Intricate Monsters

It has been, as they say, a while. For some time this Spring and Summer I was having hardware issues and got rather used to navigating the web via my iPhone, which did not lend itself to blogging. However thanks to my ever-thoughtful stepfather, I am now the owner of a shiny new Dell (okay, matte-black finish, some sort of odd perhaps non-slip texture which I am sure will somehow uh, come in handy?) At any rate I need to get back into the habit of blogging.

I never stopped making things, of course, because I can't do that for very long without feeling edgy and also like life is perhaps pointless. I am not sure creating art makes the world a better place, but it is the only real gift I have, such as it is, and I do feel compelled to use it. Also, it does bring me a feeling of peace I have not found anyplace else. Not every moment of course, there are certainly times I feel quite frustrated and end up ripping things up (Note I do not show you the things that don't turn out - there are some of those.) There are also plenty of times when I spill my watercolor water for the 3rd time in a day and get rather irritable about life in general. However, There are still many times when I am immersed in art when I feel most like myself. Watercolor is the closest thing I know to flying. This summer I worked on a number of pieces that involved watercolor with an intricate overlay of pen and ink. They were a bit more planned than some of my works, though with areas for less structure. I enjoyed doing them and I liked the end result, but I think I am going to go back now and do some less structured pieces, at least a few, because it's more relaxing and sometimes more surprising. I am going to share some of the pieces that came out of this ... These are mostly Daniel Smith watercolor on Arches cold press paper and the ink is mostly Sharpie. I have these fine point Sharpies

Please note I still have the same scanner but I am not sure this is the best scanner driver! Perhaps I will take some iPhone photos over the weekend to show a bit more detail. One thing about living in Seattle is you kind of have to plan for when there will be some light. maybe. enough. if you are lucky....