There's all sorts of activity afoot here. My mother in law is having 25 for drinks and a buffet, so there is lots of thinking around where to park, moving of furniture et cetera. I am printing small things to go into 3.75" x 5.75" windows in these rich mats from Nielsen Bainbridge and measuring the other pre-cut mats to see which sizes are needed to scale the work accordingly. Next Saturday is the first Ithaca Art Trail Weekend, and my hope is to get the work ready and/or framed so we can hang the work next week/ next Friday and price. Last year I went a bit nuts offering all sorts of stuff...and giclees in tons of sizes, two types of holiday cards in boxes, boxed notecards, Memento Mori books, folded mantle art (dogs and death), Ithaca Trail Mix in a cute kraft paper box, collections of postcards for a buck... etc. It was a wealth, or even an explosion of what was available. This year, no explosion. I am offering what I am offering...with some (underline some) random giclees. The majority of the offering will be framed (which will take the per piece price up...but selling in a more distinct and frankly more finished way). If the Ithaca buyer winces at $75. for a matted and framed illustration and that same buyer hesitates at a $20 print in a sleeve...then that buyer is just not buying. I do not need to underprice myself to move prints...undervaluing the work,, but to offer up what I have and if I do not ring the cash register, I do not ring the cash register. It might have been too many choices combined with basically a cheap audience that uses the Art Trail opportunity to nose into people's houses and studios with no need to pay anything. What with the free cake we are encouraged to provide etc. why should you do anything but eat and meddle. So, with that thinking, why am I going greyer on this one? Plus, with the added insanity of having a party the first night of the second week...and truly, expecting 200 people, I need my planning and thinking to get through this one.
The illustration above was a floral study done for a client with their logo to be inserted into the picture. This was rejected in place of the sun and moon put up on Thursday. I was looking at this floral against what I drew last spring (08) and I have definitely come someplace with the random drawing and sketching I am doing with the HAS Garden of Eden. I am not patterning everything...and am letting the balance of black and white relax a bit which is nice. I am doing a bunch of pictures of Genesis 2 (Day two) with a series of books on japanese illustration at my elbow. The temptation is to mimic the wonderful Hiroshige Wave when working on water...but it is so singular and doesnt sit nicely with the hand I am working in...that it seems out of sorts. Clouds are another thing...and you know, in real life (outside of reflection) they often resemble each other.
I am listening to this great book, The 19th Wife, which weaves a fictional story of the 19th wife of Brigham Young (this expose that this wife wrote, blew the doors off of the image of early Mormons and polygamy--such that the Church represesses all the original writing etc>played against a tale of murder set within a Mormon sect/cult modelled on my favorite, Uncle Rulon and Warren Jeff's own FLDS Church in Bountiful, Utah. The book makes the time with the printer far more fun than imagined. I love having a subscription to Audible--and all the books that await listening to. Vincent Bugliosi's book on how George Bush is a criminal and needs to go to jail is next. I hope I can listen to this without throwing my iPhone out the window. Speaking of the iPhone, Wordpress has an iPhone application that I want to use on my phone...because it will allow me to blog (to a wordpress blog I will link to when I am not close to my computer). More on that...I am a bit fearful as the typing on the phone is slow, and cumbersome...so those entries will be short and garbled. But, maybe that is all you all are used to anyway.
Another exciting thing is that my big bottle (twice normal size) of the Heart of Darkness is almost a half done. Thanks to the plunger/converter with my fab Sailor pen, I am cranking through the ink (my notebooks will attest to this) and am not throwing away cartridges...so eco-illustrators unite~!
Gotta go. More on the table to do.