Friday, December 21, 2007

Progress and Cards


We've been inside the studio building doing wall insulation, we can work once again since the electrician pulled wires throughout the building! The wire has "just" been pulled through though, nothing has been wired to completion (such as switches and outlets). But that's a start!

The furnace has been warming up the building fairly well, even though the soffits and ridge vents aren't blocked.


Today we got all walls finished up with insulating and have started some limited finish work on the entrance gable inside. We likely won't get back in there to work now until after Christmas.

Speaking of Christmas - it's almost here already...just amazing! It's really looked the season around here, been very pretty. It just never seems the season without snow, but I'm still happy we haven't been as inundated as folks to the south and east (and north) of us.



All the cards I've done in the past 40 years for Christmas have run the gamut of pen and ink, wash, lino and wood cut, oils, color pencil, serigraphs, and photographs. Not really that many have led to larger ideas like I mentioned before, but there are some still "stewing" in the background.

One of my simpler designs was the 2 color serigraph above. I like it when the best idea doesn't create a printing nightmare! I really toyed with the idea of doing a larger serigraph some day, putting a Kingfisher in the branches over the water. Maybe I'll try it...maybe I'll do something else with it.


The next piece was another I've thought about from time to time. I originally did it with the Christmas card in mind...but was working on some other small studies with water based graphite then, so I did this piece of a place on the Upper Iowa River that I liked and treated the drawing as a wash. I almost got to the point of doing a painting of it soon afterwards but I wasn't ready (or maybe the "idea" wasn't ready). Will I ever get back to it? Don't know...but I do think about another try some day!

Never give up on old ideas, they may come to pass in a surprising or unexpected way.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looking at the picture of the water posted I could have sworn it was a black an white photo. It wasn't until I clicked on it that I could see that it wasn't.

I love the reflection in the water.

Prairie Painter said...

Thanks for your comment James. The water soluble pencils made for a fairly straight forward "reflection". Drewent is the brand of the pencils and I'd highly recommend them to anyone to experiment with.

Happy New Year to you...

...Bruce