M. Bunny

This morning I saw this little fellow contentedly munching the remains of our kale, which was sticking up above the snow. We didn’t pull the it out of the ground this fall because it always seemed to perk up after a freeze. I’m glad the bunny waited until winter. He’ll get his B-vitamins! Our dog Lydia likes to hunt for him in the yard after dark but he is far to quick for her!

Munching kale

Every other Friday I meet two sketching companions at nearby Como Park. As the weather has cooled, we’ve moved inside to the Conservatory. I recently captured some Koi gestures while gazing into the dark koi pond and hardly gazing at my paper. I enjoy the energy of gesture drawings  – with live fish it’s impossible to capture much else because of the constant movement — in this case the eyes and mouths really stood out! It might be helpful to remember this movement while re-designing my minnow stencil!

the hungry koi

I received John Marshall’s wonderful new DVD, Journeys in Katazome, in the mail last week. It’s the first in a series of DVDs teaching the katazome process, starting with stencil design, cutting and preparation. A richly illustrated interactive PDF document describes the process in detail from start to finish. The DVD also includes high-quality demonstration videos in which John demonstrates and talks about various steps. I’ve started to re-design my Minnow stencil after viewing the videos on stencil design. While I like my original minnow design, it is a challenging stencil to paste, and feels a bit unstable, perhaps because of the large open areas. I’ll try to create another more useful variation on the same theme as a 4-way repeat, sharing the process here from start to finish. I expect I’ll need to do 4-6 iterations before I’m satisfied with it.

In the first sketch below, I’ve played with some of the shapes, experimenting with scale and rotation. I can see now that 4 minnows do not excite me that much. In the next sketch I’ll try 3 and/or 5.

first sketch

Preoccupied with our need for rain (we were 10 inches below average rainfall by the end of May), I decided to draw my favorite sprinkler, the Rain King. I need/want to draw more for the sheer joy of it and because my textile process is so long from start to finish that I crave the more immediate gratification of drawing. It is such an interesting object that I know I will draw it again. Coincidentally, we’ve had several rainy days since June 4th, the day I sketched this.

Rain King, vintage sprinkler. Cast iron and steel, made in Chicago!