I’ve been continuing today in sorting through old paintings, and doing some writing in a pretty new A5 binder I started last week. It’s faux camel suede, with nice KOKUYO loose leaf paper inside, the same setup I’m using for my languishing novel.
The blog needed its own space for notes and ideas and little chunks of prose. And of course I’m indexing it because I’m a freak for organization. Does anyone else write every other page in their binders upside down or is that just me? If you know you know.
Or maybe it really is just me, because so far it’s not really working out.
Come along now while I put some paint to paper, and have a few cups of tea in the furnace workshop. But first stare into that radioactive sky a while. Doesn’t that cloud look like Alaska?
Be right back, I’ve got to put the kettle on.
My relationship with the torture device that is the stool in the furnace workshop has progressed, in case you’re wondering. I’d like to amend my conclusion that the key is never to sit on it, because I can sit on it if one foot is planted by the heel to the circular wooden seat, and the opposite leg’s dangling. Some extensive stretching has been required over the past month or so to get comfortably into this position, and the work is ongoing.
This would, I’m sure, fall under the umbrella of what my spouse calls “big chilling” which I think refers to the strange and creative ways that characters in the movie The Big Chill sit in chairs, or maybe specifically the way Glenn Close’s character sits in chairs, or actually — maybe the way I sit in chairs? I’m suddenly realizing?
Also I have looked around at other stools and this one has two virtues which are that it is already here and it is free. I’m hoping to write a heartwarming blog post in a few months about How Accepting the Stool I Already Have Fixed My Back. Stay tuned for that one.
If it’s your first time here, which I bet it is because no one reads this blog yet, welcome. In my cup is Harney & Sons tippy yunnan, and on the bench is a painting I feel a little bit intimidated by, and hence have been putting off.
Watercolorists of the world, do you also swing wildly between ink then paint, and paint then ink, and ink no paint, and paint no ink? I’m very into ink this week, and forever trying to marry the two.
Most recently I have been trying to marry them in what I keep feeling compelled to describe as a “little adventure comic,” so. It’s in the early stages.
And that’s what we’ll be looking at today, just as soon as I’m done stalling, which I nearly am.
It was subzero this morning and the cat’s getting over a cold, so we’re staying in. I’ve been opening her favorite window for a few minutes here and there, so we can sit and smell the air.
The sun is shining out of a crisp blue sky, and the air is sharp and fresh, and it’s really quite cozy down here in the workshop, all of which the photos are perhaps failing to convey. But it’s a lovely day, is all I’m saying, bright and clear, and there are little bird tracks in the fresh snow on the stoop.
Now let’s get to work.
I’m doing swatches for the sky. I want to see if I can use buff titanium or white gouache or some combination thereof to inject some clouds in a wet, dark wash. Inadvisable? But I’m pretty happy with white gouache on top of dry watercolor, and white gouache mixed with indigo — a soft, smoky blue-grey.
The night skies are the hardest, aren’t they? But I think I’m circling it. Just like the blog. I’m circling it.
But I think it’s coming together, reader.
Starry skies ahead, and a little adventure comic.
Okay. See you next time.
adventures 
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