-is-good list, right, but by golly, this time he's on mine! Javier won allll the Valentine's Day couple points by capping off the classic chocolates-roses-dinner trio with a shocking text of tickets to Cumming's sold out cabaret evening in Detroit. WHAT. WHAT. WHAAAAAT. I didn't jump on our two-top. I didn't knock over water glasses or wine flights. But neighboring diners shot glances in our general direction; Javier was rightfully pleased with himself.
I ceased to track conversational threads for ohhh, a few minutes, but beamed at Javier to make up for this; the grinning may have looked a bit toothy, wolfish. Mildly unbalanced. New York Times review of the show. Saucy man.




3.Current escapism (sketching, carving): Dexter (season five), Sarah Water's Fingersmith, as narrated by Juanita McMahon <-- never heard of her, but she's great!

Life enhancement: Sloth Slept On, written & illus. by Francine Preston-Gannon -- a good, simple story of an unlikely escapee. I'm entirely taken by the illustrations: clean, bold, sharply defined, but each shape with wonderful texture. The type also a nice choice, as well as the paper -- matte, with a good weight. Altogether satisfying! Recommended for the younger set. Baby also drawn to it, from the first reading. But sadly not as much as the super simple board books from our doctor's office: Park. I am at the park. Flower. I smell a flower. Clouds. I see clouds from my swing. Rain. I feel rain, time to go!

The house is quiet, I am sleepy. Time to go!

February First Post, in Which we go to the Basement and Dress for the Ball

I'm officially going underground! This will be my last post. I am ceasing the Facebook silliness, no longer will I blip onto Instagram. Who cares how many likes, how many views, how many followers? My vague neglect of Flickr, pinterest, etsy will fall under the umbrella of online abstinence. My digital footprint won't gain shoe sizes. I will forsake the new, the current, and live off the grid!

...Or at least descend into the basement. Which, uh, still has wifi access, so I can lose myself in most recent newfound escapism (Dexter, season three*). I've never been an all-or-nothing gal. More of a "more -- and then probably a little more." Sanity bonus: intermittent crying arrives, as if through layers of cotton, as if it holds less relevance than it does on the main floor...** 

More importantly, I shifted my picture book project wall downstairs. For the past couple

earlier versions of "Cake Stealer"

Quimbies: all scared, all "off"

years, it resided on the dining room wall in a hodge podge fashion -- sketches that were proving most troublesome, sketches I wanted to think about, newly pulled prints to remind myself of progress. But just a handful, masking taped underneath, or between, properly framed artwork hanging on the walls. Occasionally one would peel off to float behind the radio shelves; last week La Bebe lunged for a low-lying sketch with her grabby hand -- to rip, perchance to suck. The wall used to have spurring power; but in the past six months, it has offered remonstrance more than anything else: this is what you won't finish/solve/get to.

Idea for first page (2011)

Will a more complete wall actually turn my project around? Not just on its own, surely. But! Now, when you walk downstairs to the basement, you see the spare bed before you. A lamp to its left gives off a friendly glow from atop its repurposed, mirrored, sewing trestle table, itself relegated from the the living room (safety concerns). On the wall, every page of the Cakeasaurus picture book is laid out, in order, in three rows of double page spreads. The number of finished prints is heartening. Looking at it I feel a sense of accomplishment not felt for a long time, despite a few out-of-favor designs, page order snafus and uninspired pages begging for replacement. I can see it better now. The issues remain, but it has gained a new order, and with it, a renewed confidence that it will ultimately come together. Plus, it feels den-like, in the basement, in Winter. A coziness, and a remove.

***...And Now a Message from the Ladies' International Glove Council ***

An in-house workspace and get-away is nothing without distractions, though, right? Or, rather, if you are looking for distractions, you will find them anywhere, no matter how streamlined your space. Opposite the Project Wall lay stuff. Lots and lots of stuff, most of which, gladly doesn't lure me in (other than with the urge to pare down). But those two bags down there in shadow, what's inside? Better have a look.

Inside each are bags within bags, so old the plastic is brittle; clear pieces flake off and catch the light. My Grandmother's gloves. I know I didn't claim all of them, but over 30 pairs are here, carefully partnered, nestled, the paler shades nevertheless yellowed with age. The variety is impressive: wrist length to opera length, sweet embroidered details, silk to cotton to leather, pearlescent buttons at the inner wrist, neutrals to deep plum and Easter parade pastels. And why should it be otherwise, for a shrewd businesswoman and gifted seamstress, who drew up her own patterns tailored to her measurements, turning out dresses and jackets with matching linings, from the most cutting edge synthetics of the day?

