Trip to Conner Prairie in Indianapolis, early May

First fishing trip

I went fishing for the first time this year last Friday morning. I just went for a couple of hours, since I had various other things to get done, but it felt great to get out.




First, just to get this bit of suspense out of the way, yes, I caught fish. One bluegill and one smallmouth, both too small to be proud of, but fun to catch anyway.



This was also the first time I’d ever tried creek-wading to fish. I probably loaded myself up more than most anglers do for wading, because I wasn’t sure if I was going to stick with just using a few different lures for bass. I wanted to make sure I could switch to any other technique I felt like trying.



I think my preparations paid off. I put an assortment of tackle into a small tackle box, and put the tackle box into a vinyl satchel to carry. The satchel was also (barely) big enough for the plastic jar of worms I dug up in the morning but never used. I packed a few Ziploc bags for my wallet, phone, and camera, because I intended to get wet. I wore my fishing vest and old trousers, and liberally soaked myself in Off! before heading out because I found a lot of ticks the last time I was in that area.



The water varied between ankle deep and almost waist deep along the edge of the creek. The water felt good; it was peaceful; and I think I even saw an otter in the distance at one point, though it might have been a beaver, which I know were nearby because I saw the chewed-up vegetation.



I caught the smallmouth right at the edge of some ripples, and he jumped as I reeled him in. He was very pretty and bronze.

I didn't wade very far. Probably not more than an eighth of a mile.

I think the smallmouths are targeted pretty hard by local anglers. I’m wondering what kind of success I’d have looking for catfish there? I never hear anyone talking about catfish there, but I don’t think many people look for them. I really want to go back and spend a while fishing some slow-current spots for bullheads and channel catfish; I think they’re there.

Looing upstream

Looking downstream

Ferrari Spider commission finished

 

I finished this commission in time, a couple of days ago. This is a 2004 Ferrari Spider, oil on panel, 16 x 24.

 

The background is cobbled together from a few references, and quite a bit of it is just made up.  I had never painted a palm tree before, but I think these look sort of nice.

 

What a show

I saw two big productions over the weekend.  Last night, thanks to my friend John, I was able to attend The Wall Live, performed by Roger Waters and a bunch of great musicians and a host of production personnel.  It was spectacular, and we had great seats.

Also over the weekend, I attended another wonderful performance in my own back yard!  Here is the invitation:

And here is another handout, a synopsis to entice us to attend:

It, too, was a fine production, completely silent, obviously well-rehearsed, and with great props (there was hula-hooping, small plastic stakes used at hunting implements, and a water spray bottle for cleaning the invisible prey... which they did eat with enthusiasm.

Rock climbing

 

These are some crummy cell phone photos, but you can still see what a great job she did climbing!  These are from a birthday party last week.

House Portrait drawing - sort of a rush job

 

 This drawing is 8 x 10 inches, black walnut ink on bristol.  I only had a small window to get it done, soI worked fast on this one. It's not quite a "polished" as I usually like, but I'm pleased with it nonetheless.

Still so many basic things to learn

  

Pretty frequently I'm startled by my lack of art knowledge.  Sure, most people I know really aren't into art, and have almost little working knowledge of any media.  To them, I'm sure I seem like I really know what I'm talking about most of the time.  And to other, more established, experienced artists, my lack of knowledge isn't surprising at all.  There is so much to learn that, even you are devoted full-time to learning about art, there is always something new to discover.

 

Still, I regularly learn something that makes me think, "Wow, how could I not have known that?"  The most recent example is pyrrole red.  This is a pigment that was developed in the 1980s, so it's been around a while.  It's a relatively inexpensive red, cheaper than the expensive cadmiums.  I've learned (through internet research) over the past week that it's a great, versatile color, and very bright.  Many artists consider it a very important tool.

 

I don't have this color.  I don't have any reds that have this pigment in it.  Get this: this color is also nick-named "Ferrari red."  Hey! And I'm painting a Ferrari right now.  I guess I'd better buy a tube and check it out.

 

Another thing I think about, related to the above:  I feel like the technical aspect of painting was largely glossed over in my university studies.  What did we talk about instead?  Well, there were a lot of generalities (don't over-mix the colors…perhaps you want to try more muted tones…etc.).  Most of all, I think there was discussion of the drawing aspects of painting, such as getting value right (something that, honestly, probably can't be over-emphasized), proportion, paint application and brush strokes.

 

I can recall very little discussion, however, of opaque pigments vs. transparent pigments, or having on hand cool and warm versions of the same hue.  There was certainly little information presented on glazing, which frankly I'm not sure any student I was with every really attempted.

