Mmmmmm, Art...

As promised, below are some photos of my nature journal from LK Ludwig's class in Asilomar. The binding technique for this book is quite clever and allows you to bind any kind of page anywhere in your book. It also allows the book cover to lie flat.

Here's the cover:

That's a little assemblage we created inside the cover of an altoid tin. It's filled with resin, which I think will be my new favorite thing this year. So easy to make, fill anything, and dried like hard plastic, completely clear. It has MEK (Methyl Ethyl Ketone) in it, which is an irritant, but not a known carcinogen. So, please use outside, and allow to cure 24 hours outside. I glued everything inside the assemblage, including the branch and ribbon just by pouring the resin.

Next, the inside cover page, above. I must admit I did a piss poor job of folding the cover fabric over to the inside of the book, but, there wasn't much time. I love the blue of the gelatin print on the right, and I just made a quick transparency page with gold paint behind, a german scrap butterfly on the front, and white, rub on letters, spelling "Nature".

Here's one of the inside pages, made with a water photo transfer. I had a MAJOR advantage in the class that not only do I already know how to do image transfers, I've been teaching the darn technique for almost three years now.

This is a photo transfer of a dandilion seed ball. Then, I wrote on top, one of my poems. Good luck trying to read it.

Here's another page, (on the right) where I poured that same resin right over regular paper with that scruffy ribbon, a twig and the butterfly. I like how that white cotton ribbon flows in and out of the resin. This was my favorite page. The left is another gelatin transfer with a butterfly glued onto deli wrap with more resin. The resin makes the deli wrap tranparent like that.

The image on the left is a photo transfer from a photo I took out on a hike in Seattle, this was carved into the wood handrailing.

On the right is a page I tore out of a Victorian "photo album" - all reproductions. I sandwiched one of my tissue paper collages between the frame, which conveniantly had two sides. The tissue paper collages are so cool, 'cuz you can see through them, like this:Here's another layout that showcases the metal etching we did. Very fun - adhere natural leaves, etc. (here's a fern picked from right outside the door) to brass wire mesh, antique mesh, peel off leaves, here's what you have left on right. The left side is the reverse of the Victorian oval frame. I just couldn't handle two pages of sweetness, so I had to paint over it.

Well, I think that's enough of that journal for now. I'm even more excited that I've begun working on my commission piece again. Yah - that cool, big thing taking up lots of room in my studio. So, the next step, after making the background and gessoing over it is tracing the focal point image:

I had my image on regular paper, then traced over it with carbon paper underneath onto the canvas to get the image onto the canvas without having to re-draw it.

Then, started throwing on paint, literally.

Next comes some orange. I feel so good that I used up the entire little bottle of that orange paint I've had sitting around for over two years. Well, it's really a glaze - Goldend Pyrole Orange.

Dry time sucks.