But the gloves, even more than the dresses -- most of which are long gone -- illustrate how different was the time within which she lived. Such dainty, feminine restraint! Notions of purity met by snobby classicism. There must be fashion parallels to today, though they escape me now. They hold a weird power, even as they are now.*** They beg to be tried on, after all this time without use.

opera glove, called "mousquetaire" due to button opening

peekaboo wrist detail. I forgot about these plum ones

barely visible, but ruched along the sides

a small selection

the palest moss green

these were crazy, almost bridal

this leather was so soft, so thin, each finger slightly thicker than an envelope

these felt especially intimate somehow

My favorite glove bag: crown and crossed gloves~!

followed by this one -- look closely: a glove draped over the earth

Not glove-related, but an added bonus.

Van Raalte apprently also made hosiery and lingerie as well, natural pairings. See below for billboard (Atlantic City) and great vintage ads:

Detailed like precious jewelry!

And this one, not Van Raalte, but found among the Google flowers:

Gallingly wonderful! 

*But I don't think I watched all of season two? It reminds me that I still have a taste for (conveniently justified) glossy violence, even with the more recent, more finely honed maternal sensitivities. I suppose if he was a serial killer of children I would be unable to deal. Another reminder: opening credits can be so phenomenal! One of the best! Up there with Six Feet Under. And what else? Movies more than tv, certainly.   
**Disclaimer: noooooo, I don't leave my child crying for hours on end, stop it. I speak of nap protesting and the odd hour or two when she is not under my care.  
***Ohoooo! Here we go! the start of a less-than-successful possession story! "The gloves did indeed hold power...power beyond what she ever imagined. But as Clarissa changed and a new world unfolded, the question remained: would she be able to control this power, or would it control her?"

Don't Make the Cupcakes Cry

Confrontation!

A quick post, with the return to the workweek. Finally returned to more sketching over the long weekend -- there's hope yet that I'll finish the year back on track with respect to my larger woodblock project!


A peek into what will be two two-page spreads.

Fear is contagious.

Cake-Eating Maelstrom

That is all! Busy as this latest one is, I am excited for it! A few more designs sketched and then I can order more wood blocks...I am craving a bit of carving at this point.

Out, Crimson Spot!... Grimm's Blocks, Continued

How's about an update? I got a nice, over-sized box from McClain's today, which as you may suspect is the woodblock that I determined would take too long to carve before a fairytale deadline. So, since I don't have any singing birds or gouge-wielding gnomes, and since I am employing details from the larger design within the three smaller blocks, this means this block will probably find itself propped up in a lonely corner and pointedly ignored for most of the Summer. Poor shina plywood, custom cut and everything. 

The carving has gone pretty well*, so even with the need to print quite soon and frame quite soon, I think I may just be in good shape.

*I have yet to even skin my knuckles! GOODness. Gold star for the clumsy one! Maybe this is only because they're smaller blocks. If it's a larger one, I have a tendency to throw myself into it an unnecessary fashion. And then one wonders why one's shoulder or elbow hurts. Woodblock elbow: less sporty than tennis elbow, but still carries a certain cache. In, umm, very limited circles. And even then, the next person over is all, "Yeah, well at least you don't havestained glass shards underneath your skin." Psssh. Can you tell I'm crabby? Even my imagined tangents are irritable. 

ANYhoo. I spoke with several fine folk last weekend, as I paced and tried to puzzle out the new direction. My sister offered a suggestion, which while it didn't quite work, was still encouraging and helped me to carry it a bit further in my head. Mom offered the following: "Well. Simpler is better. It's sometimes harder to keep it simple." She slipped in variations of this about three times throughout the conversation, which I totally agree + it's not my forte + she clearly recognizes that. At least she didn't return to her position about my relying too much on words in designs -- which again, NOT that I disagree with her -- but it's just highly unlikely that I'll be able to wean myself from text with image. So. That said, good to listen to your Momma.

Mom has been cute about this project in that I checked additional Grimm's fairy tales out from the library when I was home, to make sure I read through all of the nine selected for the exhibit. This was the first thing she told me after I returned to my home here:

"I still have that book! And did you look on the inside cover? The library got that book before you were born!  I wondered if you had realized that! The first date stamp was a few months before!"

"Oh! How funny!" I didn't really know what to say after that, though it made her pretty happy.

"I think I'll just keep it out for awhile. Maybe I'll read a few of them."

Sure, fine, be my guest.

Next phone call: "Your sister renewed that book for me. I still haven't read any of the tales."

"Mom, don't feel obligated to read them because of this application. And if you want, I can just photocopy The White Snake and send it your way."

"Oh, that's okay. I think I have my old copy in the attic. Nancy who lived across the street from my house, we would both get books for Christmas and we'd sit together and read them by the Christmas tree! I think it's up there somewhere."

So sweet, and so comforting to think of her as a little girl, with her Christmas books. And to think that that Grimm's volume is probably still in the attic, most likely with some very old crayon scribbles in it.

Bowdlerized** versions, most likely. Which, honestly, I fall back and forth on this matter: intelligent children don't profit from receiving pablum texts ad. And, as Shirley Jackson would say, children are savages anyway (her lesser known book Life Among the Savages is a priceless tale of parenting~~). Violent tendencies are in all of us.

