Prints, rats, and blooms
So, today’s weekly update blog.
I spent today taking a gelli printing workshop today up in Ladysmith.
I had picked up a couple Gelli plates last year after I took that monotype class at MISSA and intended to get to using them, but kept getting sidetracked. Then I spotted the Ladysmith workshop at almost the last minute and jumped on it.
So, here’s a bit of what I was up to today:
It was suggested towards the end of the day to use the prints for collaging into a book project, and I like that idea. I haven’t started on that yet, because I was thinking I’d do something along the lines of Mickey B.’s Ricky B.’s* ABCs… which requires me to write some filthy rhymes, lol… plus the prints need to fully dry so I can cartoon over top of them along with collage and embellishing/embroidering (no beads or the book won’t close, of course.)
* at the time of this writing he was still called Mickey B., but I changed his name to Ricky B. since then.
Well, that brings us to ol’ Mickey Ricky… so, in the last week or two, much as the whole “draw Bono with mouse ears, a tail, and an obsession with cheese” project is loads of fun, and ongoing, I’ve started to think of “Mickey B.” “Ricky B.” as his own mouse-man, visually inspired by early ’90s Bono, sure, but… well, let’s just say Mickey’s Ricky’s a rat and not just visually.
So, I’ve separated him out from the whole Bono-as-mouse sketchbook project. Let’s see a couple versions of our new mouse-man:
As such, Mickey’s Ricky’s started to evolve a bit more elongated rat face. And I did start messing with Procreate versions of him, too… and tried different brushes so he looks distinct from my other Procreate cartoon project, Noah’s Archipelago.
That said, I feel like Mickey Ricky is more of a hands-on (heh!) project, not a digital one. I have ideas of rendering him in lino cut prints, then scanning those and messing with it further in procreate. Or just working the lino cuts over top of gelli printed backgrounds, etc.
Mickey’s Ricky’s got a lot of rough edges, and that’s better/easier to do with analog methods.
Anyway, so there’s one chunk of that project’s evolution. The silly Bono-as-mouse sketchbook continues as well, because it’s fun, because it’s good practise, and because it’s a good troll for a couple friends who really can’t stand Irish Jesus, lol. Favorite of those from this week:
What else… still dealing with the fraud bullshit, spent half the week still getting over last week’s cold, still think daylight saving time is asinine like every year… but hey, it’s almost spring officially and stuff is finally starting to bloom, so let’s wrap up with some flower pics from my garden:
Lastly, not flowers, but let’s check in with the potted herb garden I made last August. The goddamn squirrels dug into these pots a lot in the fall burying their nuts and other mischief, and a couple of the rosemaries in the back didn’t fare too well, but overall pretty much everything survived and thrived on this side. The other side of the steps weren’t as strong but still a fairly good survival rate, though I will need to replace some thyme and oregano due to a combo of squirrel damage and drowning in the heavy rains… dunno why it screwed the one side and not so much the one 4 feet away.
