Plastic Acid

Picture Story: calla lilies & tree swallows

2012-02-18T23:12:00.000-08:00

Of all the pictures I have ever created, this one has always been my favorite. Shh, don't go telling my other pictures, they'll be all jealous and stuff.

With the exception of the birds — I drew the sketched the entire composition... and then followed the process of converting the sketch to a blue page, inking that, printing out a color fill and then coloring that with colored pencils, and well, a whole bunch of editing... you know, that same paragraph I type up virtually every time I explain how I translated a sketch into an illustration.

Yes, this was once just an outline on a white sheet of paper, before it was an entire production combining a digital scan of a painting, a digital scan of a colorized print-out of my calla lilies, and a digital scan of my drawings of tree swallows. The tree trunks and the leaves were done with photoshop filters - as this picture pre-dated me owning a digital camera (otherwise I surely would have photographed some tree bark).

Anyway, there are 2 things I remember most vividly about this picture.

One is that I re-edited the calla lilies about 3 times, because there was something that I just didn't have right about the outline around them - and actually ended up mostly painting in the outline in photoshop until I was happy with it.

And the other is that the tree swallows were the first set of birds that I simply drew out on bristol - absent of any actual composition, to scan and cut. Back in the olden days - when I created an illustration I drew the entire thing on one sheet of paper by hand... this was really the first time I drew the parts separately and put them together. These were literally the first bird graphics that I meticulously removed from a white background in photoshop.

It's a strange thing to remember - but it's what springs to mind the most when I look at this image - as it was a point in a learning curve.

Anyway, calla lilies & tree swallows has always been one of my favorite illustrations, albeit simply for the visual. It's intricate choreographed chaos.

oblivion

2012-02-12T00:54:00.000-08:00

I'll Follow You

I made this picture. I made it first by standing outside somewhere in the country presumably some morning, and then I enhanced it on my computer... because really, without some digital device - this image does not exist.

I think images tend to stand for themselves, so as I type this I cannot really see the purpose of explaining the image. I think it's self evident. I also think that people can read into or take away whatever they want from a picture.

I'm particularly fond of this one.

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I've been MIA from blog comments lately, I know. If it makes me a bad blogger, then so be it.
Life is busy sometimes.
I started a writing project 10-12 years ago, and I've been on it on and off for a while over the years. But recently is the most consistently I've stayed on it. I suppose in a way it's like going through an old box of mementos that was shoved away in a closet somewhere... although I remember most of it as clear as day.

So, if I haven't visited you in a while, it's probably because I'm sitting here at my desk staring at a word processing document and thinking about printer formatting for book pages... and grammar quirks, and possibly semi-colons — they're not just for winking emoticons.

Every year I think to myself that I should just go for it and work on this project. And slowly every year life creeps in and provides a distraction. I think, perhaps, this year will be different.

the anonymous sale

2012-02-03T23:48:00.000-08:00

8X8 inch photos are on sale at sarahknight.etsy.com
browse here

"into spring"

Every now and then, I suppose in the hopes of selling something or perhaps amusing myself, I put things in my etsy shop on sale. And I make an announcement on a couple of etsy teams and on twitter... and I rarely, if ever, actually sell anything that is on sale. It's like an exercise in futility.

I think, sometimes, that blogging is like an exercise in futility as well. And that in a way we're all anonymous on the internet, and on some levels we'd like to connect with other people (let's keep it platonic) and then there are all the things we consider to be personal... keeping that separation between the two takes some kind of discipline. Disregarding it is often more fun, at least for the moment in which it happens.

The future is that nebulous place where we'll remember to clean the grout or better organize the office or regret things.

So, I make things, and I have a shop online, and I'm having a sale. The sale ends 2-14-2012, or whenever I get around to changing the prices back. Evidently Valentine's Day is on a Tuesday this year. Yes, I just walked over and changed the calendar to February. Things move slowly here like that sometimes. And yet time marches on regardless of my calendar.

It's still cold here, even though it is a mild winter. The days are shorter. And since I work midnights it's dark out when I leave for work and it's dark still when I'm driving home. Winter is always kind of a dark time. Truthfully, it's a lot of time indoors with artificial light, so, in a way it seems like an unreal period.

I like my television though. So I've really enjoyed Grimm, Once Upon a Time, Supernatural, the Finder, Californication, and Archer. Yes, I'm 32, and that's my demographic. Plus, I think I have a slight crush on David Giuntoli. Yeah, he's dreamy. Don't worry, Jared Padalecki and Geddy Lee — I still have crushes on you too.
That's probably the over-sharing part that I'll consider regretting later... but won't. I'm a lazy crush, it's not like I write letters or visit fansites. Yeah, I watch the tv shows and I buy the albums, that's it.
So, anyway, if you enjoy passive entertainment - then check out those shows.

A few days ago I also got out my copy of "Atom Heart Mother" by Pink Floyd. In case you were unaware, Pink Floyd is the greatest band on earth. Yes, that's right: Pink Floyd is the greatest band on earth. Damn, they were awesome. I don't think I've listened to that record in a couple years. It's refreshing to just press play and be blown away by artistry.

Anyway, things may be a little lax here from time to time, as this is my blog about me on the internet. And as it turns out, my life is basically working a full time job, driving to and from work, the occasional spurt of cleaning around the house, taking pictures when the weather is nice, painting, drawing, illustrating, watching television and the occasional movie, buying groceries, doing laundry, feeding the fish, and trying to get to bed on time.
Oh, and I write too; and I don't exactly mean this blog. I mean fiction.

I started a project about 10 years ago. And now is apparently the time when I feel compelled to work on it. It's exciting to embark on a new endeavor, even if it's an old endeavor that you've been shuffling around in piles on the floor or desk for years.

So be well, and keep yourself entertained.

nature in my heart

2012-01-27T11:50:00.000-08:00

It's been a mild winter so far. I mean, technically, winter started on 21 December 2011. So, it's only been winter for a little over a month... here in Michigan that usually means we're 2/5ths of the way done. Maybe by May we'll have had the last snow. Maybe. I make no promises.

It's been mild so far, but we still have bitterly cold days - like last Friday it was about 6˚F. Brrrr.
So, I spend most of the winter inside trying to avoid frozen fingers, chapped skin, and shivering. And it's also project time.

Sometimes things just happen. Because when I plan things, the statistical possibilities of the details have this habit of getting in the way... and then I have another thing in the pile of unfinished projects. It's a never-ending cycle.

Well, sometimes I just sit down in front of the computer and go. No over-thinking it, no hemming and hawing... no what ifs.

nature in my heart
Valentines:

The project came together in the span of 3 hours, technically... I had been working on printing photo cards, and in the last few weeks I had done collage Valentines. And well, this project was just the natural progression.

The actual heart - I folded a piece of paper in half and cut it out. It was for yet another incomplete project involving tea bag filters (I drink a lot of tea, and the pattern left on the filter paper of the bags intrigues me). I haven't gotten that project done, but I do have my paper heart. Well, to use the heart for my collage Valentines I scanned it and turned it into a template - so, you know, it's just there in a folder on my computer.

Now, I like weird stuff and arty stuff, and I suppose I like indie stuff. I was always into science in high school. Pictures of cells and microscope enlargements were always just so interesting to look at... so, when I take pictures - I take pictures of all sorts of things - from flowers to the sky to tree bark to rusty things to fallen leaves.

So, I have all these pictures of all these strange things. And I had my heart template, and I thought "why the hell not?" Obviously I'm biased, but I think the finished project looks pretty cool, even if I know some people will think some of them are a bit ookie. I know they're a desired taste kind of thing.

You can check them out here ; )

I've been on a bit of a project spree lately, partly from being stuck inside, and I suppose residually because it's January. You know, the month of New Year's Resolutions. I'm not so much a resolution person myself... but I suppose I can pretend that I resolved to impulsively execute projects, at least for a little while. Then I can stave off the thought of "what if?"

ubiquity and tidings of Valentines

2012-01-21T03:50:00.000-08:00

This song has no title, just words and a tune... well, okay, actually, it's an Elton John song from "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road." My Mom had that record. It was a double LP, those were a big deal back in the day. "This Song Has No Tittle" is one of my favorites from that album along with "Grey Seal" and "The Ballad of Danny Bailey." Anyway, I like that song and when I thought about presenting another blog entry - it popped into my head.

I'm not a religious person, and I've never taken much stock in the adage that everything happens for a reason. I think there is the explicable and the inexplicable, and someday what was once inexplicable will one day be explained. Time marches on, time stands still... Yeah, I'm one of those people who likes Warren Zevon. We can't all be the same, you know.

Anyway, I tend to come from the camp of thinking that often (but not always) things are relative, and discordant threads can be connected. So, let's give it a whirl, shall we?

I just spent 20 minutes re-working my banner for my etsy shop. If I was a different person, then I might plan to do this stuff and have everything coordinated and whatnot. But that's not me. I looked at the stuff I was working on, I looked at the way stuff was organized in my shop... and I thought it's time for a new banner... since I think I had the current one for like 3 whole weeks. I hear that's like centuries in internet time.

I like internal rhyme, alliteration, assonance, consonance - that kind of stuff. So, after I'd been on etsy for what felt like a century I looked at my one shop and thought "well, this thing needs a name, I guess." I mean, if you go on the etsy forums — a whole gaggle of people will tell you that your shop name is really important or some such thing... but they'll tell you a lot of things.

My shop is actually sarahknight, but I can slap whatever text I want (within the bounds of reason) on the banner. So, I was bored for 10 minutes or whatever, and I thought up "technicolor emporium." It's rhymey & Latinate-ish, the latter part redundantly indicating it's former...

I seem to have dropped the name. It was, after all, just some thing in my banner; some thing that rhymed. But it was there for about a year, and well, the earth didn't stop rotating around the sun, so, well, it is what it is.

I had this idea that I would do the basic design and then just rotate a segment of a painting or a photo in or out for the background. That was the simplest design... and that lasted for about a year. At least it did until I re-formatted the design early this morning. It's the same difference, just without the idea of a name.

I am Sarah Knight, and the items in the shop are what I make. In real life, as opposed to the internet where this isn't surveillance footage, I make a lot of things. But in addition to sleeping, eating, showering, and leaving the house to go to work or the post office or to buy necessities — I make a lot of stuff. I draw, I paint, I take photographs, I make jewelry, I play with sculpey or clay on occasion... and for whatever reason I have a lot of glitter. I did some cleaning recently, and it's always funny to find stuff that you stashed away in some bag or box somewhere... and virtually every time, for whatever reason, there was a tube of glitter. You'd think I'd have something with glitter in the shop... but I don't.

So, I'm back to having an etsy shop with no title. It's just me — sarahknight. Not that anything has changed, really, because I have the same items. I just have a new banner. As I type this it's the second one from the bottom in that graphic. The previous one was the picture of sprinkles. It's a fun picture, but I never formatted it for the shop, and well... I dunno, it's getting on Valentine's Day, so I guess I should act more Valentines-ish.

I like chocolate and chocolates, I think you might have to be suffering from a medical disorder to not like chocolate or candy or sweet things... that's just not normal. But, I'm not a big Valentine's person. So, every year it rolls around, and I'm like, "oh, yeah, that."

This year I decided to make some Valentine's for people like myself slightly less committed to the conventions of Valentine's Day. I wanted to do something with collage, but I got halfway through that project and just kind of stalled into "meh" territory. It sits in a pile next to the paper cutter. Instead, I was cleaning and I have all these old books hanging around, and well, on etsy everyone prints stuff on old book pages. So, I decided to engage my inner hipster and I too would print stuff on old book pages and make Valentines...

As it turns out - my old book was a psychology text book, and the first page I ripped out - almost at random, since my criteria for a page was something with no pictures and mostly text - was about drugs and the brain. It felt ironically humorous, since I was printing the shape of a heart filled with a selection of one of my photos. Hallucinogen Hydrangea was actually the first one I printed. It seemed adroit. It still makes me chuckle. And well, I am that kind of person, I guess. We couldn't all be Martha Stewart or someone's wonderful mother.
People less committed to 19th century poets and Victorian era decor need Valentines too...

So, while watching "The Finder" I glued my hearts to some poster-board that I cut to size and scored and folded, and then added a coat of varnish... and well, they're done. At least I can cross that off the "things I never got around to doing" list.

So, what does that have to do with my banner? Well, that red-winged blackbird photo is on one of my Valentines, since in order to make them I took a little trip down memory lane and sifted through my photos... the rest of it? Maybe not so much.

I changed up the font. I like Century Gothic. I like Coke, I like the color Violet. Pink Floyd is my favorite band, and I wear a lot of black concert t-shirts. Some things are just ubiquitous. But every once in a while you gotta change something up, or everything just turns into background noise.

So, I nixed Technicolor Emporium and picked a new font. I wanted something in a handwriting style. My go-to font is usually Bickley - because it's just a pretty font. But it wasn't fitting the mood... so I picked something different. Font geeks probably know what that's called. Basically, it's fancy, but it's not too pretty or too uniform. Looks a little less like script and a little more like handwriting - the fancy kind.

I'm totally guilty of being a casual devotee of fancy penmanship. For whatever reason I found making letters in certain shapes or styles to be entertaining way back when we were doing primers in elementary school. I'm quite fond of my own handwriting... you can see me being neat and uniform with my penmanship on my name on my business cards:

And you can see my unyielding fondness for Century Gothic. I like Century Gothic mostly for the circle shape of the "o" and the "e" but also for the "a." You see, my name is Sarah, and no one writes an "a" with that goofy little glyph thing on it (except maybe Lisa Bellamy in fifth grade). It's a relic, is really what I'm saying, and I'm not hipster enough to think it's cool.
Anyway, sometimes people being snarky confuse Century Gothic with Helvetica... if you're having one of those moments — look at the "a" and you'll know which it is.

