Green Glass

Frederick ambles in

I decided to use a model for some of sketching.  Frederick volunteered.

 

I appreciate a patient model.

Frederick...

And so it begins.

Let is be resolved, Frederick needs some page time.

    Along with the  binding and the quilting and the knitting, I must spend some quality time with Frederick.

Patience should be rewarded.

open

 

 yup

What are these people thinking?

I've been derailed!

I was chugging along, journaling, sketching, doing a bit color here and there and then

WHAM

I was derailed by a bit of yarn and the holidays.

This is a half hearted attempt at keeping up in my Catch and Release journal.  I should be speeding through these pages, but I'm NOT.

I'm knitting.  Which I hope to have in pictures tomorrow.  Hats, I tell you hats GALORE.

Do you see me gesturing and genuflecting?  It's because I'm stifled not being able to play play all the time.  I've been required to attend FUNCTIONS which need clean pressed clothes and clapping and dishes in travel friendly containers.  And it's going to get WORSE!  

Really!   What are these people THINKING????

Back to the pamphlet

 Cut and paste.

 Sometimes that's all I want to do right now.

 Yup.

Resume your own activities.

Back and forth, here and there.  I keep jumping around. 

I haven't felt so nimble in a while. 

Not feeling wordy.  Just feeling grateful recently and so happy to be having fun.

And hoping that no one is looking in my windows at the hopping, cantering lady.  

Pay no attention. Resume your own activities.

Delight will be had.

I'm off the delightful drawing paper and back to kraft paper.  So it's cut and paste time.  I got out my washi tape.  Delight will be had.  

Paint.  And didn't I get an alphabet stencil?  Yup.  Use those supplies.

Frederick is trying to sneak in, but this isn't the paper I really want to draw on.  My pentel pocket brush doesn't glide across this.  However, he is not to be denied.  I am in an obliging mood.   

Little boys will be obliged too.  Delight will be had.

 

So patient, that Frederick

Because I chose Option D, I am reassessing how I am working in my big Catch & Release Journal and why I seem to go in fits and starts.  The switches in paper are definitely a factor.  In the little pamphlets, I just cut and paste and paint with acrylic mostly, so I can mentally plan on having a variety of surfaces.  But in my "main" journal, I am realizing that I want to be able to work on one surface for a while so I can explore what it does.  Knowing that people have advised that is an entirely different thing than for me actually doing it.  Slowing down and actually doing it.  Actually. Doing. It.

This paper is, I believe, either Arches text wove or Swathmore Aquarius.  Because I am impulsive I didn't make a note of it.  Of course I would remember (I thought to myself).  I am slowly slowly learning to make notes IN THE BOOK (not on a slip of paper, not in some other place, but in the actual book itself).  But in any case it has a little pebbly texture.  I am still working on Frederick's portrait (so patient, that Frederick).

 I love the tip of the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen and have from the moment I first used it.  It makes my wobbly lines look almost graceful, almost intentional.  But for this, I tried laying it on its side to give Frederick's skin some texture.  And I love how it turned out.

There are a lot of things I don't like about this sketch, but I'm so glad I kept working on it.   I also used my Lyra graphite water-soluble crayon this time, and again, although it wasn't quite what I wanted, it was worth the time experimenting.  

Now, however, the paper switches in this book, to some random mixed everyday mail papers, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do next.  But this time, I want to try to press on.  Frederick may just need to make an appearance in a different venue.  Hmm.....

What all of this leads me to, is perhaps a better understanding of how I can chose my journals in the future.  Which is a lovely thought.  Especially since my fingers are beginning to itch to do some binding.

This kind of debacle.

As usual, I'm being held sway by more than one impulse and they are playing themselves out in my journals.  This is Frederick.  Roz Stendalh entertained us last week (were you paying attention?) with a series of portraits of her in-house model Carl.  I was moved to get one of my many models out and refocus myself with a brush pen, which I've enjoyed ever since she introduced me to one.

This was done with a Pentel Aquash pigment ink water brush pen  (not the water based brush pens they have or the Pocket Brush Pen, which I adore, but I wish they'd come up with more distinctive names to separate them).  This has grey ink and a similar feel to the pocket brush pen and is similarly waterproof.  I am a slow learner, so after a year of having used the pocket brush pen, I feel like I'm still just beginning to explore all the things it can do.  

This is my model.  He doesn't mind being photographed.  He's used to the attention.

Roz suggests picking one subject and focusing on it from different angles.  Not that this is revelatory, but I do what Roz says.  It works for me.  I don't know why I picked Frederick.  Something about all the lines. Or maybe the pace.  He doesn't jump around too much, which I appreciate.

I'm also trying to do some shading.  And I keep looking.  I hope I'm seeing.  

Meanwhile, since I am NOT working on putting together another pamphlet journal, I discovered on my shelf of journals-to-be used that, that in fact, I had one already.  Frederick is standing on it.  Now the dilemma.  Continue NOT making new little pamphlet journals with my new spray paint papers?  Actually use what I have made instead of just adding to the stockpile?  Reshelve what I made before and push on with my Catch and Release hand-bound journal and actually finish it sometime in the nearer future?  Oh, the choices, the choices.

Frederick is keeping his opinion to himself.  He knows better than to get into the middle of this kind of debacle.

I had no idea how much my current happiness is dependent on having a place to cut and paste.  Silly woman.

Mayhem Reigns!

At least on my table it does.

And on my sewing machine.

And next to my sewing machine.

And this before I get really busy.

This is before I considered the possibility of tabs and that new decorative paper I promised I wouldn't buy.  

And it's about to get worse.

 

Frederick

Roz.  Carl.  You need to go there and see that.  That's what I'm talking about.

When I say she inspires me, I mean,...  why have you not gotten a pentel pocket brush pen yet?  Or a Faber-Castell calligraphy pen?  

Except she would say it's not about the pen.  It's about what happens when you find that joyful moment with the right pen in your hand, or discovering that it's not the right pen, or the right pen but doesn't that paper drag a little (this one does to me), but more than that it's about looking, really really looking.  

So here's Fredrick.  

And above that was someone's class picture who forgot that when you put your hair in a ponytail (especially a little little one) it doesn't show up in a photo.  But your wonderful sunflower shining smile does.  The one that makes your mother break into a smile every time she looks at it.  

Every. Single. Time.