Sketches of Dublin, Ireland

This past fall we took a trip to Ireland with several friends.  We spent a few days touring in Dublin, the city we flew into and out of.  It was a very brief stay filled with trips to museums, a walk in the nearby park, a bit of shopping and of course enjoying the local pubs with friends.

The city is filled with brightly colored buildings of various architectural types, which immediately caught my eye.  The days were overcast and rained on and off, but that didn't keep us indoors.

Below are two small sketches I did using my Van Gogh watercolor Pocket Box and my extra small Strathmore spiral bound journal.

 

Leather quote books

As a special request, I am binding some small leather books that have pages sized perfectly for one special quote.

Quotes come from many sources; family, friends, a favorite line from a book, song or movie.  Some quotes can make you laugh, others can inspire.  A quote can remind you of the person who said it, the place you were when you first heard it, or the feelings you had at the time.  Collecting quotes, sayings or proverbs allows you to re-read them whenever you want.  The perfect place to save your favorite quotes is in a handmade book.  A place you can personalize the quotes with doodles, sketches and drawings.  A place that can grow to include a life's worth of quotes.

"If its worth writing, its worth writing in a handmade book"
  Hollis Fouts

The first one has a black leather wrap cover with a large wooden button closure.  There are 50 landscape oriented pages, divided into five signatures of 5 folios each.  French speckled 80 lb paper was used, and the first and last signature have tipped in maroon colored end papers.  Red Crawford 4 ply waxed linen thread was used to bind the book and attach the wooden button.  The leather wrap was cut in a semicircle, and a hand decorated wooden button was added for the closure.

The second one has a red suede leather wrap cover.  The ten signatures contain five folios, forming 100 portrait oriented pages.  Japanese inspired blue and gold wave pattern paper was used for the end papers on the first and last signatures.  To match the end papers, torquise Crawford 4 ply waxed linen thread was used to bind the book.  Two signature templates were required for the binding pattern.  The leather wrap was cut at an angle to match the diamond shaped raku button used for the closure.

Volunteer Sunflowers, part 3

The tale of the Sunflowers didn't end with my painting.  After the flowers were pollenated, the ray flowers shriveled and fell off and the flower heads drooped.  It would take several weeks for the seeds to finish maturing and be ready to harvest.  My plan was to harvest and dry the flower heads with the seeds intact, to later user to feed the birds.  Every few days I checked to see if they were ready to be harvested.

One day I found cracked sunflower seeds on the backs of the flower heads.  Birds had discovered the seeds and were beginning to eat them.  Over the next week I watched Gold Finches, Cardinals and Crows come to the garden and wrestle individual seeds from the flower heads.  The flowers that had fed the bees, and provided me with beautiful subjects to paint were now feeding the birds too.

Seeds were pulled from the edges first, then further towards the middle as they too matured.  The birds had to be quite acrobatic to remove the seeds, hanging over the edge of the flower, or even upside down.  Their struggles would make the flowers shake violently.