You probably know me as this face... well, also in my shiny new banner - yeah, those are my eyes. Yes, I do have green eyes. No, I'm not Irish, or descended from Irish people. I've eaten too much goulash to hold onto any such inclinations. Mom had green eyes, and so did Grandma Duda (nee Hajos)... of course, it also has something to do with the bey2 gene and the gey gene... Dad had brown eyes, and Grandma Knight has blue eyes. Yes, go make a punnet square now ; )

Anyway, the photo is one of the product shots I took for the lizard barrettes. Yeah, I'm a weird rock'n'roll kind of girl like that.
In the event that you ever wondered...

That's me.

Mind you, it's a blurry shot, and since I'm trying to smile-ish for the photo I have sort of a dumb look on my face. I do not have glamorous teeth; thanks, Mom. So, yeah, I don't go for the toothy grin or the idea of spending $30,000.00 on dental work. And yes, I am wearing a Pink Floyd t-shirt, and my favorite violet colored shirt with the little red flowers on it from the Gap which I bought at a thrift store like more than 10 years ago. Slackers represent.

Anyway, I spent the last couple of hours sifting through photos... it might not have been the most productive night, since other than a new banner and a new potential banner I didn't make anything per se. But well, it's January, and yesterday we had the coldest day so far this winter. Yes, it was a balmy 9˚F here in Michigan. Obviously that's why I scheduled my appointment to get the oil change yesterday. Brrrrrr.

Anyway, I look forward to April or May when it's warm enough to leave the house, because I'll probably go back to the marsh where I took that photo of the red-winged blackbird...

Picture Story: winter winds

2012-01-14T10:55:00.000-08:00

So, in the first week of December I had 2 out of 12 calendar graphics done... and sometimes that means that I flip through the old sketchbooks and look for things that I drew that I never quite got around to finishing. I needed a picture for January, stat.

I think I had some idea about a girl and a snowman sledding. But I was out of time to sketch new ideas...

The snowman with the kite was what I found. There's a note at the bottom that says "for January 2010." What that actually means is that I sketched this in 2009, and was thinking it could be one of the graphics for the 2010 calendar.

I scanned the sketch, converted it to a blue page and printed that. I inked the snowman and the kite, but nixed the birds (which were supposed to be bluejays).

Now, the snowman is wearing a scarf and a hat, so I needed something to fill those in with... this scarf appears in a lot of my winter pictures, like this one.

sapphire sunshine alchemy

For the sky - I wanted something more than just a photo of clouds. So, I decided to combine a scan of one of my paintings with a photo of the sky. I picked "sapphire sunshine alchemy." I played with the color settings and changed out the magenta and yellow - and made the layer more saturated with blue... and then used some layer styles to combine it with a photo of clouds.

"winter winds"
@sarahkdesigns

And this is what the finished picture looks like, of course after I filled in the snowman, the snow, and the kite. And that became the graphic for January 2012... so it only took me 2 years to get around to executing it, ha.

Technically, my illustrations may be digital, but visually, they are an accumulation of physical things: drawings, photos, paintings, a scarf... and then there are all those snowflakes in the background that I designed individually. There's a point at which making the picture seems mechanical: draw it, scan the drawing, convert that to a blue page, print it, ink it, scan that, block the scan, and then start filling it with bits and pieces of digital files - like photos or scans... but all that stuff comes from somewhere. I actually stood out in my backyard photographing the sky on some summer day. And I actually went out and took photos of tree bark - which were what was used on the arms of the snowman.

Anyway, it snowed here in Michigan for the first time in 2012 just yesterday. It's pretty, but I would rather not have to drive in it. I guess I like my snow better when it's on paper. At least then I don't have to scrape it off my car.
: )

Picture Story: fox trot forest

2012-01-07T22:12:00.000-08:00

Every year for Christmas I make a calendar. It's the gift that I give to all my relatives. Last year (and by last year I mean 2010) — I was more organized about getting it done for whatever reason... this year? Not so much. It's funny, because I've made one every year for at least the last 6 years. So, you'd think in the first week of December I wouldn't be looking at my sketchbook and computer and thinking "oh, shit."

Yeah, I had one graphic done: fall fantasia
I finished it in September... and actually, every year I have the designated sketchbook that all the general ideas go into. And I drew my little chart somewhere in the back pages:

And things get sketched in, and things get erased, and new things get sketched in... and sometimes this thing isn't that accurate by the time the calendar has actually been produced. Because a lot of it was mocked up in August.

I actually drew the background of this picture a long time ago. And I think when I did I had a different idea of how it was going to look and how I was going to execute the illustration. I think the sky was supposed to be pink, and that I was going to fill in the trees with birch bark. There was probably supposed to be leaf litter on the ground - and I was going to print it out and do an impressionist style of painting of leaves - probably in red or red-orange tones... the entire picture would have a poppy & warm cast.

Instead, I sketched in a fox and a running figure in a cape. I'm sure I was thinking "little red riding hood." But as you may know, it was a wolf, not a fox... I was also thinking etsy cliches. So, yeah, it's a fox, not a wolf. And, yes, the hooded figure has conveniently run almost off the picture plane thus negating the need to draw hands or a face...
Anyway, I scanned the sketch, converted the graphic to a blue page, printed it, and inked it. People that use pens with nibs and ink wells may shriek in horror. Yup, mechanical pens. They make consistent lines. I've also never 'spilled' one all over anything, heh-heh.

In the course of a year, I take a lot of inane photos... at least when I die and someone finally looks through all these things, well, the excitement factor just isn't going to be there. Yes, uh, it's another picture of tree bark. Yes. There's a method to the madness though. I took those mundane, questionable, and inane photos with the intention of using them in bits and pieces somewhere in some illustration... not print them off, frame them, and hang them on a wall.
So, I filled in my trees with birch bark. And I hemmed and hawed and finally picked just the right photo of leaf litter and got it situated... and then hemmed and hawed some more until I had the sky picture that I wanted. And then there was some layering and some big blurry fills, and maybe a color adjustment or ten, and some layers were merged... And yes, my birch forest finally had a ground and a sky. And then I filled in the fox and the hooded figure with some color and printed that out...

Then I take my prismacolor pencils, sort through them until I have the colors I need or think that I need - and I color over the print out.
Of course, once that's done (5 December 2011) then I scan in my colored print out and make any necessary adjustments...

fox trot forest

Of course, at the time there were still 10 more illustrations to finish in 17-20 days depending on when my family was actually planning on doing Christmas. Ha ha ha...

It's amusing to reflect though, and watch everything come together when deadlines are fast approaching. Suddenly decisions are easier to make. Things don't get to just drag on or "I'll do it later." As it turns out - later is now.

I suppose this is why some people buy presents or give people money or gift cards at Christmas. But that's just not who I am. I'm not a religious person, and my family isn't particularly religious either. Christmas is a time when we get together and actually spend time with each other. And yes, it's about gifts and food...

I'm not religious, but I also don't spend X amount of dollars per person or budget for Christmas gifts or whatever. There's a fine line between being non-religious and profanely materialistic. I'm also the weird one in the family, so in addition to the calendar everyone gets an assortment of candy, and a lot of people got socks this year. Sometimes the dumbest gifts come in the handiest - like when it's been a while since the socks and underwear have been washed, and you just need one more pair. And really, who hates candy? Well, besides my overly picky sister? Everyone can blame her for all the chocolate and the mint. I was standing there in the store with a bag of truffles that were flavored like pumpkin (or something else really questionable) but I put them back... because even I couldn't pull the full on Grandma Duda and buy chocolates with pumpkin filling. She was an adventurous lady ; )

So, I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday - whatever you do with it... now I just have 10 more pictures to write about.

Happy Holidays!

2011-12-25T11:51:00.001-08:00

Everyone out there in blogger land,
Have a Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year!
I hope you enjoyed the holiday season and got or did whatever you wanted : )

Yes, I know, my last entry was in October... sometimes life gets in the way. But now that I've worked on (what feels like) a cajillion projects — now I have some time to relax and actually share those. So, regular posting should resume in the new year.

Every year I make a calendar for all my relatives for Christmas... this year I was a little behind on the graphics, which are traditionally my illustrations. If I've really run out of time then occasionally I default to using photos... but generally I draw everything. So, on the first of December when I had 1 illustration done, well, it was crunch time. And in part that is where my time has been... I would come home from work and I'd either be packing etsy orders or illustrating.

I'd like to thank all my etsy customers from both sarahkdesigns & sarahknight : )
And a special thank you to akacinders : )
I hope you all enjoyed your stuff & had wonderful holidays!

Otherwise there was a tirade of cleaning and organizing, even though all my relatives know that the house is generally in a state chaos.

Oh, and, of course, there was the traditional marathon of Christmas cookies. In the event that you've never ventured to this blog in previous years, well, every year I make Christmas cookies. They're actually sour cream cookies, and the recipe yields like 8-10 dozen (depending on the amount of flour and the size of the cookie cutters). This year there were 120 cookies frosted in 19 different colors of frosting. It took 4.5 hours to produce this batch... and, of course, there were photos.

The dough.

Mixing in the 5+ cups of flour is always the hard part. Well, that and trying to remember whether it's baking soda or baking powder... oh, crap it's baking soda. Did I buy baking soda in the weeks before Christmas? No. Was there a moment of panic at 1am when I was set to make these cookies? Yes. Fortunately, the baking soda was right there in the spice cupboard next to the allspice and the Hungarian paprika...

Bake for 5-7 minutes, 375˚F

cleaned up for next year

Time to frost the cookies...
frosting √
food coloring √
sprinkles √
happy-go-lucky knife (aka butter knife) √

there is a system

They're finally frosted! Now they just have to sit on the table for 4 hours for the frosting to dry so that when I put them in the storage container (cake holder turned upside down) they don't all clump together into one giant messy cookie.

(click on graphic to enlarge)

Yes, 19 different colors. 1 box of standard 4-color food coloring, 1 box of neon color food coloring, and you get a good color of violet by just buying violet colored food colorant from the cake decorating section of any store. In the event that we've never covered this before - violet is my favorite color and YES it is that important.

So, again, I hope you're having a wonderful holiday season! And next time around I'll start showing off all the new pictures I've made in the last 25 days.
(or you can peter around here for a sneak peak)

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T00:53:00.001-07:00

Happy Halloween!
None of these are my pumpkins, but collectively they are the creative works of folks in Tecumseh, Saline, and Manchester (which are all cities in Michigan).

A couple years ago I went out and bought some fake pumpkins. One of my pumpkins is carved as the face of Jerry Garcia. My other pumpkin is Frank Zappa. So, every year I just have to find them and make sure that the fake candles that one puts in fake pumpkins still work.

Yes, I know, I'm lazy or whatever... but I carved a lot of real Jerrys and Franks before I finally threw in the towel and bought the fake ones.

Anyway, apparently a large pumpkin eating a small pumpkin is the new new thing : )
I've seen several of them when I went out wandering around with my camera.

So, if you haven't carved your pumpkin yet, well, get to it. The best thing for hollowing out a real pumpkin is to use is a metal canning lid - not the screw on part, but the flat metal circle. It's sharper than a spoon. If you've never canned or saved a canning lid, then the lid off any tin can is just as good, although probably a little sharper. The thinner you make the side you're going to carve - the easier it's going to be to carve... although don't make it too thin.

Now, for those of you not content with the standard children's pumpkin knife - because in all likelihood - you are well beyond any age that would qualify you as a child - the best way to slice complicated lines and shapes into your pumpkin (and this is only for the adults) is to use a fillet knife. (At least I think it's called a fillet knife... hopefully with the number of things involving knife blades that I just typed into google I didn't just land myself on an FBI watchlist... ) Anyway, it has a thin blade and it's good for carving small, awkward, or intricate shapes into your pumpkin. I used one to carve my fake pumpkins.

Safe carving! And don't stab yourself!

Oh, and Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween

2011-10-30T09:21:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is Halloween. So, this is one of my haphazard Halloween posts... an ode, I suppose, to Halloween candy.

Now, were you under the age of 16 and over the age of 3 and you were to stop by my house tomorrow - this is the standard fare. Sorry, but that bag of mounds and those "fun size" heath bars, yeah, I bought those for me. Because, you know, I'm 32 and I bet if I knocked on my neighbor's door they'd kind of be like "uh, yeah, just go buy some candy." So, yeah, I did.

Of course, I've already tested the tootsie rolls, the smarties, the nerds, and the dots.

So, have a safe, fun, and sweet Halloween!
And then go brush your teeth.

Hopefully no one puts pennies or religious pamphlets in your plastic pumpkin ; )

Picture Story: pumpkin harvest

2011-10-23T00:20:00.000-07:00

"pumpkin harvest"
by Sarah Knight

I used to work in a particular location. It was 33 miles from home, and driving there meant passing through several farm fields. One of those farms was a pumpkin farm. So, every fall, there would be a field of pumpkins. I think one time when I was a teenager my mother tried to grow pumpkins which was probably when I first learned that they kind of form on a long vine, as opposed to say the way that strawberries or tomatoes grow off a stalk. I don't think we actually got a pumpkin out of the experience, but well, that's why there are farms. Sometimes just leave it to the professionals.

