I wasn't in the mood to work on my Nature Journal catch up but thought it was way past time for some more work in my Chicago Journal. The scene above is a view of some buildings on Belmont Ave. not to far from where my sister lives. The middle building (which is pink) is a Mexican restaurant that we occasionally have lunch in.
This isn't wonderful as I find buildings a challenge to draw, they are just so time consuming, and all those straight lines get old, well to me they do. Still I think if anyone knows the real building it would be recognizable. I originally was going to leave it as just a pen and ink work, but the pink/turquoise combination is so distinctive that I though color might be a good idea, so I added some colored pencil. The paper in the journal isn't heavy enough to take watercolor, so I am left with markers or colored pencil. I hate markers and don't own very many so colored pencil it became.
Stage 1, pencil drawing and some stipple.
Stage 2, more stipple work in upper area and some down through the center.
I don't usually do in-process photographs, but with stipple works it is almost necessary as they take so long to go from start to finish. So above are 2 in-process photographs of a new stipple piece I am working on. The reference is a photograph I made of a bloom spike on a Hosta. I am working on grey Stonehenge paper with a Prismacolor Premier .005 fine line marker.
The book is done. Not bad for a first effort at a hard case, though I made the mistake of making the back section too wide, I could have added 6 more signatures. Still I think it looks pretty good for a first attempt. I may be making more of these eventually.
Course I need to find better fabric to use as a cover. My cover is some linen I purchased when I thought I would try counted cross stitch. I quickly discovered that counted cross stitch was one needlework activity that didn't suit me at all. I never even finished that first project. Because the linen wasn't backed properly I ended up coating the outside of the book with some Acrylic Gloss Medium. It will waterproof the outside of the book and help protect the linen from wear. It does feel a bit strange to hand, but I will take the trade off.
I also need to find some more decorative end papers, I used some plain gray paper that I had on hand from when I was making some resume books.
Photograph for today is of some blooming pink roses. Love that one bud that is almost right in the middle of the photograph. Just slightly left of middle, which I find more visually interesting than putting something smack dab in the middle.
One of the forums I read had a mention of Georgia O'Keeffe today, she was known for putting the subject of her paintings in not only the center but in the middle of her paintings. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. The Boston Art Institute has one of her paintings that I think would have been much more successful if she hadn't been so persistent about that placement. Personally I am more inclined to follow Winslow Homer, in many of his works his subjects are carefully placed either just to the left or to the right of center.
Next time you have to crop a photograph compare how it looks with the subject in the center to how it looks with it just off center.
That is it for today, per usual comments are welcome.
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