non-obligatory blogging

. Not much time to post this morning but I thought I'd show the little books Yvonne, Kellilynn and I worked on yesterday. They are ATC size, using playing cards for the light cardboard in the covers. We did some image transfers on some paper from Nepal and coated it lightly with acrylic medium. It ended up looking a lot like leather. Lots of fun!

. Hey, check out The Altered Page postings from yesterday and today -- Studio Shots 1 and 2 showing tons of artists' studios with pics and comments by each one. I love it! Seth Apter has organized "the third edition of The Pulse: an artist survey" and began posting the results on August 18, 2008 with 95 artists participating. Very interesting and inspiring to read. Actually, check it all out.

. I found out last week that I sold one of my prints that had been in the VLA ( Very Large Array ) gift shop. It had been there for about 8 months at least. Jimmy always says that art just needs to wait for the right person to come along -- the one who's just gotta have it. He told me last week that the lady who runs the gift shop told him that some guy who was with a film crew out at the VLA site recently had bought it and it was going to his office in New York. Cool, I thought and Yay, the print finally sold. Found out today that apparently (or so I was told) it was David Muir with ABC News and he's hosting an ABC Primetime special about UFOs that aired tonight. (Honestly, I've never heard of him before this but I still thought it was kinda cool news. Apparently, he's pretty hot stuff in the news world. He sure looks like a hottie in his pictures anyway ;) Now I'm wishing I had framed it more professionally and included a certificate of authenticity (standard p...

Cloth Paper Scissors is publishing a special issue about studios . It will hit the news stands early in October. There's a lovely photo on the cover of some artist's very nicely appointed, clean, well kept art space. It will also have, " 85 ways to find, sort and store your stash " and " 11 best organizing tips from an expert " and " BIG solutions for small spaces ". I need to read all of these articles, I'm sure and I'm really looking forward to getting a copy so I can be inspired and encouraged by all those organized artists. Or possibly not. Usually, I just feel depressed when I see the large, clean, orderly work spaces that other artists work in. Anyway, just knowing this special issue was coming out has made me think about what condition my art condition is in. Here's mine... Sorta pathetic. Actually, I try to be organized. I really make an attempt at being organized but I don't love to organize or the discipline that it takes ...

. I bought some HammerMill Color Copy Gloss paper this weekend at Office Depot. I had never seen it before and I keep trying to find a paper that gives me a really nice, consistent transfer without a whole lot of effort. (besides that I'm just a paper junkie.) Anyway here's a couple of samples of what happened. (remember this is just an experiment, I'm not going for art yet.) In the first photo (above) the images are transferred to MDF that has a light coating of dried white gesso. I applied a layer of Golden Polymer Medium (gloss) and then burnished the images face down with a brayer -- the back of the paper covered with plastic to prevent gel medium from going everywhere. The daisy on the right was printed on a color laser printer and the one on the left was printed on an epson c88+ with durabrite ultra inks. This next one (below) is transferred to some untreated matboard -- again the laser on the right and the inkjet on the left. Of course, the laser print is the more vi...