By the time the pumpkins have matured - the leaves are pretty much dead and crispy. Which one can see, even if they are driving by at 55mph. I say this in the event that anyone wonders whether or not this is what a pumpkin patch really looks like because that's why it looks that way in my picture.

I drew the picture as a graphic for my yearly family Christmas gift calendar. Obviously this was the Halloween picture. I saw some picture of a scarecrow somewhere and thought it'd be cool to draw a scarecrow... and typing that I kind of laugh. I've been on etsy too long where apparently everyone has lost their frigging mind and mistakes the notion of inspiration for the dreaded copying. You know, because if I was going to draw a Halloween picture, clearly whoever listed one on etsy did it first, not that Halloween has been celebrated since (apparently, thanks Wikipedia) the Romans.

Author's note: I've decided to purge myself of all notions that I should hold back on the sarcasm.
If you've been on etsy long enough and ever visited the forums, you may be familiar with the notion that every fifteen minutes someone discovers that someone is "copying me!!!!!!" As if no arts or crafts had ever existed before 2005 when etsy went live on the internet, and obviously, whoever listed whatever it is on there was doing it first, even if it was like shrinky dinks or something. You know, nevermind that if you've ever taken an art history class they start you off with those cave paintings in France from before people were officially noting time in terms of days and months... no, time began in 2005 when etsy launched. There there, drink your Kool-Aid.

Author's note: I actually like Kool-Aid, Soarin' Strawberry Lemonade is really good ; )

Anyway, so I think this illustration was done in 2009 for my 2010 calendar. Yes, the October graphic for Halloween. So, it's a scarecrow in a pumpkin patch - because pumpkins are easier to draw that corn fields. They just are.

Amusingly, from a technical standpoint, this was a difficult illustration to execute because it was one of my early experiments in coloring over print outs like for almost the whole graphic (as opposed to doing just like one bird that takes up like 2 square inches on a page). Let's just say that there was a lot of selecting and blocking and layer fills and styles that happened in photoshop which is technical stuff that isn't that interesting.

So, the ghost clouds - at least I think of them as ghost clouds - are something that have been in my Halloween pictures for several years. Sitting here right now at the computer I don't exactly remember when I got the idea... just that I used to draw a lot of pictures with weird clouds when I hit my big prismacolor illustration phase when I was about 16. I liked making magenta colored clouds with holes in them... all I know is that from 2006 on - most of the Halloween pictures have ghost clouds.

And, of course, the sky is violet. Violet is a Halloween theme color, and well, it's my favorite color. I was reading some interview blurb in People or Time or Us or one of those magazines where they ask like 20 questions of some celebrity and of course, they answer. The one I'm thinking of was Jewel and she was asked what her favorite color was, and she said she didn't have one... and I found that amusing. Violet is my favorite color, but I like all colors and quite frankly have never had a limited color palette in anything.

So, yes, the sky is violet, that was inherent somehow. I cannot actually imagine making it black or navy blue or gray or slate or any color other than violet. And I suppose, decisions like that aren't something I even consider until years after the fact.

Anyway, I was pleased with the way the image turned out.

I hope everyone has a Happy and Fun Halloween! And even if you don't officially celebrate it, just have some candy on the 31st :D

I've been enjoying some of the candy that I bought to hand out to the trick-or-treaters who visit the neighborhood. Don't worry, I bought a lot of candy. As per the usual I'll be dressing up to hand it out. And probably enjoying a fine horror movie as I do.

I finally had a moment to sit down and relax and watch some television yesterday and caught up on a couple episodes of "American Horror Story." I was intrigued when I saw the ad for the show... and kind of annoyed to see it was on Wednesday night - which is in competition with like "Revenge" or "CSI" or some other show... anyway, it's content is a little risque - I think it has one of those tv MA ratings, but I'm 32 and a life long fan of horror movies, Hunter S. Thompson, and Pink Floyd, so it isn't exactly shocking to me. Anyway, I seem to be hooked - it's a really interesting show.

I'm hoping to be able to fine "Grimm" either on onDemand or hulu... because, of course, it's on on Friday night at the same time as Supernatural and Fringe. *shakes fist at networks* Seriously, people, there is nothing airing on Tuesday or Saturday.

Oh, October, the time when it's acceptable to enjoy horror movies and scary tv shows. If only the month was longer...

the long rambling post...

2011-10-22T23:13:00.000-07:00

I am a lot of things, many of which can be described with the use of adjectives, but all things are not constant all of the time. I mean, I'm female, I'm a certain height, I'm Caucasian (really, spell check, it's a proper noun?), and I'm alive. But beyond that, everything else is relative. And when I'm dead it doesn't really matter.

I was ill. It wasn't a cold or a stomach virus (nor was it like VD or something). It's just one of those things you kinda don't share with the entire world. I'm not entirely sure I'm fine, but well, one can only defer life for so long.

I'm tired, and I'm tired of being tired... so I suppose I want things to change and have to figure out how to make that happen. I want to stop coming home from work and spending hours in front of the computer and in the end having a feeling like I wonder where the last 3 hours went and wondering why I didn't get anything done.

I want a feeling of accomplishment. I want to feel like I don't have to bite my tongue or not say things because I might offend someone. I want to feel like being me is fine. And for a long time now I haven't felt that way.

I was never someone who wanted to be the center of attention, and I'm still not. I just want to be happy making the things I make, and if people happen to like those things - then that's cool... and for a long time I didn't have an outlet for that, and then a few years ago someone told me about Etsy.

And wouldn't that be neat - to just list things and sell them? Cool, right?
Without being specific, because it's kind of pointless, etsy is the thing that seems to eat up 3 hours of my day every morning with very little return.
I can list things, I can tweet about it, I could tumblr, I could get off my lazy ass and waste copious amounts of time with random strangers "liking" things on facebook, I could theoretically join teams, I could make treasuries... I could do that stuff in every waking non-working hour... and it still wouldn't amount to anything.

So, I guess I'm just going to be me because I'm tired of being philosophically paralyzed by the notion that I shouldn't say things because I should talk to everyone like they're my grandma. And which one, btw, I had 2 of them. They were very different people.

I'm 32, and the life that I have is not the one that I want. I'm not who I want to be. Somewhere, within me there is someone who is happy and content and comes home from work every day and doesn't wonder what the hell happened to that 3 hours since I walked in the door, and I have to find a way to remove the notion that that is buried in the depths of me.

I recently took down some decorations that had been hanging around for 10 years... they were mostly clippings from magazines, pictures of famous people and rock stars. They were brittle with age in most cases, and the masking tape with which they had been attached to the wall or the door was also that yellow-orange-brown shade and brittle. It was amusing in a way to pick off a layer of old ideas and notions. And why on earth did I have a picture of Robert Smith on the back of the door? I'm really not that fond of the Cure... oh, wait, yeah, magazines aren't really rife with shots of Geddy Lee. The Beatles were definitely over-represented. I'm not a big Beatles fan, but it's always easy to find Beatles pictures or post cards.

The hardest thing to take off the back of the door was the newspaper clipping with the picture of some college-age neo-hippie named Shanti Stark lighting a candle in front of a Frank Zappa album. I think that one made it into the keep pile along with all the Beatles post cards.

I've never had heroes or role models or suffered from the notion that I would want to pattern my life after some one, but from an early age Frank Zappa was always interesting to me. He made weird music, and I probably first heard him on Dr. Demento, which I used to stay up and listen to on Sunday nights because the show was played on WIQB (back when that was still a decent station). Anyway, I either wrote my book reports about Frank Zappa or Pink Floyd. Zappa died when I was 14 years old, and that newspaper clipping was an announcement of his passing. It was on the back of my bedroom door, right by the door handle.

It's purely sentimental, I suppose. But it was the last thing to come down.

I decided it was time to redecorate the bedroom, which quite literally just means I'm going to hang different pictures on the wall because everything has pretty much been the same for 10 years, except for the things that fell down from the humidity and just never made it back up...

I don't spend a lot of time in the bedroom (not sleeping), but I guess maybe I'd like to. And I suppose changing some things out might be appropriate.

I have a lot of paintings that end up in the keep pile, and well, that's kind of a shame, because although I may be the only person who ever goes in that room - I probably ought to stop keeping my work in a pile on the desk or the floor and get it on the wall...

I've been thinking about this for a while now, and while my first few attempts at finding the right size frame may have ended in defeat (what the hell, Hobby Lobby - no love for the 9X12 unless I like the look of aged barn wood?). Well, I did find myself in a Michael's 10 minutes before the store closed on a rainy Wednesday night, and now that I've spray painted them a brownish shade of metallic silver which I believe was called "sesame" I have 4 9X12 frames and just need to figure out how to configure them on the wall... oh, plus like the other 10 picture frames I bought. I'm female, there was a half off sale in the framing department. I thought about Christmas and Birthdays and mentally said "fuck it" and there I was standing at the register with a heavy pile of frames.
Yes, relatives, it's artwork again as gifts, how could you expect anything different?

So, yeah, I have to go get those off the patio, where they are airing out, in the morning. I'd like to assume that in the span of time since I painted them and when I retrieve them that no birds have pooped on them or small animals have gnawed on them...

The one thing that I did take pause to notice while thinking about the whole bedroom decor thing was that my work has gotten progressively abstract. I don't paint pictures of things, I paint with color and shapes or lines or movement may happen to occur, but the intent is not an image of an object. I'm sure, in the realm of possibilities, that someone could draw a quick conclusion about that... or relate it to the fact that I keep sitting down with my sketchbook with the intent to draw and keep putting down a blank page, but presently I'm not so much in the moment that I think there's a meaningful conclusion to be drawn from that... just that it's an amusing observation.

earthworms...

2011-10-05T07:55:00.001-07:00

By all accounts I was missing in action for most of September, or at least from my blogger account. Since I'm not a meticulous planner, I cannot say it was a planned absence, circumstances and life just kind of dictated that it occurred...

Part of what I was doing in that period of time (aside from sleeping, working, driving, eating, and watching television) was working on a project: the worms. Yes, worms.

I first "made" worms when I was about 16 years old. They were part of an art project I did either for AP art or ceramics when I was in high school. I suppose they were inspired in a way by Pink Floyd; more specifically the iconography of the film "The Wall." Pink Floyd is one of my favorite bands, and at the time actually seeing "The Wall" was kind of my white whale.

When I was in high school, this was back in the nubile days of 1996-97 when the internet came to people through landlines. Yes, there was a time before broadband and netflix and onDemand and, well, you know the rest...

Anyway if I really wanted to see "The Wall" I would have had to have rented it from our local version of Blockbuster... which I could have done if it was ever there on the odd chance that I happened to go to the local video store, which happened maybe 1-2 times a year. "The Wall" and "A Clockwork Orange" were never there, just that damned VCR case indicating that someone had rented it...

Yes, so anyway, I finally saw it somehow on some trip somewhere... but in the mean time, I was doing this project that involved making worms out of polymer clay.

Well, years passed, and projects came and went. And some time this last spring and summer I found myself standing in that aisle of the craft supply store where they sell the polymer clay... and well, just like riding a bicycle, I remembered the formula for mixing the colors and how I got the segment effect, and voilà: worms

Well, okay, so it actually takes some time to warm up the clay so that it's pliable so that colors can be mixed. But one Saturday afternoon over the course of watching "Medium Raw: Night of the Wolf" I cranked out a batch of worms. And then proceeded to cook them according to the directions on the package.

And then, while watching what was quite possibly one of the cheesiest Lifetime movies ever — "Pretend You Don't See Her" — I applied a coat of gloss varnish to my worms to give them the appearance of looking wet.

Now, some of the worms were created for a series of assemblage pieces. These were made out of a combination of illustration board, spackle, acrylic paint, varnish, and tea grounds. Yes, I said tea grounds. I wanted something that looked like dirt without actually being dirt... tea grounds, as it turns out, look like dirt. Fortunately I drink tea. So, this project incorporates some Twinings Spiced Apple Chai, Twinings African Honeybush, Mandarin & Orange Herbal Tea, and some Bigelow Raspberry Royale.
It took an afternoon of trial and error, because after laying down my spackle and then waiting for that to dry I knew I needed a coat of what would essentially serve as primer. So I had to mix up some brown-gray paint, and then paint that with a coat of umber colored acrylic... and then I needed to figure out how to get the tea to stick... some elmers glue, more umber paint, and some gloss varnish later - I had my formula. Of course, then I had to wait for that to dry too. A lot of time is spent waiting for things to dry...

Wow, that's a crappy photo!

Yes, after everything was spackled and glued and painted and sprinkled with tea and finally dry - then everything needed to go into the frames... and then the pieces needed to be photographed. From an idea-on-paper standpoint, simply photographing the piece is much harder to do well than one would hope. There were a lot of bad photos. Largely because it's hard to photograph something glossy and shiny (the worms) against a background that is dark and matte (the tea dirt) in a frame that has a shiny faux metal finish. Yes, there was some swearing and consternation and a lot of flipping thru the camera settings and trial and error and probably like 150 photos taken of 6 pieces, many of which were just terrible. Indoors, outdoors, with flash, no flash, lit... hell, I even set them up in the bathtub hoping for better light...

The other problem (particularly if you feel you take the best photos outside) is when the weather doesn't cooperate. Between just being dark and overcast it also rained, and rained, and rained, and rained. Things look wet in this picture because they were wet with rain.

The back of the old rabbit hutch is an ironically "etsy-ish" place to take photos... old white paint weathered on wood, and it faces away from the sun... plus I could just hammer a nail into it.

