More Snow

Since it's snowing here in New Hampshire, I thought it would be a good time to post "Snowscape" (4.75" x 8.25", oil-based inks on Japanese Mulberry paper), a woodcut I did for a print exchange. The theme was typography. I had a giant wooden dollar-sign block that I got at a letterpress fair last summer (see the previous steam roller printing post) and used that as a jumping-off place for a design. I wanted to use the block just as an abstract design element, with no reference to money, the economy, etc. It looks quite plain, but I used 3 Shina plywood blocks, plus the $, and five colors to make the print. There's a version of it hanging in the "Prints of the Year" show at the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord NH until April 2, 2010.

Exciting Sighting

Today I was just sitting down to eat lunch and saw a movement outside, dark against the snow. A second look: it was a fisher (a.k.a. fisher cat), coming down from up near the garden! I grabbed the camera (handily on the table, as I'd just come back from a morning painting trip) and Steve opened the door. Out of the four photos, this is the only one that really shows the fisher. I saw one up north about 10 years ago and thought it was once-in-a-lifetime. Woo hoo!

Snowcamp photos

Here are some pics from Snowcamp, just to give you an idea of what it was like for us, painting in the beyond-freezing cold. There's one of Stape giving a demo, with Mt Lafayette resting in the crook of his arm. Another shows my setup, a Judson's box, with the mountain painting on it. There's a group of us watching Stape, so bundled we could hardly move, me in green fiddling with my camera. I took the aerial view of the other folks watching the demo from my third-floor window, the half-day I was laid low from eating some allergen or other. The last pic is of Renee Lammers, who took the photo with me in it. She has lots more on her blog at http://reneelammers.com/blog if you'd like to check it out.

Snowcamp

Well, I'm back. And one or more of my previous posts has (have) disappeared; I have no idea why. But, the exciting news is that I've just returned from a three-day outdoor painting workshop with Stapleton Kearns and eight other painters in Sugar Hill, New Hampshire. It was an adventure, to be sure! We stayed at the friendly Sunset Hill House, where the heat went off the first night and the water pipes froze. Why? Because the next morning, when we all went out to paint, it was 10 below zero! Fahrenheit. At least the sun was shining. No one died or got frostbite and everyone managed to paint until about 4:00 p.m.

The views were spectacular: Mounts Washington and Lafayette, with other presidents and Cannon also nearby. We could see the snow guns working on Cannon for the skiers from our back yard. I did three paintings over the long weekend, one of Lafayette (the second one above; 11 X 14, oil on panel), which may or may not be salvageable, another of the inn's "annex" building, where we almost had to move in the middle of the night (a decent start, I think; 12 x 16 oil on panel), plus a "wiper," that will never see the light of day, never mind be on this blog.

It was a great experience; I now feel able to paint in just about any weather; I met a bunch of really nice people and got a jolt of confidence.

An in-depth version of our experience can be seen on our instructor Stape's blog: http://www.stapletonkearns.blogspot.com/. Be sure to let him know if you think he looks good in the orange hat.