Night Sky

Back in December, I was on a camping trip in the Oregon woods. The fog had cleared for a short time, and I did some experimental sketching of the Douglas fir trees silhouetted against the night sky. Dilute white acrylic paint called out the faint glow of the sky in contrast to the shapes of the dark trees.

I'd been playing with the idea of pursuing the ideas in this sketch more, but it was just simmering on the back burner for quite a while. Then, a colleague of mine at work, who worked at the museum's planetarium, announced that she was moving out of town. Clearly, the starry sky would be an appropriate theme for her going away card, right?

Revisiting and adapting the shapes from the earlier sketches, with gold paint-pen on black paper. The "boldly" caption is, of course, a Star Trek joke--boldly going where no-one has gone before, right?

For the final version, I hand drew the stars with a white colored pencil on the blue paper, stippling away in a coffee shop one Saturday afternoon. I carved the design of words and tree into a linoleum block print, and mixed a "nearly black" ink out of blue, purple, and green. The joy of sunny and dry weather in Portland--the ink dries faster that it would have in winter!

I printed a few variants on these, and they'll be wandering through the postal system over the next few days. My planetarium friend enjoyed her hand-delivered copy too--hers was extra special, with a hint of glitter. Yay.

Postcards from an Equinox Campout

The vernal equinox is always a nice time to have a little adventure. We biked out to a local state park, rented a cabin to keep the rain off our heads, and had a mini-campout for the equinox. Much of the fun was making food on the tiny portable stove...even simple meals become amazingly tasty when cooked outdoors.

I've been playing with simple postcards lately, very loosely based on the Japanese folk art of etegami, where quick drawings of everyday things are accompanied by a simple written phrase. My captions are perhaps not as witty or philosophical as they could be in this set, but I still think they capture some of the fun of camping out and cooking in the pouring rain. (Click on images below to enlarge.)

I stumbled upon the drawing tools for this little sketching niche quite by accident, actually. Was at a coffee shop digging through a bag of pens and paints and brushes that I had packed will-nilly for some other project, and thought I'd try the big old brush pen that had somehow ended up in the mix. (It must have been something I picked up from my grandma's collection, because I didn't recognize it, nor even knew if the ink would be black, or blue, or gray...) Much to my delight, poking at it with a water-brush revealed that the black ink was water-soluble, dissolving into some very pretty shades of gray when you paint over a line with just plain-old water. Of course, that means that stray raindrops also create creative shading...but that's part of the joy of a spontaneous sketch, isn't it? 

Hooray for more paper mail, and more excuses to doodle everyday stuff. (Note to self: make sure that the camping gear earns that label of "everyday stuff," it was good to be spending time outdoors!)

Read more about etegami:
http://www.nihonsun.com/2009/06/26/japanese-folk-art-etegami/
http://www.dailyonigiri.com/2009/10/etegami-japanese-picture-letters/
http://www.mirochi.com/mirochi/Etegami.html
http://etegamibydosankodebbie.blogspot.com/