Yes, somehow that's the sweet spot for taking pictures, except for the relatively minor problem of the green grass reflecting on my faux metal frame...

These are my finished pieces:

digging in the dirt | tilling | fertilize
earthworms | unearthed | undulate

The rest of the worms were divvied up between two projects.

Yes, worm earrings. Ew, yes, I know. But they're polymer clay, so they won't nibble on your ear lobe, pinky swear.

You can see them here.

And now I have to get cracking on that other worm project...

Oh, so it's September now...

2011-09-18T01:38:00.000-07:00

Yes, Mr. Calendar, I see how we're going to be about this. The sun goes down, the sun comes up, days pass... and suddenly it's the middle of September.

So, I've been working on some of those projects that I think about every now and then when I'm at work or doing something. Those thoughts you might have that usually begin with "that'd be cool..." Yes, those.

I've mentioned before that I enjoy kitsch. Yes, I like weird stuff. I decorate with color and silk flowers and have a massive collection of figurines of lizards and frogs and turtles and the occasional snail... I have birds & butterflies from the ceiling in the summer, and winter time is for glitter snowflakes.

Yes, I like kitsch.
So, every year I dress up for Halloween to pass out candy. I wear the same costume every year. It's a long dark robe (it's navy blue that's almost black) and it has lizards sewn onto it. I have lizard and spider barrettes that I made, and I do some gothy makeup.

Anyway, for whatever reason, I thought it'd be fun to make some lizard barrettes. Yeah. No, I don't exactly recall what spurred the desire to embark upon this craft project. I just went out & bought lizards and barrettes and glue, and well...

I sat down on the cement floor in front of the paper cutter last weekend with my acrylic paints and gave all the lizards new paint jobs while watching Haven on Syfy. Yes, that show is awesome. I like shows like that. I used to watch the X Files back in the day (Fox Mulder, whatta cutie) and I also like Fringe and Supernatural. So, yes, watching Haven and painting plastic lizards (and frogs, yes, there were frogs too, I just haven't finished them yet).

After I painted them I coated them with varnish, and then glued the barrettes on, and waited forever and a day for the glue to dry, and then went outside and took "product shots."

Yes, frightful, I know ; )
You can find them here in the Weird Stuff section of my sarahknight shop on etsy.
And yes, those are my green eyes, not contacts.

I finished this at the end of August. I suppose I made it on a whim.

fall fantasia

And now I have to get back to my craft projects... and maybe cleaning, before they have to send a professional organizer and a Hazmat team in here to deal with the after crafting mess.
: )

Here's a little peak at another project I'm working on...

all this stuff

2011-08-21T01:55:00.000-07:00

It was a busy and sleepless week of stuff. It seems like a lost week, I suppose. I had things to design, things to draw, things to photograph, things to get done... and at the end of it all, there's still more stuff to do. Yes, the doing of things is endless.

And the place is a mess. And cleaning everything up (which isn't so much cleaning as it is putting things back in the terribly impractical places where they seem to be stored) just isn't a relaxing activity. So, there's the chaos of all this stuff.

And then I went shopping... and bought more stuff. And it's not exactly like I'm a clotheshorse or something, so by stuff — I mean art supplies and craft supplies... So, yes, now there's more stuff, and it needs to be put somewhere.

So, excuse my absence, I need to put some stuff away and make the place seem like a place I want to be in, instead of a place I'd like to flee from.

And then when I get done with that I have more stuff to do, and for the love of all things, would someone come and put all that stuff away when it's time to move on to the next thing.

Oh, stuff...

Picture Story: nectar

2011-08-14T02:08:00.000-07:00

I think that illustrations are often self evident. That's why they're illustrations. And that's what I do - I illustrate. So, I realize, when I talk about my work, instead of explaining what is in the picture or why it's there - I tend to talk about how I illustrated it.

So, on to the obvious: "nectar" is a picture of ruby-throated hummingbirds eating the nectar of fuchsia. Ruby-throated hummingbirds are native to the eastern United States, for most of us on this side of the country - they're the only species of hummingbird around. They show up here (in Michigan) in May or June and usually hang around until September, when they fly South for the winter. Ruby-throated hummingbirds have a head and body that are green and a white underbelly, only the males have a ruby-colored throat.

Contrary to the depiction in this picture - this species of hummingbird is very territorial. I have never seen 2 of them aware of each other at the same feeder or plant at the same time. However, you can find videos on youtube of multiple ruby-throats in the same feeding area at the same time coexisting peacefully... that just doesn't happen in my yard.
This clip has music - but this is what it sounds like on the back porch all day long: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twqrrlAEHf8 Just tiny little birds fighting and squawking over the sugar water (often referred to in this household as 'bird koolaid') in the plastic container.

"nectar"

"nectar" was one of my first experiments with coloring over a printed image. The fuchsia in the picture were actual flowers that I photographed. I then edited the backgrounds out of those photos, combined several photos together and adjusted the color on the image I had created. I printed that out and colored over it with prismacolor pencils, and then scanned that and edited it as the base of my illustration. The background is based off one of my photos of the sky. I adjusted the colors and then merged it with a color layer to get it the shade of aqua I wanted.

And the hummingbirds were also an experiment in coloring over a print out. They were originally drawn in pencil. And that was scanned and printed as a blue page — and then inked. And then I colorized the ink outline and printed that out and colored over that in prismacolors, and then scanned that back in and made another print out. I colored over that print out — adding details, and then scanned that back in and 'cut' the hummingbirds out of the background.

And then I added the hummingbirds into the illustration, in a layer that was above the sky but below the fuchsia.

I know, I know, the boring technical stuff is only remotely interesting to me.

Since it's August, I come home from work every morning to the sound of a 'bird fight' taking place on the back patio... and I imagine this squawking and fighting and chasing and otherwise all-out territory dispute goes on until dusk. They're lovely creatures and they're complex.

And when I go out on the back porch to do something I am often reminded that I am interrupting their visit. The hummingbird will just pause and hover and look directly at me, and then jut forward, and pause and look at me again, and then decide whether it's on to the feeder or to quickly buzz off to go sit on the edge of some nearby leaf and wait for me to leave... like as if I'm not the one who keeps making them more bird koolaid or something.

Yes, they're complex creatures.

ice cream, birds, and watercolors...

2011-08-06T22:42:00.000-07:00

It was another hot week here in Michigan. Yes, I'm ready for fall. I'm ready for 60—70˚F weather. I'm ready for cool crisp mornings and cold dew on my car... but it isn't fall yet, it's just August.

So, in the mean time, I recommend sitting down and having a nice big bowl of ice cream every now and then. The greatest ice cream I have discovered this summer is Hudsonville's Orange Cream Swirl. If you remember or have recently had an orange creamsicle — it's like that translated into a tub of ice cream. It's delicious. Oh, and so is orange sherbet. Yes, I love that stuff.

Since I was drawing birds a few weekends ago, I decided to format some new pictures for sarahkdesigns:

say's phoebe | cedar waxwing
male northern cardinal | female northern cardinal

And then I worked on watercolors this week... which means I got out the salt, and the watercolors, and the gouache, and the brushes, and the paper, and conveniently used the empty tub from my orange sherbet to hold the water...

And after I use the salt I scrape it off the painting and reuse it... which is interesting, because sometimes it's covered in pigment and that transfers to the next painting.

details of some of the paintings of this week

And yes, I finally bought gouache. And decided to use it with my watercolors (although I did keep it on its own shiny new separate paint palette). I'm heavy handed with the pigment anyway - but it was interesting to see the white actually stay white when it dried.
(And for anyone uninitiated with my watercolor paintings - you can see the actual paintings here)

It's hard to explain making something abstract when you're not the stereotypical character archetype artist. I don't see the world through some narrow prism, and I don't think there's only one path to some ideal visual. When I sit down on the floor in front of the paper cutter with my paint and water and salt and brushes and paper - I have a vague idea of what I think maybe I'm going to do. But really, to a certain extent - whatever happens happens. And when I'm finally done putting paint on the paper or sprinkling it with salt - when I pick that wet painting up and set it down on the carpet to dry — I know it that when it dries it will look different from how it appears wet. Some of the salt will melt, some of the colors will run, pigment will be absorbed or overpowered by other pigment... and while some of it is knowable, there's a certain mystery and randomness to it.

So, the wet paintings sit there on the floor and I go to bed. And usually they're dry when I get up. And when I come home from work the next morning I scrape the salt off them and get to actually see the final result, which is the cool part. Because there's painting it and playing with color and juxtaposition and all that, and then there's finally seeing what it really looks like.

And then I have to sit there and name them all. Because, let's face it, I don't just ever paint one painting. Don't get me wrong, I like the paintings, but I can't imagine setting all that stuff up and having to vacuum salt off the carpeting for one painting.

Of course, I still have to do that vacuuming part.

So, stay cool and have some of your favorite ice cream : )

A week for the birds...

2011-07-31T00:06:00.000-07:00

They grow up so fast...

We had a second clutch of eastern bluebirds in the backyard. This time it was 4 babies. And all 4 fledged this last week. They're such cuties, aren't they? Yes, they are. Look at the little blue tails!

mauve morning rendezvous

I got a picture done last weekend. Which actually means I spent a lot of time sketching, drawing, and coloring birds last weekend — blue headed vireos to be exact. This wasn't really like a planned picture. I mean, if planning involves more than me sitting at the computer and thinking "I want to do something mauve / lavender colored with sunshine, flowers, and birds..."
Every once in a while I just need to start something and finish it.

It's been a strange and stressful week, and I capped it off yesterday by sleeping for 10 hours. Yes, 10... at the very least 9.5. My car broke down, it rained, it thunderstormed, it rained and stormed some more, and then the sweltering heat returned... The car is fixed now, and it didn't rain tonight, so perhaps this week will be better? I hope so.

vacation...

2011-07-24T06:42:00.000-07:00

I think I'll be back next weekend. It's not that I'm going anywhere. It's just that it's too damned hot. Yes, I was 9 in the summer of 1988 when we last had record droughts & heat here in the U.S. — and yes, I remember it. I was just conveniently young.

I went to the Art Fair on Thursday. It was kind of like a ghost town. Oh, and it was like 100˚F; evidently it was only 95˚F for the other 3 days. Anything over 80˚F is too hot... so, anyway, I think it's time for whoever plans the Art Fair to stop being obstinate and change the date to the end of June (when we have conveniently 70˚F days). When I'm not drenched in my own sweat and knowing that a sunburn and dehydration are going to happen - I'm better at buying stuff.

For those uninitiated with the United States inability to convert to metrics: http://www.wbuf.noaa.gov/tempfc.htm

Anyway, the day before I had googled the forecast, and it showed me a grumpy gray cloud with a lightning bolt. So I was hoping for rain. I didn't bring my umbrella. It didn't rain.

So, I guess maybe my fish are enjoying this time of year. Me? Not so much. Hopefully it cools down this week. Stay in the shade & stay hydrated.

lost hours...

2011-07-17T02:52:00.000-07:00

Sometimes something seems to get done on the weekend... and other times not so much. I stopped by some field along the highway on my way home from work Friday morning because they had baled the hay. And, of course, there was some thistle in front of the hay - and an industrious bee... and then I remembered to wander out into the back yard and take a look around, and there was a damselfly... and the hummingbird perched way up high on the obsolete tv antenna.

And then I spent the rest of my night off reformatting photos for listings... and then I had to edit each of those listings. Which you can see here on SunshineSight

This guy has been hanging around the back yard a lot with his mate ; )

And then I finally took some photos of the paintings I did way back when (I mean last summer). You can see them at sarahknight on etsy. The problem was that there was no where in the house with enough light or the right kind of light to get any decent pictures (I mean short of going out and spending $300.00 on lights or something)... So I finally relented and just went out in the backyard and hammered a nail into the back of the rabbit hutch. Yes, it's, uhmn, rustic.

Although if you're familiar with etsy, you may know the sardonic joke that the 'etsy look' for photos is anything shot in a macro blur with kitschy objects that have nothing to do with your listing item on a gray / white / or otherwise neutral background that is either an old book or a piece of barn wood. The penultimate satirical commentary on this concept is this post from Regretsy. Now, if you're one of those people that doesn't ever make fun of something or enjoy snark or questionable language - then maybe don't click on that link.

Honestly, "barn wood" isn't really my style... but I kind of think if you've been here before and seen my work that you kind of know that.

Speaking of 'my work' — I have a piece in the U of M School of Art & Design Alumni Show: Things That Move.
Yes, you have to scroll forever down the page to get to it (like halfway). It's called "cherry apricot phantasmagoria" (because I come from the e.e. cummings school of thought). Anyway, it's bright red, or if you just do a "COMMAND F" and type Sarah Knight into the box, you'll find it.

The show runs from 18 July to 6 August 2011
Slusser Gallery hours are: Mon—Fri 9am to 5pm, Sat noon to 7pm
2000 Bonisteel Blvd.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2069
parking is behind the building which can be accessed from Fuller Road

bird brooches

2011-07-13T08:47:00.001-07:00

I think about making stuff a lot, I suppose. And sometimes it takes me years to getting around to finally executing an idea, and sometimes something just gets done. So, last weekend was one of those 'just do it' kinds of weekends.

