Back in the studio again: new stuff

I've been away from the studio for a while. I made a trip to the Spokane, WA. area to help out with a family matter. Other than that we've been really busy in the restoration studio lately. That's a good thing. There is also a documentary film maker who wants to do a film about our restoration business. We should start shooting next month. I'm really looking forward to that.
I did manage to make a few new things though. Small projects, mostly personal ones but I'll cover them here anyway.
I made a new mobile', my 35th in this series. This one is a standing model made of painted wood (see photo at left). The balanced elements are arranged in an ascending fashion as opposed to the usual descending arrangement. You can see all of my mobiles on my art web site: http://www.tesserak.net/html/mobiles.htm
My brother Rich has a show on public access TV in San Francisco, CA. and he came up last year and shot some footage of my mobile's and ended up putting it on his show. I'll add that video, or portions of it, on my Youtube channel soon.

"Potpourri" collage series, 2012

I finally finished the 18 piece collage series I've been working on, (off and on), for most of 2012. I'm not particularly pleased with the end result but I can live with it. Some pages are better than others. The "template" at the beginning of the series (image at left) is a photo of the template used to start each page of this series.  See the series on my web site at the following link:
http://www.tesserak.net/Potpor_ser_web/index.htm
Feedback is always welcome. Questions will be answered.

There are 18 pieces in this series, titled "Potpourri". I started with 8x10 in. cardboard. Each one painted with 2 to 4 colors of spray paint, using the template shown above (or its negative, a stencil). The template could be left, or right oriented, or flipped and rotated, and though it may be barely visible on some pages, it is there. That was the base upon which everything else is built. That is about the only unifying thread in this series. There is no theme, and no underlying message to this series. I leave it up to the viewer to make their own connections, and to find a meaning on their own. Though technically this is not pure collage, because it involves rubber stamping, transfers, drawing and a little painting, it is mostly collage. Technically I'd describe it more accurately as mixed media.This is not a medium I work in very much. It's a little more time consuming and tedious to create than a lot of the other things I do.

Smashed my finger

Last Monday I smashed the index finger on my left hand while pruning trees in my yard. A large branch I cut off fell and landed on my left hand, which was holding onto another branch to keep me from falling out of the tree. It's a good thing I had on heavy duty work gloves or I might not have any meat on that finger right now. I was almost afraid to take that glove off, it hurt so bad. I thought for sure it was broken. When I took the glove off, it looked like I had a large black olive stuck on the end of my finger (I'll spare you the picture). It was VERY painful. I packed ice around it for the rest of the day. It's a week later now and the bruising is starting to go away. The feeling has returned to the finger, and I can move it without pain. I still can't use it yet, but in another week it should be back to normal.
The problem now is: what do I do in the  meantime? I can only play slide guitar for now, but that gets old kind of fast. I play my guitar every day usually, so not being able to play is more than a bit distressing. I'm right handed, so I can still draw and paint. So, I've been working on that 18 pc. collage series I've been working on for the past year (on and off). I did more work on them in the past 4 days than I have in the past 6 months. They are almost done. I've been working on this series for too long. I'm kind of tired of looking at it. Working on a collage is like doing an ad lib in slow motion.

4 Small watercolor paintings

I was trying for six paintings but I only got four done. I think these each took between one and two hours to paint. As I said earlier, watercolor isn't my forte'. I've listed these in the order I painted them. I did the first two after dinner on Saturday and the other two Sunday evening. These are painted on 4x6 in. rough textured watercolor paper. These samples are about half the size of the originals. It's not easy to get a nice smooth painting on a rough piece of paper this small. It is a little fun to get in there, push some paint around and try to make something anyway.
I painted these from memory and made no pencil sketch on the paper ahead of painting. These were simple enough compositions that I didn't need a guide. I'll have to paint a lot more of these to get the hang of it again. Better planning would yield better paintings. I'll try doing some from photographs next time.
So, here's a quick list of what I painted:
The first one, "Mustard Fields" is a rather plain but typical Sonoma county view.
The second painting, "Garden" is an impressionist inspired experiment.
The third one is a quick rendition of a beach. Only three colors used here.
The last one, a view of "Yosemite Valley", is not quite correct, but I was working from memory, not a photo.

Painting a few watercolors.

I will be making a few small watercolor paintings this weekend. I've had a block of 4x6 in. watercolor paper sitting here for a long time so I might as well put it to use.
I haven't painted in watercolors in at least 20years. It's not my favorite medium. It's not at all like painting with oils or acrylics. It requires a whole different way of thinking about painting. I usually draw very little or not at all on a canvas before I start painting. With watercolors, you really want to know where your colors are going to go before you paint them.
When painting in watercolor, I like to do landscape, architecture and gardens. Those should be drawn in first. Sometimes I draw on the painting after the paint dries. I'm not planning that for these.
For these paintings, I'll be doing mostly landscapes, and I'll be working from memory. This is all really just practice for me; reintroducing myself to the medium. I'm going to try to do about six of these small paintings. I'll post photos of them when they're done.

Ellen's Armor: sword and scabbard

Here is Ellen's completed scabbard. The sword is big; (49 in. long). I made a wooden core for the scabbard and Ellen covered it with alligator embossed leather, hand cut and sewn. Fancy lacing down one side. Studded leather strips cover seams in the leather, and buckles for attaching the scabbard to a belt (or sash). This is a "display" sword, not a real one but you could really hurt somebody with it. It is real steel. Ellen will be using this prop with her knight outfit that I posted a photo of earlier. There is armor in the making for her horse as well. She'll use this outfit for parades and events. I'll get photos of her as wearing all this stuff as soon as I can get her to put it all on. It takes about a half an hour just to put all this stuff on.

Start of a new year

Now that the holidays are over I can get back to getting some work done here.
I worked  a little more on my 18 pc. collage series. It's one of those projects that take a long time to complete because I only work on it when I don't have anything else to do. That's because it's so tedious, for one thing. It takes a long time for each piece to even start to look like anything interesting. If I keep chipping away at it, it eventually gets done. It is now at the stage where it's beginning to look interesting.
Ellen completed the work on the scabbard for her medieval sword (part of a complete costume armor project). I'll get a photo of it up here soon. Now she's working on the leather armor for her horse and it's nearly finished. We're working on a shield as well.
In Dec. I recorded two test recordings of new blues tunes I wrote: "I Gotta Move On" and "Hard Not To Be Bad". Both are played in open G tuning. These recordings are just "sketches" for now, not good enough to post on line.
I want to make some more paintings but they are going to have to be small ones. I just don't  have the room at the moment to work on, or store, anything large. I'm thinking landscapes, or non representational things.
I really have to post more photos in these posts.