New Fabulous Taylor Twin Art

Top two ink & crayon pieces by Cole Taylor (age 5), bottom pen & ink & watercolor portrait of his 95 year old great grandma Autrey by Wilson Taylor (age 5).

Gum Arabic Transfer Collage

I recently took a fun workshop with Heather Wilcoxon and learned some new techniques to further my interest in printmaking and collage.  Continuing on my themes of bugs and birds are three new items:

Top two: Collage on cradled wood panels 12" x 16"
1.  Bugs in a Bottle
2.  Crow's Nest
Bottom:  Collage on Rives BFK paper 11 1/2" x 15"
3.  Crow's Shadow

Amber's Birthday Flower Art

Top to Bottom:
Lucy's watercolor of Amber's birthday flowers (on poor paper)
Cole's watercolor abstract of the flowers (on poor paper)
Wilson's watercolor abstract of the flowers (on good paper)
Wilson and Grandma Lucy's silly pen & ink line art

Recent Crow Woodcut Prints

Above are three of eight recent prints (EV or Edition Verite - meaning I used the same 9x12 woodblock for all 8 prints but experimented with a different technique when printing each one). These were done in a recent woodblock cutting class at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley.  Top two prints are examples of Chine Colle, using different Japanese kozo papers.  Prints are 11" x 15." Prints 4/8, 7/8 and 8/8 are variations on the black ink theme (as in 3/8 above).   Print 5/8 is another version of Chine Colle, seen above in print 2/8, and print 6/8 was given to my very knowledgeable Kala teacher Claire Kessler-Bradner.  There is no intentional symbolism related to the 7 circles behind the Crow, although I could make something up if provoked.

Two Rose Woodcuts

My first home cut & printed woodcuts!  Mixed media Rose and Rose II were printed on the Lindstrom Machine Works etching press inherited from my father.  Lindstrom Machine Works presses were manufactured in San Francisco at 231 First St. but the company is long gone.  Woodcuts measure 4x6 inches.  Prints are made with Gamblin oil-based inks printed on Reves BFK paper torn approx. 7 1/2 x 11 1/4 inches.

Anatomy of an eBook Part II

Little Cloud drifts away from the Tall Mountains and meets a Blue Jay named Jack, in my Kindle Ebook story for kids called Little Cloud.   So where is Little Cloud going, and what are Little Cloud and Jack up to?  Again, we go to the top of Mount Walker, this time looking south at the panoramic views of Puget Sound and Green Hill, Turner Mountain and Buck Mountain.   On the hazy day in August, 2014, when I took the reference photos, it was difficult to make out much in the distance.  In referring to Wikipedia and the Free Dictionary some interesting facts emerge:  Puget Sound is an inlet of the Pacific Ocean and part of the Salish Sea.  In an unusual precedent, it was explored by Capt. George Vancouver who, rather than name the inlet after himself, named it for his aide Peter Puget.  The illustrations for Little Cloud and Jack surfing the breeze in the sky, had a more high tech birth, requiring a Photoshop filter from Alien Skin’s Eye Candy 7 software, called Motion Trail.  This plug-in was used to illustrate the meteorological phenomenon known as thermal lift, which is used by soaring birds (and Little Clouds) as an energy source.  Despite this energy aide, Jack got worn out playing in the sky with Little Cloud and expressed a wish to return to his home on Small Mountain.  More about this in Part III.

Anatomy of an eBook Part I

In my Kindle Kid's ebook Little Cloud, we are introduced to our main character when we see her floating up in the sky.  Where is she?  Turns out the reference for my artwork is based on a photo I shot at the top of Mount Walker, in Washington State, on a grueling hike taken in August, 2014.  Here’s a link to the Washington Trails Association’s webpage about Mount Walker:  http://www.wta.org/go-hiking/hikes/mount-walker.  The north summit view, from the top of Mount Walker, includes the third-highest peak in the Olympic Mountains range, Mount Constance (7,743’), and the other “Tall Mountains” are Warrior Peaks, Cloudy Peak, Buckhorn Mountain, Iron Mountain and Mount Townsend to the west and northwest. 

My reference photo and the art for e-book pages 6-8 are above.