I decided I wanted to make brooches. Now, I'm not exactly sure precisely how I arrived at this conclusion, but I found myself standing in an aisle at the craft store buying a baggy of wooden shapes and then standing in the jewelry findings aisle looking for pin backs...
and well, now I have brooches:

Yes, so, I opened my baggy of wooden pieces and sorted them... and then picked the biggest ones and measured those... and then made a file of that size... and then spent a good hour opening files and copying and pasting and combining until I had at least 30 bird portraits...
And then I printed those out and cut them apart and began the odyssey of production... I painted the fronts and sides of my wooden pieces with black acrylic paint... and then I found my snazzy Elmer's craft bond glue stick (because I have used a lot of glue sticks - and unless it's paper to paper - glue sticks are a nice idea but not a great adhesive) and got to work gluing my printed pictures onto the front of my wooden pieces... and then I pulled out my jar of satin varnish (because, honestly, satin is the most desirable finish — not matte, not high gloss) and gave each tile a good 2 coats of varnish...
Amusingly, okay, so maybe it's really only funny to me - while I was doing all this I was sitting there at my desk watching "The Nine Lives of Chloe King" via the internet.

And then I took them outside on the back porch and proceeded to apply pin backs with a generous helping of E-6000 glue. Oh, yeah, it's industrial strength - and so is it's odor. E-6000 must be used in a well ventilated area and whatever it has been applied to should be left in a well ventilated (or open) area for at least 24 hours for some of that pungent odor to dissipate. Yes, not everything about craft projects is all sunshine and sparkles.

And then, of course, I had to photograph them... Now, as it turns out, I made 30 brooches, since 30 is the number of picture fronts I could fit onto a sheet of paper (and there happened to be at least 30 of the same sized pieces of wood in my little baggy). I mean, when I started I was just going to make like 3 to see if they turned out well enough to be viable... and yeah, by the end of the day I had made all 30.

Apparently, I cannot do things in moderation.

So... I have them listed on Etsy at sarahkdesigns

and on Artfire at "SunshineSight"

So, get some art on that lapel : )

for the birds

2011-07-10T00:52:00.000-07:00

I spent the weekend working on a spur-of-the-moment project (I mean, you know I thought about it for like 2 whole days before embarking on it, technically)... so, hopefully I'll be done with it soon, and then I can get back to the butterfly mobiles.

It's been hot out, apparently so hot that we had our first power outage of the summer. Yes, you know because I had just arrived home from running errands - it was like 80˚F - and I went to put the cold groceries in the fridge and was surprised that it was dark in there. And then I looked around at the rest of the kitchen and noticed the clock on the microwave was blank, etc. Fortunately it came back on within 2 hours...

Anyway, there's a male cardinal out in the yard pining for some company. We had 2 of them out there the other day chasing each other around and otherwise jockeying for territory... at least cardinals have a pretty song (as opposed to robins which always just sound like they're yelling).

what they sound like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9LNexIoCW0

This is one of my cardinal illustrations: cardinal couple
It was part of the project that I have been working on this weekend.
Here's a little preview:

Yes, it involves my bird illustrations (which you can see at sarahkdesigns)
or
if you're more curious...

There's a cool giveaway at danielleorama's blog, that bunny is adorable :D

Now I think I'm going to sit here in front of the oscillating fan and catch up on Haven (season 1) - which I have been watching via dvd. It's an awesome show.

Hopefully you had a lovely weekend : )

just because

2011-07-06T08:03:00.000-07:00

Evidently it's Wednesday... I forget that sometimes because I work midnights and sometimes the days just kind of blend together.

Apparently it's 79˚F, and the skies are sort of overcast and yet sunny — so there's that atmospheric light. It's humid, but it isn't ridiculous. It's warm, but it isn't sweltering. It's just nice...

And I've been sitting here, working at the computer this morning, indoors... until I finished what I was working on — which, as it turns out was the new background for my blog — which you may have noticed if you've been here before. There used to be a lot of #867cbb around here. But then I was meandering around my blogger profile or the blogs that I follow or something — and I opened this blog: http://bittersweet-enmi.blogspot.com/
And, yes, I was envious — in that I wanted a background and something maybe a little less generic — because her blog just looks cool.

So, yes, it's summer and it's nice outside and I've been sitting here at my computer tinkering and copying and pasting from my files like as if the design layout of my blog was the only thing that mattered... and actually, I didn't change the layout — I just changed the colors, made a new header and assembled 100 square samples of my work together into one large grid to make a new background — since I finally figured out that blogger will let me upload my own picture for the background.

So, thank you, Emmy Wahlback, for the inspiration.
And now, I suppose it's time to get back to cutting out butterflies... or maybe I'll go outside again.

Enjoy your summer, and the wondrous things that exist just outside the back door.

The lost week...

2011-07-02T00:43:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the weekend finally comes and I sit here at my computer and wonder where the last 5-7 days went... and then I remember all the mundane things that ate up my free time. The last two mornings (because I work midnights, and that's what's left when I get home at the end of work) were spent on dentist's appointments. My teeth are clean, have been treated with fluoride, and I now have 1 less wisdom tooth... and now my mouth hurts.

So, if I disappear this weekend or this post seems exceptionally disjointed - that's why.

"midnight mist"

I made this painting probably about 3 years ago. And I finally got around to listing it on etsy. I also recently used its digital copy in my butterfly project. Which you can see here or in the picture below:

I sample or recycle my own creations a lot, I suppose. I mean, when I painted that painting 3 years ago I wasn't specifically thinking "I'll scan this for this specific project that I plan to do at this date." Because, really, I'm not a plan-on-a-schedule type of girl. I think things happen separately, simultaneously, and often cumulatively. And sometimes that means having an idea, letting it sit there for a long long time, and then finally just doing it.

Long before I finally actually did the butterfly project or painted that painting I was thinking about how cool it would be to decorate with butterflies — like as ornaments — as evidenced by my summer decor from this post. All those monarch butterflies were sort of a preliminary learning curve with photoshop and printing and aligning the front and back of an image on a print so that it could be cut out without any off-set... and that I used fishing line to hang them was probably an due to something from the 3D class from my freshman year at the University of the Arts. We had to build a cube frame out of balsa wood and then fill the cube without gluing anything to the frame - the easiest way to accomplish this was by suspending things with fishing line - which is thin, clear, and almost invisible and made to support X amount of weight...

So, every now and then I think about how nifty it would be to take the idea for the ornaments and convert that into a mobile or a wall hanging... so that's what I'm going to work on this weekend — which is also what's in the last 2 pictures. First I had to line up my images, and now I have to cut them out. Only time will tell how long it takes me to getting around to actually suspending them from something...

Have a good, relaxing, productive weekend — and a Happy 4th of July!

butterflies

2011-06-24T07:19:00.001-07:00

I think everyone has a romanticized version of themselves. Like if you had to define yourself as a person - the words that you would choose are a projection of the qualities that you desire... and to some extent every person thinks: I defy labels. Really, we don't, but we all think that.

Labels, of course, are subjective.

So, what I know is that I probably have little use for "the rules," whatever those might be. If you've visited this blog semi-regularly, you may have noticed that there is a lack of format (which, unless you have OCD and you check here daily) is due largely to the fact that I do a blog entry when I actually have something to share, as opposed to having a format.

I don't desire to abide by a format in my free time, which I consider this blog to be. Formats are just like rules, and usually they're kind of arbitrary and eventually they get boring or feel like an obligation. Obligations come with expectations and guilt, particularly when expectations aren't met... and I like to avoid that. Formats also involve a time table and repetition. I'm not really a format kind of girl.

When I was a child I had a lot of toys, particularly Barbies and Cabbage Patch Kids. And one day I was downstairs playing in the Barbie Section (that was the name of the area in the basement that had been apportioned to me & my sister as a play area) and realized that I had no desire to be a doctor or a lawyer or an astronaut (or whatever the third rung of that analogy is supposed to be). My childhood ambition was either to be a princess or a hairdresser...

I mean, I styled a lot of doll hair, and I had all the latest dolls from Herself the Elf, Rose Petal, Hot Looks dolls, Strawberry Shortcake, She-Ra dolls, Golden Girls (not the sitcom), Barbies, Maxie dolls (like Barbie), Jem and the Holograms... some of those probably also account for my princess aspirations (besides the fact that princesses had pretty dresses)... Anyway, I am neither a princess or a hairdresser.

I'm not a goal-obsessed person. That's probably why I got that art degree.

So, every now and then an idea for a 'thing' will pop into my head. And I may write it down or draw it in the back of my sketchbook, or I might not. And if I just remember it - that's fine.

So, for a long long time I had this idea about a project with butterflies, and really, I didn't sit down and meticulously plan out the details... I just finally did it. So, one Saturday morning one of the showtime channels was playing "Ripple Effect" and I sat there and sketched out butterfly wings... and realized that I think that Forest Whitaker plays phenomenally annoying characters (yes, I've seen the Criminal Minds spin-off).

And eventually, I scanned those and inked them, and scanned those, and made a 'body' and then 'antenna'... and piece by piece, slowly, and perhaps organically the project finally came together. And I realize that I tend to think of my work in process terms - like I scanned that, inked that, etc — because generally, those are the givens. The colors, the shape, the composition — I think of those as simply being inherent and I suppose, beyond explanation...

And sometimes I think things have amusing and unintentional parallels and connections. Because to 'colorize' the butterflies — I used scans of my watercolor paintings. And perhaps, when you were a child you had a watercolor set and made a butterfly by painting half and then folding the paper in half and pressing it together. I don't remember ever having done that at home — I actually only remember doing it in the fourth grade...

But then, I paint watercolors that don't follow "the rules." According to the rules - if you use some sort of gimmick - like salt on watercolor - you should do it sparingly, just in an area or something. Oh, pfft to that thinking.

When I paint with watercolors, other than knowing that I will be using paint, salt, water, paper, and a brush — I don't plan my compositions — they happen. It is what it is, which must be very wrong to the people who will tell you that there are rules...

So, I finally finished* the butterfly project that I've been thinking about for about a year now.
*finished is a relative term.

morning dew fairywing

rose madder majestic

morning aurora swallowtail

You can see the rest of them at my sarahkdesigns shop as they trickle into the butterfly section.
I suppose if I had planned it and put it on a time table - it would have been done a long time ago. But, that's just not how I work.

Now, since this is the last day of my 'vacation' — let's see which new project gets my last day of vacation, so I'm relaxed and focused attention. Will it be the calendar graphics, the bird project, the dancers, the 'portraits,' the watercolor over photographs, or the girls? Or, maybe I'll finish cleaning the living room. Okay, yeah, the living room probably isn't going to win that one.

Have a lovely weekend, and do whatever is going to make you happy : )

Outside: irises (part 3)

2011-06-21T03:23:00.001-07:00

This is the third installment of the irises. I don't quite remember what type the first image is, other than just pretty... The second is honky tonk blues, the third is jacaranda falls (which came from Frank's Nursery before it when out of business), and the fourth is a superstition.

Superstitions are 'black' irises - in other words, when the sun isn't hitting them directly they're very dark. Mine are planted along a fence, and it's almost impossible to take a picture of one that isn't backlit, unless, of course, I want to wander into the neighbor's yard. I really need to move these ones to somewhere slightly more practical...

So, today is summer solstice. It's the official start of summer according to the calendar, and it's the day with the longest period of daylight. And it's also my birthday.

So, even though it's 68˚F with a possible high of 86˚F (and rain, damn it, weather!) - the oven will be turned on, and the traditional birthday cake will be baked. Yes, Betty Croc ker Cherry Chip cake with the corresponding Cherry frosting. I first had this cake when I was probably about 6 years old. It was at Grandpa Duda's birthday party - and by far it was the most awesome cake I had ever had as a six year old. White cake, yellow cake, chocolate cake, that ridiculously dry German chocolate cake — they've got nothing on cherry chip cake, particularly not when it has the corresponding cherry flavored icing.

Grandma & Grandpa Duda (c.1988)

Anyway, I got my love of kitsch and cheap jewelry from Grandma Duda; and my green eyes and my premature gray hair (well, okay, Grandpa Duda probably contributed to that too. I don't have any memories of him without white hair... allegedly his hair was once brown). I got my first pet from Grandma Duda - 2 bettas (Calvin and Mike). And generally, Grandma Duda bought me and my sister a lot of weird kitschy stuff... plus, she also showed me the first cockroach I ever saw - which was a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach - consequently I thought all cockroaches were giant so when I saw an ordinary cockroach for the first time I was like "oh, that?" Grandma Duda was a secretary for Richard Alexander of the herpetology division of the Natural History Museum at the U of M. So, she always had something strange to show us grandkids... plus I got that Naked Mole Rat t-shirt that I wore all through high school from Grandma Duda via her job...

Anyway, since it's my birthday I'm going shopping today, and no doubt, there will be some kind of "Grandma Duda" purchase. Yes, I'm going to buy something inexpensive that I really don't need that probably has no practical purpose. It's in the genes.

Bluebirds...

2011-06-19T00:43:00.001-07:00

So, the bluebirds...
Yes, I think I've mentioned the eastern bluebirds a gazillion or so times. When we're lucky, not only do they visit our backyard, but they nest there. So, below is a picture of the old nest box... it is no more. It was old, and it was literally falling apart. That's what happens with weather and age. My father made that nest box. And my father made the new nest box that after some swearing and consternation was installed in it's place.

Yeah, it's a wooden box bolted to a metal pole. The bolts holding up the old box were rusty. One of them had to be removed via hacksaw because the wrench and the can of WD-40 just wasn't going to cut it. Good thing my father bought me that hacksaw for Christmas, I guess...

This was the old box.

