'charlotte' ~ watercolors and goauche on white arches drawing paper, 4" x 6"

i've been feeling mighty quiet... 

i'm still painting/drawing on arches cotton drawing paper (both white and cream) and dura-lar;  i enjoy the arches paper so much, and i'm slowly getting to know the dura-lar.  definitely best to use a kneaded eraser on it.

colored pencil and graphite on dura-lar

i like to draw/color pieces on dura-lar to lay over paintings on paper... 

watercolors, gouache and colored pencil on misc. papers

i've also been working on this canvas paper and i like it a lot!  the piece on the top right is on it.  the piece in the middle left is strathmore 500 series bristol (vellum surface) and i don't like it so much.  watercolors aren't brilliant on it, and it just feels sort of flat to me, even with colored pencils.   i still might try the plate surface, though...

and i've printed out photos of art that i love (by artists who are no longer alive - i think this is legally cool).  after my pogo printer quit working i bought a canon selphy cp900 printer; it prints truly gorgeous images but i've hardly used it.  one of the best things about it is that you can print up to eight different images on one 4" x 6" sheet of paper.  i printed two per sheet for most of these images.

so what am i doing with all of these pieces of paper?!  i'm putting them in a box that i made from a book.  this is what it looked like in the beginning. i love the modern library logo and didn't intend to cover it up,

until i saw this picture of frida.  i wanted something to keep everything in, and so far i'm tickled with this idea.   the 'box'  looks full, but if you press everything down it's only about half full.  i am already thinking about the next one, though. 

the book was published in 1944 and is what they call a 'flexi-cover'.  it's fabric over thin-ish cardboard (thin bookboard?), so it's very lightweight.  plus it's a modern library book.  i adore modern library books...

one thing that i like about painting on loose pieces of paper/dura-lar is that you can mix them up and create new combinations.  in the morning i had this dura-lar piece over another painting;  late in the day i put it over this one.    it's very smile making!  i'm still painting on both sides of the paper, just as i would in a book.

if you're wondering what happened to my 'daily book', well, it's sitting there...  still dearly loved but not being used for now. this is the first time since i started painting in 2006 that i've worked outside a book.   i'll just follow this trail and see where it leads...

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"The mouth is singularly the most important feature of the face for conveying the mood or feeling of the individual.  It is the number one sign of expression.  It is forthright and seldom subtle as the eyes may be.  The corners of the mouth alone speak worlds."

~ Jack Hamm, Drawing the Head and Figure