It's Spring

OK I now consider it officially spring. Above is a photograph I made today at Blue Hill's Reservation of Trout Lilies. They are one of the earliest spring wild flowers, and as you can see are now in bloom. Last year we had a late freeze and the blossoms were malformed so I didn't get any good photos. That said they are pia to photograph because they are only about 6 inches high and the blossom tends to droop a bit so they look at the ground. A bit tricky to photograph through a view finder. I have one more photo of these lovelies for you.

Monday was Patriots Day and the 114th running of the Boston Marathon, not that I run but it is notable that they have been running this race for over 100 years. I didn't realize that I didn't have class on Monday so got up per usual and puttered around working on some things then collected myself and headed out to school, only to find an empty parking lot - hmm well guess that made it pretty obvious there were no classes. So I thought I would head up to Blue Hill Reservation and check on how the Trout Lilies were doing. There were no open blooms on Monday, but it was apparent that it was only a matter of days before there would be flowers to photograph. I made mental plans to come back on Wed. then did some wandering around. Monday morning though a bit on the chilly side was a beautiful sunny day with just a few clouds, so I though I would take some landscape pictures. Well I ended up taking landscape pictures all the way up to the top of Blue Hill and into the observation tower. Even ended up with a picture of Boston to show for it. Visibility was for miles and about as good as it gets in the Boston Metro area. Enjoyed the outing very much though I am not sure I took any really good photos. I will spare you having to look at distance landscapes, photos of Boston, which to be honest from a distance looks like almost any large city.

Tuesday it was back to classes and my Intaglio class. Here I finally have something to show for all the work I have been doing, I finished re-working my tree plate and made 4 good prints. I also applied some aquatint to the Cat in a Bag plate, and applied hard ground to my final plate so I can do some drawing on it at home. I think the image for that plate will be a Jack in the Pulpit. I did a drawing which is OK, but it needs something so I am considering using an older drawing of the flower for a reference or looking up some more reference photos on the internet. Will probably do the latter.

So here is the final version of the tree after aqua-tinting the background top and adding a fair amount of engraved lines to soften the edge between the bottom plate and the aquatint. I scanned this so the shadows are the from the paper not being totally flat on the scanning bed. Paper for Intaglio has to be wet so it doesn't always dry totally flat. When the ink drys a bit more I can press it, but right now I need to let the ink dry. That's it for this post. I have to tint the prints that I did with the soft ground, I also added some engraved lines to that plate after adding some more hard ground etched lines. Will upload a photo of that when I get the tinting done and the print scanned, next post I am sure. In the meantime I am trying to get my cover design for my resume package worked on. I had something for class today, but it was pretty much rejected out of hand by everyone in the class. Oh well, I wasn't in love with it so don't mind going back to the drawing board with it. I have been spending more time with page layout, what images to use, what order to show them, what size to make this and what paper I am going to use to print it on. Did you know that you can no longer get really good paper in a legal size? No where, and I have even checked for web sources. If you want letter size there is plenty to choose from but not legal. Very frustrating but I think I have a solution, at least I hope I do. Will get back to you on how it works. In the meantime comments are always welcome.