So, anyway, the bluebirds have been hanging around the yard again. They watched the demolition of the old house. There was much squawking and wing waving. And then, hours later they were in the backyard, nesting materials in beak, building a nest in the other nest box... you know - not the nice new one. Birds.

So, anyway, it is now Father's Day. So, if you're a father: Happy Father's Day!

Father's Day is one of those kind of annoying sneaky holidays. It creeps up on me every year. I love my father, don't get me wrong, it's just that Father's Day has this annoying habit of being on or around my birthday. No one likes multitasking on their birthday... There's a 2 day delay this year, but I still have to share it with the first day of summer.

Anyway, every year there is a last minute Father's Day gift... so this is this year's. Yup, it's a drawing of a male eastern bluebird. Yes, I draw a lot of bluebirds, you can see them here.

I sat down in front of the computer whilst catching up on the Daily Show & Colbert on hulu and drew the bluebird on a branch.

Then that was scanned into photoshop. I cleaned up the scan and adjusted the layer to just black and white. Then I blocked the scan and started filling it in with colors and used a photograph for the background.

This was the photo I used for the sky. I took it on Thursday morning while it was sprinkling on and off. Stormy skies are generally the most interesting to look at. Obviously, when I used it in the picture I adjusted the colors and levels.

I printed out the colorized scan of my drawing onto some 2-ply plate bristol and began coloring it with my favorite medium: prismacolors.

And there it is. Well, I have to sign it and slice off the border so I can fit it in a picture frame, but otherwise it's done :D

Have a Happy Father's Day!

Outside: irises (part 2)

2011-06-11T01:08:00.001-07:00

So, this is the second installment of the irises. The first two photos are "honky tonk blues," the third pic is a "batik," and the fourth - well, I think it's an "above the clouds."

As for those light purple colored irises that smell like grape - those are Iris pallida 'Variegata'
We have some growing on the side of our house, I always just kind of thought they smelled like grape — although probably because we never had grape soda. There's a fairly famous beverage company in Michigan: Faygo. Anyway Faygo Rock & Rye was a family staple, because otherwise it was Coke or Pepsi. Rock & Rye is one of those pop flavors like Dr. Pepper - I'll be damned if I can explain what exactly it tastes like, and I suspect it has nothing to do with the alcoholic beverage of the same name. But then, what exactly does Coke taste like — you know, besides Coke?

Anyway, the pallida variegata grow by the side of the house. But unfortunately, they grow to be about 3-4 feet tall. And the stems are so loaded with blossoms that they literally fall over. I have to go out and prop them up with pruned tree branches every year. They're pretty though, and I love the way they smell.

On a completely unrelated note, my 'Artfire collection' was the collection of the day for 10 June 2011 - check it out here. Very cool : )

The bluebirds had 5 babies this year. I neglected to mention this while they were in the nest, because last year's first attempt at a nest ended in tragedy — due to English house sparrows who went into the nest and killed all 4 babies. I hate english house sparrows. When I can: I kill these birds. I live in Michigan — they are an alien invasive species.
European House sparrows are an invasive species in North America

Anyhow, the bluebirds had five babies. They fledged, without incident. I actually saw the last fledge out of the nest. It was adorable, mostly because it was literally just standing there on the back porch looking up at me. Anyway, that was like 2 weeks ago. Last night I happened to look out in the back yard and wonder what the strange little birds were sitting on the old rabbit hutch. I got the binoculars, and low and behold — they were the baby bluebirds. Well, I guess now they're technically "juveniles." Juvenile bluebirds are pretty much gray on the head, back, and wings, their belly is white with spots of gray, and they are identifiable by their blue tails. (see this photo from a google image search) What a bunch of cuties. This is actually their Dad. And this is their Mom.

You can find my many homages to eastern bluebirds here and here.

As I type this I am waiting for paint to dry. I've had this idea floating around in my imagination about combining photos and watercolors and probably salt and then the other day I saw this technique with alcohol. So, yeah, photos had to be selected, and then formatted... and there was some gnashing of the teeth at my printer which apparently does not understand the meaning of the term "borderless." But anyway, I'm waiting for the paint and salt and alcohol to dry now...

Surely, if I ever have an autobiography, there will be a chapter entitled "Waiting for Paint to Dry." And it will somehow be a very long book with many pictures...

Have a lovely weekend!

Outside: irises (part 1)

2011-06-08T16:30:00.001-07:00

As I've mentioned before: irises are my favorite flower. While I may spend a lot of time wandering around photographing other people's flowers, flowering trees, trees, the sky, tree bark, etc. — irises are my favorite flower and I have a menagerie.

Yes, somewhere in my past there has been a great deal of money spent via the Schreiner's catalog. So, they're like my children. And every year when they appear I finally remember to weed them, and then I take a ridiculous amount of pictures. So, this is Part 1 of at least 4 parts...

The first picture is a Merlot, the second picture - I have completely forgotten the name, and the last 2 are Gypsy Romance. Gypsy Romance — I completely fell in love with these when I saw them in the catalog. I had to have them. I assembled an entire order just so that I could justify buying them...
*swoon*

I guess it's beyond about time to start working on the graphics for the 2012 calendar; there's always something with irises...

Summer begins...

2011-06-05T00:48:00.000-07:00

Well, summer officially starts on 21 June... which I know because it's my birthday. But it's summer now. The weather really doesn't care what the calendar says. It's humid and 70-80˚F out right now — that's summer weather.

So, a couple weeks ago I happened to look up at the obsolete tv antenna that towers over the house, and sitting way up there on the top of one of the rods was the male hummingbird. It's amusing to see such a tiny creature sitting way up there, where presumably he's surveying the territory. So, I cleaned up the feeder and made some bird kool-aid for him and the rest of the hummingbirds to fight over... and this weekend I finally got around to taking all the snowflakes down. Yes, I still had vestiges of the winter decorations hanging around the place. Laziness, I suppose.

So, the hummingbirds and the butterflies are now up.

A few years ago I was looking for snowflake Christmas ornaments at Target, and I happened to notice that they had all these resin bird ornaments... so I picked through them all, carefully, and literally bought all the hummingbirds that didn't have broken beaks, as resin is fragile, and these were just hanging on hooks. They had bluebirds and chickadees and goldfinches too, and yeah, I bought some of those as well, but they were all made in a perching position, where as the hummingbirds are flying. (Some day I'll get around to making something that my bluebirds can sit on)

So, anyway, all the birds were painted as the male form of the species... so, I brought them home and repainted them. I made males and females, and went so far as to use iridescent nail polish to make their feathers more authentic. So, every year when I finally let go of my laziness for an hour or so - I get them out and put them up - and they stay up until October or November - long after the real birds have flown south.

I made the monarch butterflies probably about 10 years ago. I suppose it's silly or childish or whimsical or maybe a little 'Flowers in the Attic'-ish, but I like weird stuff I suppose. And if you looked at the pictures and you're wondering - that brown blob on top of my computer is a snail knick knack.

I did some paintings on a whim last weekend, so now I need to scan them and varnish them, and sign them, and print out and attach the labels for the backs of them... I finally went through my paints this week (since the garbage was off by one day in observance of Memorial Day), and threw away all the bottles that were dried up and chunky or almost completely empty. I do that every now and then, particularly when I can no longer fit all the paint into the basket that holds the paint. The overflow of arts & crafts supplies gets to be a little much every now and then...

The summer flowers are here. The irises are blooming! Irises are my favorite flower, hands down. I love them in virtually every color (except the brown ones - that I will never understand). But violet (and any other shade of purple) is my favorite. Violet is also simply and unilaterally my favorite color.

Plus, after probably not having ridden on an actual bike for like 15 years - I bought a bike this weekend. Yes, it's a lavender shade of violet, which was most of the appeal... aside from the fact that it's a female model, adult sized, and has brakes. Yeah, I'm not one of those cyclist people, so, really I bought it because I want a bike to tool around on mostly for leisure purposes - which means riding it around the block in a residential area where I am least likely to be impeding traffic or hit by a car.

Hopefully your summer is filled with color and happy things, and maybe air conditioning, a fan, or the occasional cool breeze.

Sidewalk Tourism: Redbuds

2011-05-27T20:28:00.000-07:00

While I continue to attempt to finish up some projects — here are some more pictures I took this spring when it wasn't raining like cats and dogs and a plague of locusts. This time around: redbuds.

They're pretty, aren't they? Yeah, they are.

Have a Happy Memorial Day!

Outside: Bradford Pear blossoms

2011-05-21T01:43:00.000-07:00

I'm going to play catch-up with the spring blossom pics that I took this season, since it's rainy and I seem to be working on a project that does not involve wandering around aimlessly in down town areas photographing other people's trees & flowers. I've gotten some looks and concerned questions from some on-lookers this year — yes, I'm taking pictures of a tree in broad daylight wearing a bright magenta colored shirt — uh-huh, that would kind of make me a terrible burgler, wouldn't it? I mean, where's the stealth?

So, yes, this tree has already bloomed and moved on to just having leaves. Oh, and it's actually the Bradford pear tree in my front yard.

I'm not a photography purist, whatever that's supposed to mean. And quite frankly, there have always been lenses and different styles of camera and various miscellaneous factors, so, you know: it is an image taken through a piece of glass with various mechanical variables. How on earth that was ever pure... ah, that's me being esoteric.

I was recently (okay, maybe 4 weeks ago, it's a relative term) reading someone's blog where they asserted that they would no longer process their pictures using "filters" in photoshop. And I just kind of thought - eh, I'm not that declarative. Visually, if I think something needs to be tweaked or altered in a certain way — then I'm going to do it. I'm not going to let some false principle of "not doing something" cloud my better judgement. So, yes, these are all manipulated, and that's how I like them.

When I was photographing the plum cherry tree from a few entries back a neighbor actually stopped me on my way to my car to ask me what I was doing. I mean, he knew I was taking pictures of the tree, it was a question of why. My answer was this: because it's pretty.

It's the same thing with photo editing, relatively: because I like the way it looks.

Plus, it's an image, it's meant to be evocative. And besides that, anyone who owns, knows of, or otherwise lives near a Bradford pear tree can tell you: they look very pretty when they bloom, but they smell terrible. Although the bees don't seem to mind. There were points when this tree bloomed that it was just abuzz.

Outside: magnolia

2011-05-14T00:30:00.001-07:00

Spring has been a little strange this year. According to the calendar it began on 20 March 2011... well, it sure hasn't felt like it. It felt more like winter-lite. At least it did until this week, when the temperature seems to have risen. So, the magnolia had an interesting season of blooms. I mean about 3 weeks ago there was a day where the buds were covered in snow for 24 hours...

And now the blooming season is drawing to a close, so the petals are dropping... I suppose it's like confetti.

Sidewalk Tourism: cherry plum blossoms

2011-05-07T02:12:00.000-07:00

The weather is getting warmer which means it's sidewalk tourism time. So, this is someone else's tree. After consulting Google I think this is a plum cherry tree. But I could be wrong about that. It's not my tree — I just drive by it in the spring and think "man, that is a pretty tree."

merry cherry

cherry wonder

cherry affection

(not yet titled)

cherry impression

I think I stood there for about 20 minutes photographing this tree, it was just that damned cool. I so have tree envy. You can find some of them in my Artfire shop: SunshineSight

Anyway, Mother's Day is on Sunday — so everyone have a Happy Mother's Day!

Outside: magnolia

2011-04-30T23:33:00.000-07:00

As many of you know — we had some severe weather here in the United States this past week, including tornadoes in the Southern States. Well, I live in Michigan, so we just had rain, rain, more rain, and finally one giant thunderstorm that overflowed every river, stream, lake, and farm field or low area. I was at work listening to the rain pound on the metal roof when it happened... and then drove home on those country highways punctuating farm fields that looked like they were full of chocolate milk. Weather is not to be taken lightly.

Anyway, it finally stopped raining — just in time for the art walk. It was nice to finally participate in that event without rain.

In the mean time, the magnolias around these parts have been ready to bloom. That always seems to happen right when we're having inclement weather. Magnolias just have the weirdest timing. They're such pretty bushes, but it always seems to be gloomy out when they bloom, so, there was some photoshopping that took place with these photos... to make them seem less somber.

They are actually all other people's magnolias, since ours has yet to open. Hopefully it doesn't snow tomorrow or something equally wacky like that.

Outside: birds in spring

2011-04-23T23:00:00.000-07:00

Well, Happy Easter!

Maybe since it's technically Easter Sunday as I begin typing this at 2am EST — I'll get around to coloring some Easter eggs today. It just wouldn't be me if it wasn't done at the last minute.

Truth be told, I've been sick. I seem to have acquired some sort of cold. I never seem to just get the sniffles, no, every cold has to be some sort of hacking / coughing nightmare with a sore throat, swollen lymph nodes, and a fever. I slept for 11 hours today... and believe me, I did not wake up feeling well rested. I think I want to go back to bed.

Anyway, the weather seems to have decided to coordinate with the way I feel. It's cold and rainy and dull, and rainy, and then it hailed... You know, c'mon, weather — it's April, could you act kind of springy already? Could we have some sunshine and some calm skies.

Anyway, before I was hit with this virus, I wandered out and took some photos. The red-winged blackbirds are holding steady to their territory in the marsh. And yes, that third shot is a sandhill crane — believe me it is not a Canada Goose. We have Sandhill Cranes and Great Blue Herons in these parts — so when a giant bird flies over I always have to pause and wonder which one it is. Sandhill cranes fly with their neck fully extended. Great Blue Herons fly with their neck tucked back to their bodies.

