What’s Going on Out of the Box?

Before I talk about my bitchen new watercolor box that I’ve been meaning to post about for a while now, I’ll give you the goings on about what’s happened in the last week.

I’ll again have to cross-post much of this information on the Shrapnel Blog, but I spent some time trying to find a simple WordPress theme for that site. It works decently for what I need. For now. Until the book launch, It’s okay. I’ve been adding different elements to it, bits at a time, like an “about” page for my dad. I’m working on an “Interview” with him now. I’m strange, I know (because he’s passed away). I made a News page too.

I’ve started the script for the trailer. I’ve decided to make a short film — not more than 3 minutes. It will be more like 90 seconds — to promote the book. I’m not going to use animation because that would just take too long. I need to make it on my own, and in an easy, short amount of time, So I’ll see what I can conjure up with the pictures and footage I already have with narration and sound. When I’ll fit that in, I do not know, but I’ll have to.

I didn’t think it would take so long, but I built a bibliography for the back of my book. It took up three pages and a week’s time. (Still deciding on a glossary.) I did this while I was experimenting on what I was going to do with colorizing/watercoloring the illustrations. I found the Bristol did not hold the water media well at all. I decided I should redraw each little illustration again on watercolor paper and write some words from the book that pertain to the picture. Sounds like a pain in the ass, well it kind of is, but I’m using 140 lb paper instead of my normal 300 lb so that I can lay it over the lightbox and use the original drawing as a guide, as well as writing the words first so I don’t make fuck-ups in the letters.

I’m doing teeny paintings here. They are fitting onto a 5 x 7 inch area, so they are really small. All the hot press paper I wanted to use that was 140 lb was basically on a block, so I had to get rough (cold press), 9.5 x 13 sheets, and cut them. It was the easiest solution. I’m using Blick Studio Fabriano Paper.

The plan is to make 120 of these, frame them in 8 x 10 inch frames that are matted to 5 x 7 inches. I was just doing the math on that, and with about 12 inches between each piece, that’s roughly 225 feet of wall space. I’m gonna have to talk to my gallery about this and see what we can see. I’m really hoping to schedule a show around the time the book will launch. We’ll see.

Now, I’ve been meaning to talk about my nifty new Gerstner watercolor box. I “got” it back in July for my birthday from mjp. Only, this is how it came from Gerstner:

I got it as a kit that we could build together! A fun project. And fun we had.

We sort of leisurely worked on it in our spare time, here and there. It was very relaxing. Our dinning room was our designated space, but of course, we had to do some of it outside, like sanding and varnishing. Once we gave the rough edges a basic sanding, we glued the thing together.