Booking Along

Sunday, Hannah and I printed the linocut blocks for Outlander. Wanna see some pictures?

These are for the two pages in the book, and one is for the label that goes on top of the black-painted, recycled cigar box that the book and the other items come in. Remember the other items?

The bow drill kits:

The compasses:

The first aid kits:

And there are the prints…

We decided to spend Sundays (from now on) Internet-free. We did this a couple of years ago and it enriched our lives immensely. Then we moved, and I guess we forgot about it. Good thing we remembered. I highly recommend disconnecting at least one day a week for your mental health!

Anyway, I am booking along on this Artist’s book–dumb pun intended. I only have four more pages to finish at this point. All four are time-consuming, and I also have to color pencil in all the fold-out maps now, but everything is coming to a head. Soon, I’ll be trimming and binding it all in no time.

All five fold-out maps are now drawn–front and back. They all just need color penciling. Actually, only four do because one is already done. I had to order more colored pencils because each map is using three-quarters of a blue and black pencil to do all the lettering and the water. I was surprised. I have to put aside the pencil once it whittles away at three inches because I can’t get it into the electric sharpener. The manual sharpener is not my thing (it’s a mess) and it’s hard to work it at that length. It feels wasteful, but whatever. I’m not tossing them until they’re about two inches. I can use them for marking other things that are less precise.

Today I’m working on drawing the little hiker’s items in pencil on the backs of the linocut pages. I couldn’t use the lightbox for this to sketch in the skeletons because the block prints are so opaque on the other side of the paper. Now it’s a big pain in the ass to draw them all. I’m doing that old-style carbon technique where you scribble on the back of a print with a soft pencil to transfer the basic gist (skeleton), but I can already see I can only get maybe two of them before I’ll have to print another copy and do it again. That’s fine I guess. It takes as long as it takes. Rendering them will take just as long to do probably.

The other page across is the longest paragraph in the book. It’s handwritten–the main story that sums up the whole theme of the project, which is also on this post at the very end.

When that’s done, I’ll paint the two watercolors. See? Not too much more to do. I’m having Hannah spray-paint the boxes for me. She offered, so why not?

I can’t believe I’m typing a blog post because I’ve been having a huge keyboard issue with my computer and had to buy a new one that’s not coming until Friday. In the meantime, I’m temporarily using the most fucked up keyboard I think I’ve ever used in my entire life–and I used to type on a really old Royal typewriter when I was a kid, too. I had to use all my might to type on that thing, but at least the keys didn’t stick or not compress inconsistently like this one is doing. Arrrg! This is so frustrating!

I’ll try not to type much this week other than this article.

But I’m having a better day today, and yesterday…it was a bit rough the days before that. Even though I’ve been working hard, I’ve had a lot of depression and anxiety. I even had a bipolar episode–crashing after having been manic and working too many hours straight for a number of days. Not good. I have to be more mindful. I also have to watch my eating. I’ve been back on my diet, but I also wasn’t eating at all for those few days. That’s not the way to go about it.

Anyway, in the middle of all that, I missed seeing my bestfriend who was in town for a short window of time. She lives outside of Philadelphia and I never see her, so I totally blew that. She was staying in Long Beach and I could have driven out there and stayed overnight, but I was in no condition to drive. Maybe next time.

Back to it…

One thought on “Booking Along

  1. Kate August 23, 2021 / 11:03 am

    Wow!! Well done you! I think what you’re doing is fantastic! I think so much about you and feel very proud of you and what you achieve. Thanks for your creativity and your inspiration. Love you ever so much, Kate xxxx

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