 

I'm not at all faulting any of my professors.  They had their hands full just trying to coax us into the ability to paint a portrait with vaguely human features, and I am forever in their debt.  The information has always been available for me to learn.  Maybe I don't really every learn it until I truly need it.

Bird: Beginning and Intermediate Levels

 

 From a start of four robin eggs in the butterfly bush beside our house, only one hatched.  We saw it the same day it hatched, tiny and feeble and limp, but I failed to get a photo.  It didn't take long, though, for the bird to be big and feathered.  The day after I took this photo I saw it standing on the edge of its nest, and a couple of hours later, it was gone.

Ferrari Spider work in progress

Here is a painting commission I am working on. 16 x 20”.  I think the easiest part is done.  The upper layers of the painting will be the trickiest, but also the most satisfying.

Black walnut ink house portrait 5-20-12

 

 

I put in a little overtime on this drawing over this last weekend; it's another one of the multiple commissions I've accepted for a relatively short space of time.  It felt good to get it done!  I'm pretty pleased with the outcome.  This is 11 x 15 inches.

Shocking shopping

I shopped at Costco yesterday, and again I kept getting static electricity shocks from the shopping cart.  It happens on most of my trips there, but yesterday was particularly bad.  I'd say that less than once a minute, I'd be pushing the cart and ZAP!

 

What's weird about it is that the charge builds up with my hand on the cart.  The handle is plastic, and eventually the charge builds up enough to shock me through the plastic.  I'll be walking along with my hand on the handle, when I feel a sudden stinging crackle in my palm.

 

Sometimes it's not a single zap, but it'll manifest itself as a stream of electricity—like having my hand on a very low-voltage electric fence.  That's unpleasant, but not nearly as unpleasant as when big shock gets me right through the plastic handle.

 

This also used to happen to me at Sam's Club, and I've heard people say that it happens to them at Walmart.

 

It doesn't happen to Kim. I wonder if my shoes play a role?

Playhouse mural

Here are photos of the playhouse mural I did for some friends. They cleverly turned the recess beneath their basement steps into a play area for their little daughters, with molding around the door and square window, and a peaked “awning” over the door. Then they asked me to paint a house around it.

This is the result. The most time-consuming and tiring part was gridding in the bricks and then painting them in slightly varied reds. I guess they are what I’m proudest of, because they give a nice sense of sunlight and shadow, and I like the effect of having the “near” bricks slightly larger than the “far” bricks to give an illusion of depth.



School building drawing - black walnut ink

Whew! I finished the drawing of the school.  I’ve crammed in a lot of work over the past couple of weeks.  This is black walnut ink, 11 x 15 inches.

The rats like to sleep all piled up.  The girls at at top; they crowd together on the wooden ledge.  I just thought this was a funny picture.  The second photo is the boys, napping in their hammock.

Germantown street view

 

 

This painting is about eight years old, 16 x 20", oil on panel.  I am just putting it up here because I never put it up here before, and I sold it recently to a co-worker.

 

I painted these shotgun houses just off Ellison Avenue, next to Gnadinger Park, the smallest park in Louisville.  It might be the smallest park in the history of humanity.

Another black walnut ink drawing

 Here's another work-in-progress, one of several projects I am working on right now.  This is 11 x 15 inches.  It's getting there.

Thick black walnut ink

 

I just started using some of the black walnut ink I made last November.  I have four jars from that batch.  The first one I opened was oddly thick.  I could still use a paint brush with it, but it was too viscous to use with a dip pen.

The second jar I opened was normal, and worked wonderfully with a dip pen.

I wonder what happened with the first jar? (I haven't checked the other jars yet.)  It was pretty weird; not crusty at the top like it had dried out, just uniformly thickened.  That jar did have a small film of mold growing in it, but I've had mold in jars of ink before and not had it affect the ink flow.  I wonder if the gum Arabic I added did something strange?  But if so, why didn't it do that to the second jar?

I might be able to re-thin it with water, and even if I can't, it's not a great loss, and like I said, I can still use it with a brush.

I had the idea of obtaining a large number of small bottles and making ink to sell, but if I do that, I guess I better establish some quality controls!

Easter Goofy

 

 

Immortal

 

 "The Meat That Won't Die" would be a great premise for a scary religious cult, or a very cheapo horror film, or a scary cheapo rock band.

Pen and ink beginnings

 

 

I'm trying to remember how I got involved in pen-and-ink drawing.  It wasn't a very deliberate thing, and just enough time has passed that I'm on the verge of forgetting.

 

Of course, I've always used ink to some degree, for sketches and doodles.  However, I wasn't ever really what I would call a pen-and-ink artist until about four years ago.  I drew mostly with graphite, and preferred to paint with oils.

