Sugar Crash

February was touch and go. It came and went as fast as it's 28 days are short. Still, I have a few things I whipped up.

Hope ya had a Happy Valentine's Day, love.

And here's a bookmark I whipped up for Ms. Cornpoppy. She was sending some books to a friend and thought this would be a nice bonus, a custom bookmark!

Fly high with books.

 ...

Had a big break thru this week: I was able to print some black and white ink work onto watercolor paper for coloring purposes. Many artists these days produce work digitally and I'm not knocking it one bit. Do what you do. But when it comes to digitally coloring my work I find it to be tedious, painstaking and extremely time consuming. It's probably due to my outdated techniques and hardware, yet despite my prolific output I'm still a hold out to drop down the money to update to some decent hardware plus deal with the learning curve of said hardware. So, perhaps digital coloring could be a lot funner. Lotta my friends tell me so, but, here we are. Analog coloring, on the other hand, comes natural to me. I AM a painter, after all. And it's way less time consuming, which is why it was such a big win that I was able to run these pages off in such a fashion. Here's that concept page, now with a splash of color.

Color concepts. Not quite done but you get the idea, and that's the idea.

The way the black print out, as you can see, provide a sheen of sorts. It may look strange here but it should scan just fine. The black ink does "seal up" the surface it covers, so any color that goes over it just sits there, which I wasn't expecting. It's also a very print friendly paper at 98lb, and not crazy porous like other watercolor papers. Still, I needed something that could take the color without buckling and ruining the paper and this is it: 11"x14" Canson Mixed Media 98lb (160g) paper.

Gearing up for my 40 day "coughee" fast. Those that know me know what I'm talking about, and may no I used to do it almost every year, but have slacked off in the last few years. But alas, it's time to clear out the cobwebs; get my motor skills back up to snuff, as well as my equilibrium. Become the clear-headed, fast-talking leaping gnome ya'll no me to be. I've also decided to give up coffee, so we'll see how that goes. You might be thinking "Why the hell would you do that to yourself? You're not even religious." Just trying to be a master of my dominion, and to prove to myself that I indeed can quit any time.

I'll keep ya posted on how that goes. 😵