'self portrait at 11' ~ colored pencil, watercolors, goauche, black gesso, beeswax, and oil and soft pastels on tracing paper

i've been working on tracing paper again - this time with beeswax - and really loving it.  the possibilities are just about endless when you combine the two...

 what it looks like without a white background behind it...

'a brief moment at 45' ~  same ingredients as above

i love to scratch into the beeswax with an awl, put black paint over the scratched out places, then rub off the extra paint.    it's a lot of fun...  : )

and i've finally started a new 'daily book'...  when i left for virginia i thought i'd start a new stillman and birn 'gamma', but i hardly worked in it.   last week i decided that what i really wanted to work in was an old book, and once i made that decision it was full steam ahead.  the name of the book is 'gold dust', and there's a pic of it in the sidebar...

two summers ago i worked in an old book and used beeswax on a lot of pages...  to see how they'd held up i got the book out...   everything looked exactly as it did two years ago.  the paint on top of the beeswax has held up beautifully, and the PYM II fixative that i used hadn't flaked off or discolored.  

there's a post here about PYM II and beeswax if you want to know  more; and there are pics of pages with beeswax on them.

the other thing i did last week was (finally!) take the time to figure out how to use my canon selphy printer without having to hook it up to my computer.  it couldn't be easier!    i can print up to eight images on one 4" x 6" piece of paper, but four per sheet is just the right size.   i'm *really* happy to be printing and using pics in my daily book again!

i'd just put wax on the face when i took this pic...

gouache, oil pastels, pan pastel, watercolors and black gesso on beeswax in my daily book

this is what she looks like now, after outlining, getting rid of the hat, massive quantities of paynes grey gouache (her hair), and covering up those lovely flowers on her neck...

wild geranium

besides that i'm still going out

and seeing so much...

* * *

 “I never wish to be easily defined. I’d rather float over other people’s minds as something strictly fluid and non-perceivable; more like a transparent, paradoxically iridescent creature rather than an actual person.”

~ Franz Kafka,  from a diary entry dated 23 March 1914