 

I think this is how it happened:

 

In the spring of 2007, the office I work for changed locations, and our new building has behind it a wooded area with a walking trail.  That summer, on the walking trail, I found some fallen, immature green walnuts.

 

I didn't know what they were, and identification was difficult because they were still small.  They didn't yet look like ripe walnuts.  After some research and discussion, I figured out they were black walnuts, and learned that the wooded area had a bunch of black walnut trees.

 

I think that somewhere along the way while I was researching this, I saw that black walnuts could be used to make ink.  That prompted me to do a little more internet research on the process.  I read that the ink was good artist ink, lightfast, and archival.  The process for making it was pretty straightforward.  Since at the time I had no cash for art supplies and I'm a cheapskate at heart, I thought I'd try it.

 

I do recall being a little bit preoccupied with it.  I learned to identify walnut trees and started spotting them all around town.  In the autumn, when the nuts fell from the trees, I picked up a bunch and made some ink.

 

During this time period, I was occasionally spending my lunch breaks doing graphite (and occasionally charcoal) sketches of buildings and trees near my office.  I was also, from time to time, doing quick sketches of people with black ink felt-tip pens, mainly because I enjoyed the crisp, clean contrast as opposed to graphite.

 

Late in the spring 2008, I took some walnut ink with me on my lunch break, and began a small drawing of the old Bellevoir mansion near my office.  I spent a couple of days on it.

 

In July, co-worker saw that drawing, and asked me to draw his house.  A friend of mine saw the Bellevoir drawing and bought it.  The house drawing I did for the co-worked led to a few more commissions from the co-worker's friends.  That, in turn, led to more commissions over the course of the next couple years.

 

I was taking these drawings to a gallery frame shop to have window mats cut for them.  The owner of the frame shop expressed interest in my work and recommended that I draw some local scenes to try to sell.

 

As I worked on these commissions, I developed a deeper appreciation for, and enjoyment of, pen-and-ink.

 

So, there you go.  I became a pen-and-ink artist because one day on my lunch break I found a nut I couldn't identify.

Dental Correspondence

Erin left a not for the Tooth Fairy a couple of nights ago, and she got a response along with the dollar that was left.  Very interesting!  The note was, unsurprisingly, quite small; only about an inch tall.

Erin, Jill, and I were playing soccer in the back yard. Jill said she would be the referee. We were all standing pretty far apart.



Jill: “First, what are your team names?”


Erin: “Lightning!”


Jill: “Lightning. Got it. What about you, Dada?”


Me: “The Tornadoes!”


(pause)


Jill: “The Potatoes?!”

This year's garden, so far

 

I haven't really been bitten by the gardening bug this year.  I think that with my slight backlog of artwork commissions, backlog of baby rats, and backlog of housecleaning chores, I just haven't been in the mood.  For the past eight years, I've been eager to start planting every spring.  This year, I feel like I just need to get the perennials taken care of, and phooey on the rest.

The asparagus I planted last year is coming back. Some of the plants look more vigorous than others, but I like them.  I'll have to read up again about how to properly maintain the plants. 

My friend Gregg, who is much more into gardening than I am, informed me that the reason my fennel doesn't form bulbs is because it just gets too hot too quickly in Kentucky, causing the fennel to bolt.  I'll keep it for the seeds, though.  And for the swallowtail butterflies.

I'll still plant some other things, but only things I really want, and things that are pretty easy.  I must plant tomatoes, that's a given.  I'll probably plant more basil.

A couple of weeks ago I spread out some of my glad bulbs, and I might buy some more mulch to put around them and the Asiatic lilies that are coming up.  I plan to put a greater emphasis on mulching all around this year, just because it's so much less work in the long run.

Yesterday I finally bought a new string trimmer.  After much research, I went with a Black & Decker 18 volt rechargeable cordless trimmer.  I had a list of five or six models I was looking for, and that was at the bottom of the list (my default selection).  It got good reviews, but the main complaint that kept popping up was about battery longevity.  I couldn't find any of the other models, so I bought that one.  What really sealed the deal was that the package came with two batteries, and the hardware store was having a sale in which they gave me a third battery for free.  I bought it with the proceeds from my Ottawa drag saw drawing, which seems somewhat fitting.

School sketch

Here's a sketch I did in preparation for a larger drawing in walnut ink.  The hardest thing to work out, for me, is how to configure the trees.  I've edited out a few trees, and made some others a little skinnier, but I want to leave in as much as I can because the trees are an attractive and distinctive feature.  I'm also diggin' the steps.  This is my favorite view of the building, because of the stairs; they will be the funnest part to draw, I'm sure.