The last three shots were taken in the backyard. The bluebirds have returned (sometimes we wonder if they really ever leave). They're scoping out territory in the backyard and waiting for warmer weather. The pussy will has been waiting to bloom. It got all fuzzy and cute... and then the weather got cold. Hell, it even snowed one day. Yes, there was the magnolia bush out back covered with buds which were blanketed with snow. Really, weather, c'mon, enough with winter already.

It seems to be warming up, so hopefully I can ditch this cold... particularly by Friday - because that's the Art Walk. If you're anywhere near Tecumseh, Michigan: Friday 29 April 2011 is the annual Tecumseh Art Walk. I'll be at Timeless Stitches, so if you're in town, then please stop by. The event is 6-9pm. Hopefully this year it doesn't rain!

Picture Story: spring sing

2011-04-16T02:36:00.000-07:00

Technically, I was on vacation this week. Vacation, as it turns out was mostly about sleeping and not having to wake up at the sound of an alarm clock. Plus it was about getting some work done on some projects that I have been procrastinating on for a long long time. I am a hell of a procrastinator. But, I did finally take all the snowflakes down — my winter decor consists of my ginormous collection of plastic / resin glitter covered snowflakes (see this post for my hilarious prediction).

Anyway, now I have to hang the butterflies and the hummingbirds... which I just haven't quite gotten to yet.

In the mean time — a picture story: spring sing.
I finished this illustration in the spring of 2009 (see last graphic), but I probably technically started it around 2005. This first graphic is actually a painting. It was painted with acrylics with details done in prismacolor on illustration board. The original is actually 11X14 inches. But via the magic of a scan and a size format change in photoshop it became an 8X10.

What I actually did was I flipped the image horizontally, and then lightened the resized copy of the painting in photoshop and then printed that and drew an outline around everything. Then I scanned that outlined copy and adjusted the file until all I had was the outline on a white background.

When I have an inked copy, then I make a sample fill of every part as a separate layer. So I fill all the tulip flowers with one color, all the petals with one color, the grass, the tree trunks, the leaves, the sky, and the clouds. Because I am going to use scans or paintings or drawings, or digital photos to actually fill in the those parts.

This is a size reformatted portion of a scan of an 11X14 acrylic painting called "geranium sunrise." It's what would eventually become the background of "spring sing." Of course, I had to reformat it 8X10, and then I would go on to lighten the entire painting by creating a layer of white, playing with its opacity and then merging that to the layer of the scan of the painting.

The yellow warblers that appear in the painting were drawn separately. They were drawn with prismacolors. That drawing was scanned, and all the white space was removed. The clouds were created using the paintbrush in photoshop, and then using a layer fill style over the background. The sheet music that appears in the background was scanned, and then manipulated using the warp tool so that it is wavy instead of linear.

The leaves of the trees were created from a digital photo that was manipulated and resized. The original image is actually of maple leaves on the ground. The tree trunks were created from a layer I created by layering several different colors with several different brushes and then using filtering effects in photoshop.

The grass was also created from a photo. It's actually a picture of the grass in my neighbors yard (and this particular photo has been used in a number of my illustrations when I need grass, which I always think is kind of funny since my neighbor will mow his lawn on a diagonal and this shot is clearly of some grass that hasn't yet been cut) . The tulip flowers and leaves were both taken from the same scan that was used for the background.

And through the magic of layering styles all these things come together to create the illustration. You can see the finished piece here in my "sarahkdesigns" shop on Etsy.

If you're anywhere near Tecumseh, Michigan: Friday 29 April 2011 is the annual Tecumseh Art Walk. I'll be at Timeless Stitches, so if you're in town, then please stop by. The event is 6-9pm.

I hope everyone is enjoying their spring : )

paper bowls & nbc green is universal contest

2011-04-09T06:00:00.001-07:00

So, a couple weeks ago I went on a handmade recycled paper bowl extravaganza...
And I think I made 36 bowls. At least, when I counted the ones I had finished that's the number that I came up with.

Bowls are a process. First the paper has to be torn and soaked in water. Then that has to be blended. Then the paper has to be strained through a screen, then that has to be pressed into a mould. Then, using a wash cloth, as much excess water as possible needs to be pressed out. Then they need to be left alone for a few days to dry. Once they're dry - they need to be painted on the inside, and then that needs a day to dry. And then they need to be painted on the outside, and that takes at least 2 coats and a day to dry... and then the tree needs to be painted.
It's a time consuming process I suppose.

So, anyway, they're all finally done. They've been painted, signed, and dated, and titled...

There's always something strangely anti-climactic about finishing a project. Because, well, now they all sit in 2 piles in my office... as if to remind me that I need to photograph them in order to list them. So, while they're done, there's still more to do.

But they're done. So, now it's time to move onto one of those other 3-5 projects I have been procrastinating on. Ha.

Anyway, there is a contest over at NBC: http://www.greenisuniversal-reuse.com/
Because they're promoting recycling, upcycling, and reuse. So, this is my entry:
http://www.greenisuniversal-reuse.com/home-decor/recycled-handmade-paper-bowl
(that one is also my favorite... well, one of my favorites)

Anyway, I encourage you all to register & vote ; )

Oh, and in the event that no one has ever seen these before - I sell the bowls in my "sarahknight" shop on etsy. You can find them here

weekend watercolors

2011-03-30T17:54:00.000-07:00

On a leisurely Saturday a few weeks ago I sat down with the remainder of a pad of watercolor paper and got out my watercolors and a couple bottles of acrylic paint and sat down on the floor in front of the paper cutter. I had this idea floating around in my head that I wanted to experiment with mixing some very watered-down acrylic paint with my watercolor pigment and see what happened. You know, there's a first time for everything.

I also finally got around to watching "Shutter" from the OnDemand menu. "Shutter" was one of those movies that when I saw the preview commercials on tv — I was like "oh, I want to see! that" Of course, I never get around to actually going to the movies. So, either I'll see it 5 years later at 2am sometime on cable, or maybe I'll find the dvd bin at Walmart. So, yes, there it was on the OnDemand menu, beckoning me. I like horror movies and well, I watch Joshua Jackson as Peter on"Fringe" (which is an awesome tv series).

So, I sat down in front of the papercutter with my paints and began experimenting. For the most part, I kept the two types of pigment completely separate from one another until I had them on the paper. Most of the acrylic paint I was using was either white or a milky sage green color. So, there was a sort of pastel / spring feel to all the paintings. Plus the other colors I was using were blue / periwinkle / purple / rose colored, so there wasn't like red or orange or anything dark or citrusy. The colors are saturated, and yet the tones are muted... at least — that's what I think of as "muted."

I suppose it's kind of strange to know that I make such colorful springy paintings while watching scary movies...

As usual, I sat down and named them. And generally, this is when I realize there are a couple of them that I can just never part with... and those end up is a special pile.
And sometimes when some time has passed and I'm sitting there listing them I think "really, this didn't end up in the keep pile?"

This is one of the ones that I'd probably rather keep. Of course, purple is my favorite color : )

“midnight plum phantasmagoria”

These are the others:
“mulberry mauve morning”
“violet morning glory”
“violet morning dew”

Look into the sun

2011-03-26T02:19:00.001-07:00

I think the first song that I truly realized was my favorite song was "Jack and Diane" by John Cougar Mellancamp (because he was JCM back then). Now, I was about 8 years old at the time — 6 years after it came out in 1982. I think I had to ask my Mom what 'Bobbie Brooks' were.

Anyway, by the time I was 11 Pink Floyd was my favorite band. I distinctly remember being on the playground when Lisa & Jessica announced that they had tickets to the New Kids on the Block concert and me realizing that I had to act excited for them. My parents had the good fortune of never having had to take me to a concert. Pink Floyd toured at some point in the early nineties, and believe me - as an adolescent I tried very hard to win the free tickets from the radio station - because I had no money to buy them and my parents sure as hell weren't getting them for me. Usually, when attempting to win tickets I'd just get the busy signal - since the only rock stations were long distance... but there's still something exciting about being caller number 11 when you're 14.

Needless to say, many years later as an adult I shelled out a lot of money to sit in the nosebleed seats to see Roger Waters in concert. And I knew every frigging song.

Anyway, when I was a teenager was when music transitioned from being on cassette tape to CDs. Remember when CDs were the new thing? Yeah, way back when. So, a lot of the first CDs I bought were by this little band you may have heard of: Jethro Tull.

As a teenager who wasn't being 100% contemporary with music, I listened to a lot of classic rock, so I was familiar with the Tull, as it were. And it was around this time that WRIF would occasionally do something over the weekend where they would play the entire catalog of a band in alphabetical order (I remember them doing Rush, Pink Floyd, and Jethro Tull; I'm sure there were others, but those were in my top 10 favorites). So, as someone who wasn't actually alive when all their albums came out - I got to hear their songs...

Anyway, I also bought a lot of Tull CDs because they were an economical $7.99 (at the time I was standing in Best Buy). When you're young and you have no job or allowance and you need to stretch that $20.00 from Grandma - that's like 2 Tull albums or 1 Oasis album plus maybe $6 + change. So, yeah, I own the majority of the Tull catalog.

Why am I rambling on about some old rock band that you may or may not care about? Because when I went on my paper bowl making extravaganza a few weeks ago I pulled out some early Tull on cd and listened to the albums all the way through. Ah, album rock. Particularly "This Was," "Benefit," and "Stand Up."

I've made a lot of artwork while listening to Jethro Tull actually, particularly their early stuff - because those albums just flow and I know every song. Anyway, there's a song on "Benefit" called "Look Into the Sun," and looking at the suns I tend to paint on my bowls reminds me of the song. Plus, I easily have it stuck in my head from listening to it while making the bowls. Oh, circular logic.

Anyway, the sun has always been there in my artwork.
So, these are some shots of some of the new menagerie of bowls in progress...

inside of a small bowl

the inside of a large bowl

another large bowl

I still have to paint trees on them, which is, perhaps, the most tedious part. Trees require the smallest brushes and the most runny paint, and the surface of the inside of the bowls is lumpy... and well, sometimes there are good branches, and sometimes there are accidents, and sometimes nature just takes its course.

To see finished bowls, look here.

"So when you look into the sun
and see the words you could have sung:
It's not too late, only begun.
Look into the sun."
Ian Anderson

Papermaking

2011-03-19T01:01:00.000-07:00

It was a busy week between work and life. Mostly it was a week filled with paper. Technically, given that I draw - most weeks are filled with paper. But this was a week filled with papermaking.

Handmade paper was something I was introduced to in 4-H, which I was involved in as a child.
Anyway, once every couple of years the desire to make something out of paper pulp occurs to me. My renewed activity with this craft happened last summer (as evidenced by this post). And I've been putting the bowls in my etsy shop, and amusingly enough I realized a few weeks ago that my stash of paper bowls was getting really low.

So, like a squirrel with nuts I have been accumulating 'unwanted paper' and tearing it into bits and soaking that in water, so that I can then put it in the blender and make the pulp. And this past week there was a papermaking / bowl moulding extravaganza that took place in Casa Del Knight. And then there were bowls of paper in front of all the heat vents because this is Michigan and it's still cold...

Torn up bits of paper soaking in water.

Pulp!

The bottom of a 'large' bowl.

The unpainted inside.

A stack of unpainted bowls.

And, yes, more bowls.

I have another batch of paper that I need to blend into pulp, but this weekend I think I'm going to try to get some of these painted. Of course, that's the plan, and as one of those free-spirited artsy people — I'm not to spectacular when it comes to staying on plan... so, maybe I'll start or finish some other project, who knows.

To see what bowls look like when they're finished click here.

Have a fun & productive weekend!

Is it spring yet?

2011-03-12T00:56:00.000-08:00

I wish it was — spring. It snowed again this week, the day after we had fog as thick as pea soup (at least, I assume it was as thick as pea soup — I've never had pea soup, I've never really been into peas). So, yes, hey there Weather, I'm ready for spring if you're getting tired or being all wintery.

The calendar indicates that Spring begins on Sunday, 20 March 2011. Living in Michigan — I'm skeptical of this. I suspect it will still snow in April. However, in the spirit of spring, and well, because I was working on cards this week, I've been rifling through my photography.

Last year I decided to take a lot of pictures of the Bradford pear tree blossoms. And so, they sit there in my iphoto, and every now and then I look through them. And a few weeks ago I decided to experiment with the Photoshop, as it were.

When I take pictures, I don't exactly consciously think about all the things that go into an image, like composition, placement, focus, visual focus, balance, color, lighting, atmosphere, oh, and then all those 'photography' concepts. Unconsciously, I'm sure they occur to me. But, a lot of the time when I'm taking pictures the immediate thought is: hey, green focus box, let's come up now, buddy.

When I was taking the pictures of the Bradford pear I wanted close-ups of the blossoms, and was hoping for some cool looking bokeh in the background. The lighting is provided by nature. The best natural light for photography happens in the morning, it changes by the season, but it's after sun-up but before noon. At noon, when the sun is high — the shadows will be severe. When the lighting is atmospheric — the shadows are less severe. Obviously, if you're going for high contrast, then this wouldn't be the lighting for you.

So, yeah, blossom close-ups, bokeh, atmospheric light. My camera is an autofocus, and I just go with that. It's digital, if I don't think it focused the way I wanted, then I can just take more shots from the same angle. I have a memory card and plenty of rechargeable batteries.

