a remembered landscape

itching to get going on some explorative work on the yukon, namely the riverboats, water, and wood i finally made the large sketchbook i began a while back

not having any suitable paper for the cover i had in my mind i would paint one but i am not a painter, though i do like to mess around with paint and what have you

  in my usual fashion i let the idea of doing that and the accompanying angst over whether or not i actually could do it get in the way of making my sketchbook

this week i realized i could turn my silliness into an advantage... too often i'm reluctant to use a sketchbook because i'm afraid of messing it up so if i made a scruffy, not so good painting for the cover i likely wouldn't be at all concerned over using the book

the thinking made sense so i got a large piece of heavy weight drawing paper, some ink, a lump of indigo pigment, a charcoal pencil and had a try

i never start with a plan, nor any kind of foundational sketch - just some water sprayed onto the paper and a few swipes of something and it all goes from there

as i worked a few mountains appeared, a bit of sky and then a grassy meadow - it reminded me of a somewhat boggy meadow not far from where we lived at fox lake all those years ago, the trees often slanted as their rooting was tenuous at best

the sombre colours gave it the look of fall so the trees i put in were done with the charcoal, black, no green

the effect was scruffy but i liked that... quirky lines for the mountains, the suggestion of ravens wheeling through the sky... low cloud, patches of snow

the paper was large, 18" x 24", and as i was fairly happy with all of what i had done i grabbed the covers and figured out how i could make both from it

not a lot of room to spare but it worked!

the front, with a close-up below

yesterday, as it lay on my worktable i noticed the inside back cover edge was an almost perfect extension of the front cover

i didn't plan that but realized right away it occurred because of the way i used the paper - now that i see it i'll definitely be doing the same thing for future books... an unexpected but beautiful detail i think

a view of the back

because i want to mount things on some of the pages i added narrow spacers to each signature in the hope the book won't expand too much at the fore-edge

coptic binding again

binding a sketchbook of this size is not easy (it's 8 1/4" x 11 1/4"), especially in a landscape format; the long pages flopped so much that even paper clips didn't help much but i'm glad I persevered

every time i make a book i fall in love with the process all over again

there are more of these in my future; i think from now on i'll be making all of my sketchbooks but i'd like to also make them to sell

the wheels are turning...

black and blue

inside days again this past week so more time to work with and learn about some of my art materials

working with indigo and charcoal, making marks, adding water, drops of ink

the swish of a brush and the scratch of a pencil

working on a large piece of cartridge paper that after a satisfying 30 minutes of trying this and that looked like a complete mess of awful

fun to do but disappointing to look at

the next step was to turn the paper over and rip it up - that wasn't hard to do at all!

surprisingly, when I flipped the remains over, there were a few that pleased me greatly

in isolation, the marks took on a new dimension and what was overlooked before took centre stage

this one intrigued me greatly... that tangle of dark

the one below became a landscape right in front of my eyes... stormy sky, wind-swept plain with a small hill... dark shadows on the land and lightning bolts - bold cracking ones high in the sky and a delicate one, straight down to the earth

sheets of rain

the first one again, turned on it's side

and then this 

making indigo watercolour paint, mulling it for ages and when all I could scrape from the plate was in a watercolour pan, I did one last spin with the muller and then stamped it on a piece of paper

little interesting things that kept me busy for a few days

if not now...

an off-hand remark on a podcast i was listening to several weeks has had a profound effect on how i manage the things in my life that need doing

it was something along the lines of "if it needs to be done, why not do it as soon as you notice it"

and then a pod cast or two later this one:

"if it's such a good idea why are you not getting at it right away?"

one good for life and the other for art?

or perhaps both for both?

simplistic i know, in a busy world, when what might get noticed is the thing you see just as you're heading out the door, but otherwise why wait?

the old, "if not now, when"

i've been using both of these ways of thinking ever since i heard them and am pretty darn pleased with the results

not only are nagging things getting attended to, i've also become much more discerning with just how good my ideas are

one i had last year was after i completed the online course

"Inspired by Nature"

i had several photographs and samples of paintings inspired by them so i thought it would be nice to make a concertina book for them and have a visual record of that connection

I gathered my favourite photos and paintings/prints and even managed to cut the cover boards and fold the paper for the pages but then spring came and the days got busy and my good idea sat in a drawer for 15 months

last week i did a big studio re-organization and in doing that i came across the folded paper, cover boards, photos and samples all bound neatly together

the last of the studio sort-out was completed this morning so today i tackled it

with eight pages i decided on a two by two layout of four sets, a photo and then the work inspired by it

the photos were all taken after an early spring windstorm that brought down hundreds of twigs and branches all around the banks of our little lake

the shore ice was melting and re-freezing, trapping many branches and often icing them with frost

i went back several times over a few days and took at least two dozen of photos, the details changing day by day

trying a variety of techniques to interpret what i was seeing

layers of ice and wood, appearing lines and disappearing ones

freezing and breaking up

water and ice

lots of trials to choose from

the covers are finished and the concertina pages attached - the whole of it is pressing under weight now for a day or two

one side will feature these photo/art duets and the other will have some of my observations i think 

having put this project off for fifteen months already I've no doubt it would have languished for another 15 at least as there's no pressing reason to get it done and other things are calling loudly

but if not now, when?

and maybe another, better question might be

if not now, why?

things to think about

i haven't usually any shortage of things to think about... pondering things, that make me consider not just the world around me but also my place in it and understanding of it

this week three more were added to the pile

shrub and the ensuing stump removal have been a big focus this summer... last week as i was sawing large roots from one of the stumps i had a rather startling experience

the stump had been removed from the ground at least two weeks prior but the larger roots were still rather soft and flexible; as I sawed my way through one of the largest i noticed a faint pink tinge which deepened as i got closer to the centre of the root by which time it was quite ruby-coloured; in minutes the colour was entirely gone with not the faintest hint it was ever there

seems perhaps "the surge" before death, (sometimes referred to as terminal lucidity), is maybe not just something for human beings...

when the root came free i laid it down on the growing woodpile and as it rolled over i noticed a small web of fine "root-threads", pure white and in the shape of a tree

so much symbolism in these two events they feel like startling messages from the plant itself and not ones to be taken lightly

a few days later, an afternoon in the studio with more mark-making using charcoal in the works, i was determined this time to just make random marks

it seemed to be going well, turning the paper this way and that, trying different ways of working but after 15 minutes there was yet another landscape appearing on the page - tried a few more things to break free of that but again, the new marks, in combination, just enhanced the overall impression

deciding there was no point in fighting it i took the eraser to the sky area to lighten it a bit and added a few more lines to what appeared to be a grassy area to define it a bit more and there it was...

the last thinking thing was spurred on by a photo a friend in the yukon sent me... they were on a boating trip on bennett lake and the white pass train came by so she snapped this image of it

https://wpyr.com

it's a tourist train now, running from skagway, alaska as far as carcross, yt along with a few points in between but until the early 1980s the train came all the way to whitehorse

i could never understand the colour scheme though... I thought the yellow and green a hideous combination and often wished they would go back to the dark red/burgundy and black i remembered as a child

when Charmaine sent me this photo I understood immediately... it's the colour of the water, and of the land, the greenery in sunlight

it's nature's perfection