Sketches for new litho...

Cutting and pasting to get the gesture I'm looking for.

"Howard's Orchard"

Added bonus to picking apples at Howard's Orchard, beautiful vines of cherry tomatoes.

We pick our own and pay by the pound.

Howard's little shop near the front gate.

Drove out to Oracle to pick some apples for canning applesauce.  We found some extra bonus cucumbers for pickles as well as the cherry tomatoes. Spent the rest of the day canning!!!! Hard work but fun to do together,

Watercolor study

This is my watercolor map I will use to determine my color plates.  I will print with trans based ink and the overlapping colors will help create more colors. I might try to print the tan this week.

Inner city farm...

Jenny and Mike's lovely inner city farm. Tucson has great pocket neighborhoods of "like-minded" people.

Jenny's husband Mike made this wonderful chicken coop.

They have 4 chickens and they regard them like pets.

Mike found these 3 lovely eggs while we were there.  Beautiful pastel shades of pink and green.

After visiting Jenny and Mike's place I think Andy is more open to the idea of an inner city chicken coop.  You are allowed to do this if your coop is 50 feet away from the nearest residence and you cannot have a rooster. P.S. Jenny is a wonderful painter, too.

The prints are drying...

Had a good day printing yesterday (42 prints) .  Used a stiffer ink than usual.  2 parts GC Crayon Black to 1 part Charbonnel Velvet Black. Also, printed the image onto fabric, I added 2 extra rolls of ink to make sure the ink would cover well, plus I water spritzed my fabric so that it would take ink better. Made sure that before I ran it through the press, all of the wrinkles were out.  Any raised areas or wrinkles might cause the stone to break going through the press. I also printed a mylar so that I could use it to register the following color plates.  When inking to print onto the mylar I under ink it (2 less rolls).  Because the mylar is very smooth it needs less ink.  After it is printed I add frosted tape over the registration marks and draw then on with a black finetip pen.  Then I dust it with talc on the wet side to help harden the ink so that I can work with it later.

All but one of these mirrors belong to my Mother and her Mother. One day I accidentally dropped the wooden mirror (second on the left).  I know 7 years of trouble but I decided to refit one of my litho prints into the window with an oval piece of mylar to protect it.  Need to polish the silver mirror, it's my favorite.

Our first canning!!!!

New seedlings for the fall garden

The seed packets for these plants read "Red Noodle Asparagus Beans"other people call them "China Yard-long Beans"

Sunday morning market in Tucson St. Phillips Plaza

Stone Drawing

This is a detail of the stone drawing I just etched (used a 3 drop etch because the stone is a dark blue grey).  I flipped it in Photoshop so that the banner would be right-reading.  Plan to do several colors (maybe 7).  I need to had the red spots for her measles but am saving that for the red plate.  Plan to print Tuesday.

Brushes, Brushes Everywhere!

3 containers of brushes in the drawing studio

...even in the kitchen ( I rinse brushes in the nearest sink)

In the painting studio...

In the printmaking studio

In the utility room

These are not counting Andy's studio brushes.  I use such variety but my favorite brush is still my 1970s Winsor-Newton series 7 sable round.  Unfortunately the new Winsor-Newton series 7 are not made as well as they were then.

Sketch for a new print...

Once upon a time a little girl went to the circus for the first time. On the way there her father, the fireman, stopped by the local grocery and purchased a large bag of bananas, oranges, grapes and apples. This was so that she would not be "tempted" to eat cotton candy, ice cream, candied apples, popcorn and taffy. He had gotten free tickets because, fireman were always getting free things. When they reached the large auditorium she saw thousands of other children laughing and screaming and having a wonderful experience with their balloons and soda. There were Shriners and clowns everywhere. The clowns looked and smelled very frightening. To her it was all a bit unbearable because at that time she didn't realize that she also had a bad case of the measles.  One reason she was there without her sister who had stayed home sick.  Her seat was very very high up in the rafters of the auditorium.  It was so high up that the circus looked like "The Smallest Show on Earth" from where she was sitting.  She thought the circus would never end but finally she returned home and that night made a wish on a star to never ever have to go to a circus again and to this day her wish has come true.

Recent edition finished, ready to ship

Because I spent most of my summer cleaning studios and organizing I felt a bit rusty printing this final edition.  It is actually due today but will need to ship this afternoon.  Ended up printing on damp paper and was unable to register for color.  Opted to have 2 colors printed (black and overall tan tint base) and hand-tinted the yellow and red.

Meanwhile our home garden is bearing nice melons.  I know that you might be wondering why the cantaloupe is surrounded by watermelon leaves, it's because we mingled the two plants together in the melon patch and they both got aggressive with each other.  May not mix them up next time.  Our community garden plot is bearing several wonderful watermelons, gaya melons as well as Persian melons.