Preliminary

I spent most of today babysitting my printer as it churned out prints on 160 sheets of heavy weight paper for the calendar collaboration that Jacob and I have just finished.  As I sat there I spent the time when I wasn't babying the printer drawing what I could see from my post.  And so on the top left is a toppled ceramic head that's on the edge of the front garden, and next to the head a little sprig of a gazing that still thinks it's warm enough to bloom.  Then I moved over to the other side of the room and started drawing some of our indoor plants as preliminary sketches for a book I'm making on the same Charlottes-playing-night-games theme as the print I finished in September.

Originally I was planning to cut another woodcut, but since this is not going to be an edition, just two copies, I decided to do a painted/drawn book, something I haven't done in a while and really miss doing.  I need to practice drawing plants until I have them in my hand and can paint them more freely.  By late this afternoon I was seriously needing to go outside even though it was chilly and drizzly, and when I came back from a couple of miles slogging up a muddy path, I felt ready to start.  I tore off a small slice of the paper I want to use and that I had prepared by pouring fluid acrylic and water over this morning.  I really like the tiny scene that appeared.  And when I went out to get the mail, in it was a tiny accordion book  made by Angela Bart of New Orleans and sent to me by my sweet cousin Denise, and it is the perfect size for the teeny tiny drawings.  I decided to fill the accordion book with these little sketches and then see how big the finished book wants to be.  It may not get any bigger, and that's fine too.