And yet...every time I review The White Snake and he kills his horse to feed some raven babies he just met, I'm outraged on several fronts. The brutality of slaying his horse, plus the weird decision-making that led to it... And actually this tale was flat-out ghastly to me in the way that Grimm's are usually: all the class depictions, how to get what's desired (or in positive light, the lower class character uses his wits to defy the established order...to marry someone who tried to kill them repeatedly...oh, also less positive)... "I CAN NOT CONVEY HOW MUCH I HATE THIS STORY. I. HATE. IT." My hairdresser told me, after I ran through a synopsis.  

**Hey hey! Check out wikipedia -- the term originated from Thomas Bowdler, who created "The Family Shakespeare."

Well, crabby and meandering. Here are some snaps:

Three designs transferred in one hot day! Eau de Lacquer Thinner, anyone?

Okay and remember how the past several designs have transferred horribly?? BOOM! These came through fabulously. Fist pumping in the carport.

There's another design, the middle one, which I'll post later. It's the closest to simple and I think it's going to be really cool.

Blurry, but still textured.

Doom is Mood backwards.

Happy Friday, Folks! One last day of being my current age and then we have a birthday. Yeah, that could be another reason for the crabbiness~~ But the past year has brought lots of good changes, a long with several challenges. A life to savor, things to anticipate, it could be worse...

There's a New Design in Town. And It Has Utensils.

First, it seems only appropriate to acknowledge Memorial Day. I'm not walking through a cemetery or playing taps with my bugle. I love the country I was born to and live in; and certainly hope that my life somehow improves other people's lives. But I have never experienced a call to serve my country in such a deep way that I would find myself in a war torn landscape, knowing I could be maimed or killed. I don't know what that is. I am grateful to those who have felt this call, and have sacrificed themselves in this way.

One of my favorite metaphors about loss that I have ever encountered is from Laurie Anderson's "World Without End" -- it begins in an obvious fashion, but ends profoundly:

"When my father died we put him in the ground. 
When my father died it was like a whole library Had burned down."

All those past gems of knowledge and future experiences, nullified. So. I guess that's what I tend to think of, on a day like this. The families and loved ones, who have/and are experiencing this. The servicemen and women who have been lost.

***
The Design that Wasn't

Really no good segue way here, so I'll just get on with it. Remember that Grimm's Call to Artists? That I was so excited about?...I know, it's been awhile. It's not that I haven't done anything, but I have yet to find my new groove in the evenings, with the new job. Soooo many things have gone by the wayside (hopefully only temporarily). Recent text from dear friend:

Hey you alive? Or just not talking to me :p

That kind of says it all. Yes, alive. Yes, talking to you, just wiped out.

So. I have made slow progress on the White Snake design (What? You don't have this obscure tale memorized? Read a version here).

I got a little over-ambitious. But RAWTHER focused on it. Apparently, part of me was focusing on a more classic approach to it, even as another part wanted to do more of a sideways take. No matter to the latter: I was soon caught up in making repetitive leaf patterns and snake scales.

Behold, some snaps:

So, as you can see, there was a fair amount for me to obsess over. Not edgy, too classic, too large! But noooo, it will be so cool, once it is carved and hanging, with a bit of hand-coloring! A good testament to a weird classic! Scales all over too busy, not enough apples, too many apples. Overly busy, said Ginger, lacking a central focus. And snakes have scales all over, not just in patches. What's the deal with his super long arm, anyway? Hmm, hmmm, hmm. I stalked back and forth past my dining room table, drawing and erasing repeatedly. I periodically worried over the amount of carving (design size 30"x 16"), then set that aside. Finally ordered the woodblock Sunday before last.

And then, this past Friday, reality belatedly hit. Riding along from dinner at One-Eyed Betty's (burger *great*, maple-bacon doughnuts a sad, yeasty undercooked disappointment: stick with Washtenaw Dairy maple glazed, and serve up your own side of bacon.) and a showing of "Dark Shadows" (also lackluster, though as with any Burton flick, visually fun). Compatriot drove, I stared out the window and suddenly realized that if I didn't get the woodblock for another week (as predicted), I'd have 2 1/2 weeks tops to carve and print a design that I'd normally allow myself a couple months for. Seriously, after all the work so far, would I REALLY not have something to submit? Did. Not. Compute. But! But! But! No...truly not realistic.

"But would this be a design you'd carve even if it wouldn't be for this exhibit?"

A fair question from Comp, though one I didn't want to touch. Yes! No! Definitely Yes! ...Arrrrrgh. So, this Memorial weekend brought lots of agonized creative hustling on my part. Lots of gear shifting and examining from new angles, etc. etc. But! After two solid days of wearing my pencils down to nubbins, it seems I (potentially) have a different solution. Three of them, to be exact. ooOOo, a *triptych*, how fancy! Still lots of work, but I have the blocks already. So we shall see. I'll (hopefully) keep you updated.

Off to fumigate myself with lacquer thinner and transfer the first design...

Best to Everyone, on this Memorial Day!