The first shot is the original photograph. The second shot is the result of cropping, manual color adjustment, manual brightness adjustment, manual application of a filter, and layering effects.

before

"spring nostalgia" by Sarah Knight

There's something about the way the background blurs, combined with the color palette, and the subject matter that just reminds me of images from long before I was born (yes, I know, to some of you I am so just a kid) but to me the image I created reminds me of sixties photography. You can find "spring nostalgia" in my 'sarahknight' shop on etsy.

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Now, on a related but different note...
A large part of my week was consumed by the creation of an Etsy Team: Artists

It's a treasury team for Artists. If you've ever read my etsy profile, you may know that I've been making art since I was a toddler. So, I don't just think of art as paintings, drawings, sculptures, or statues. Photography is art. Collage is art. Prints are art. Illustration is art. I could rail off media all day long, but I think you get the point. Art isn't limited to media that happened to exist in the year 1200. Besides, there's ceramics, fiber art, embroidery, art jewelry, fashion art, domestic arts, etc. So, the Artists team is for folks on etsy who make art & are interested in promoting art through making 'artcentric' treasuries.

If you're interested, then come check us out.
And you can see some of our treasuries here.

Have a fun week, and find some art in something!

picture story: sublime limelight

2011-03-06T01:28:00.000-08:00

"sublime limelight"
salt on watercolor

I did this painting about 3 years ago. Being a "non-day planner" type of girl, there was a period of time in which I made things and didn't bother to date them. It happens quite often. It's kind of funny, because in the context of Art History - if you ever take an Art History class - part of one of your exams will be to memorize the artist, title, and date of a painting. We're all very familiar with "circa," aren't we?

So, this painting is c. 2008.

This painting amuses me. It amuses me, because, technically, it's upside down... and yet it isn't. This painting is from what is quite possibly my second installment of salt on watercolor paintings. The first installment was literally a series of experiments that I did during one of those semesters of Aqueous Media back in college (so, the first installment is c. 2000).

Anyway, the second installment of salt on watercolor paintings came to be as the result of happenstance. My grandmother always buys me some sort of art supplies for Christmas, usually they're kind of cheap, but it's better than getting socks or a sweater (because while I have a ridiculous amount of socks, I do not wear sweaters). So, the paint was just there, and apparently I just happened to have a pad of watercolor paper, and I had just opened an etsy shop, and I was starry-eyed at the concept of selling my stuff and supposed that I should probably try to sell some "original" artwork instead of just prints.

Anyway, the salt on watercolor thing occurred to me as an idea. I mean, I wouldn't become too attached to them, and I could just sell them (ha! I have a a pile of favorites). So, I sat down at the paper cutter and proceeded. They started out as being studies in color like this. But by the time I had gone through the entire pad, they ended up looking more like what I think of as an implicit landscape. Arbitrarily — if it's green on the bottom 20% to 40% of the painting, then it's a landscape. So, that first installment was 50/50 between just being color studies and implicit landscapes. And the piece that I ended up titling "sublime limelight" was kind of a transition point between the color studies and the implicit landscapes.

When I named the paintings, this was one I had to move to the back of the pile, because I had to determine which end was the top - the green or the lavender. Because I had no recollection of which was which from when I painted it, as often there is a lag between the creation of the paintings and me getting around to naming them. It is entirely possible that I have it upside down. Which, again, amuses me.

If it was an implicit landscape, then, yeah, it's upside down. But, I don't think it is. Still, it makes me smile. That and there are technically 3 colors of paint in this painting that aren't so much three colors of paint. The green color might have been almost straight from the tube unaltered color, but the lavender is an amalgam purple color, which was probably derived from some actual purple paint, a bit of any red that happened to be on the palette, and a smidge of cerulean as well as a helping of good old titanium white. This was one of my first unadulterated flings with adding white to my pigments and making them more opaque. You have to look really closely to find the periwinkle color, which occurs primarily because I used salt scraped from other paintings on this one.

And, yes, it is right side up, even if someday 100 years from now some Art Historian tries to insist that it isn't.

Plus, the title is derived from "Limelight" by Rush, which is one of my favorite bands; even if the lyrics of the song really have nothing to do with the content of the painting. Hey, Geddy Lee was my first rockstar crush. Never mind the fact that he's older than both my parents...

Have a lovely week, and remember to find amusement in something.

plasticity of abstraction

2011-03-03T07:06:00.001-08:00

This entry should really just be entitled "write something here." This is the entry that was and wasn't. Because this was the week that was and wasn't. It's winter, it's cold, the drive to work was icy, episodes of CSI were watched, I endeavored into the realm of constructing an idea for a project and then thinking about all the parts that would need to come together for it... I guess I'm still in the middle of that.

So, I was looking around the place for something that I could use for a blog entry. Given the volume of "stuff" I have, this really shouldn't be that difficult, but really, I just want to veg on the couch with the decorative throw and the remote control and do nothing.

So, here it is:

These are not paintings. These are not photos.

There are "artists" who are very much about the "process." I suppose I'm not so much one of them, which is not to say that I lack procedure — just that my procedure is not predicated on buying the most expensive or "professional" tools or media. I will not deny that there is something to be said for quality materials and tools. However, I own one "actual" paint palette (it's a tray for watercolors). Otherwise, every summer I relish in the fact that 'box stores' sell colorful non-microwavable plastic plates as though there is no end to plastic. Yes, I paint off of plastic plates.

The images in this entry are scans of some of the plastic plates I used this summer when I was painting the insides of my recycled paper bowls. In other words, that is the residue from these. I guess I'm not one of those "tidy" people who washes everything down after I use it, otherwise this would have been lost to the sink. I think dried paint looks kind of cool, which, I suppose is part of why I didn't bother to scrape these down or wash them off... that and they're cheap plastic plates, they were like 4 for $2.00 or something, it's not like I would even consider using them for food.

Of course, I just think they look cool. Beauty can be found in the most mundane circumstances.
Now, I should probably actually start working on that project that's floating around in my head before I forget it.

reflections in watercolor

2011-02-26T01:22:00.000-08:00

I am what I am, and I'd probably prefer not to think of myself as what I'm not.
That being said, sometimes I do think about the things that I don't do versus the things that I do happen to do. For instance, I'm not a "painting a day" adherent. I paint when I want to paint, and I don't when I don't. And generally, when I do paint, I tend to make like multiple paintings in a sitting. There's something about making art that needs to be inherent to me, not routine. It's not a this versus that kind of thing, it's just a who I am as a person kind of thing.

So, the thing I like about watercolors isn't so much painting "things" as it is playing with color and being pleasantly surprised. Watercolor (not unlike certain glazing techniques in ceramics) can be a semi-random process. Now, when I get out the paint and the brushes and the water and the salt and sit down, I usually sort of have an idea of what I was maybe thinking about doing, but then it depends on the colors that are already on the palette and then, well, I just sit there and paint and add more color or change colors or get into a mood or a movement and just go with it until there's no more paper or spots on the floor to put paintings to dry...

And it kind of happens like that last sentence - it just goes on until it stops.

I have a good gauge of color, and a reasonable idea of how the colors I have combined are going to look together, and yet, with my watercolor paintings there is always an element of surprise. And that's kind of the kismet of the thing: making something and being certain in knowing that the outcome isn't exact and yet it will probably be fantastically interesting.

With every batch of paintings I do, I always have favorites, this is one of them:

raspberry misty morning rain

Now, for the person who asked on the comments of my last entry:

"...wonder if you would tell me what you use salt for and what it does?"

When you apply salt to wet watercolor pigment it creates the 'fractal' effect you can see in the bottom half of that painting. See this detail. Basically, the salt crystals play with the pigment and the water and leave little 'star' patterns. For a matter of amusement, you may also notice that rock salt when dried on a sidewalk will also leave a similar pattern.

Now, if you look this up on watercolor painting tutorials it will tell you about creating stars or snowflakes or lichen or something. Let's just say I have a heavy hand with the salt and a heavy hand with the pigment — because I scrape my salt off with an old gift card, and always either wear sunglasses or avert my eyes when I do it. Safety first; that and my eyes are important.

There's a semi-amusing thing about this series of paintings (at least, to me there is) because when I had started painting I had the fleeting thought that I wasn't going to end up going full bore with the salt and that I was going to try to do something more oriented with droplets of pigment.... that didn't happen. I mean, the next painting I did was mostly based in white pigment, but by the time I had finished the rest of the paintings the next morning - everything was salted. This is probably why I don't "plan" things.

I suppose not planning in some respects can be construed as lowering the bar; so as to not have to suffer the indignity of not meeting expectations... but, I mean, as conceited as maybe this sounds, when I sit down to make something I do always expect it to be damned awesome. You know, it's not like I'm thinking "oh, this is going to suck." But really, when I sit down to do watercolors, I did kind of already know what I was going to do, I just like to let things take their course. As it turns out, I made 15 paintings that got progressively more salty as I went along. And I'm pretty happy with how all of them turned out.

Slowly, but surely, my new paintings will pop up here... (except for a couple of my favorites, which I just can't part with)

weekend watercolors

2011-02-20T02:53:00.000-08:00

I came home from work this weekend, and maybe in my mind I had constructed elaborate plans (well, I "planned" to work on a project). But then, I started vacuuming instead. I even went so far as to clean the bathroom. So, apparently, there was a part of my brain that decided against working on the project — because the project was certainly not house work...

So, I watched some tv and did some painting instead - watercolors. Now, I have this project floating around in my imagination that involves combing watercolors with prints, and I have a mental fascination with a certain technique with gouache... but neither of those were on the itinerary. Nope, this was straight up salt on watercolor.

I had watercolor sets when I was a kid - the kind with the little circles filled with paint in a neat little container. But I remember using markers more. To fulfill some sort of "painting" requirement for my BFA - I took "Aqueous Media" (2 semesters, no less). So, somewhere in my portfolio there are watercolors of pumpkins and nude people (although, oddly, no pumpkins with nude people, heh). And while I could do minimal color combinations just fine (only orange & blue, or purple & yellow, or red & green) well, I don't see the world in terms of "complimentary colors" and I never have. I see the idea of complimentary colors as being arbitrary. So, yeah, it was an exercise in aqueous media (which, btw, could have just been called "watercolors", it wasn't exactly like we did anything with gouache).

What I do distinctly remember was being told that we should avoid using the color black. when rendering shadows, and to just kind of avoid using black in general. I also remember thinking that "don't use black" thing was both stupid and absurd. I took "Aqueous Media" to fulfill a painting requirement in college, specifically because I didn't want to take "Painting" which, if I recall correctly, was mostly oil painting, which is something that has never held any charm for me. I really do think that portraiture in museums, particularly anything meant to be realistically representational is duller than absolute boredom. I didn't take Aqueous Media because I wanted to learn how to make watercolor paintings that looked like I had mastered "watercolor techniques" — I took it to avoid taking another class & to fulfill a requirement. Plus, watercolor paint & supplies were cheaper than oil painting supplies...

I've been drawing since I was 2 (or so says my Mother). Art is something that came inherently (unlike playing the piano or poker). So, my approach has always been to do it like a savant, not to grab a book and read a tutorial. Although I went to college where my actual skills were refined (which doesn't mean that I refused to learn anything or anything new there) - I didn't take Aqueous Media to learn how to make watercolors that are supposed to look like "watercolors." So, when I read things like this on wikipedia, I laugh; particularly the last paragraph.

While I did the exercises in Aqueous Media, they were just that: exercises.

Anyway, every time I pull out the watercolors and inevitably squeeze some black pigment out of the tube - I think of being told that I shouldn't and just inwardly chuckle. Rules, schmules.

So, I got out the tray (purchased on the basis of the supply list for Aqueous Media) which is always covered with dried paint. I filled up a faux tupperware bowl with some tap water (because it's not like I see the act of painting in ceremonial terms - any bowl that holds enough water will do). Got out the kleenex box full out paintbrushes which hangs around in various places. Put a fresh sheet of newsprint down on the paper cutter. Got the elaborate bowl I made in one of many semesters of ceramics which holds my salt (regular table salt mixed with sea salt mixed with used salt scraped off of previous paintings). And, of course, got out the paints, and sat down on the floor and commenced with the painting while watching the Simpsons on hulu & CSI reruns from onDemand.

The paintings sit on the floor to dry. And then I wait impatiently for paint to dry, and chuckle inwardly at the idea of waiting for paint to dry... And when they are finally dry, then I take an old gift card and scrape the salt off them (and then collect the salt debris and add it back to the bowl; the bowl sits on a shelf in front of a pile of art theory books along with a decorative resin turtle).

Watercolors - particularly the abstract nature of salt on watercolor - are always an interesting surprise, which is part of the appeal. There is a difference between the way the piece looks when the paint is still wet and how it appear when it's dry (particularly because I use a lot of color and I always use the "white" watercolor, which alters the opacity of the colors). As a general rule (and this isn't like the don't use black) - watercolors will dry darker and duller.

I suppose the paintings I make are perhaps an acquired taste or a specific taste, because, in all likelihood, I am never going to be one of those people who is compelled to make intricate photo realistic paintings with watercolor. And yet, through medium and technique, my paintings are intricate and meticulous even with all the factors of chance and happenstance. There is the combination of what is inherent and entropy.

There is no other painting medium (or pastels or colored pencils) that is going to produce this visual. In the end the painting is a painting, it is a visual thing.

You can check out some of my watercolors on my "sarahknight" shop on etsy.

yes, it's a bird feeder

2011-02-17T07:17:00.000-08:00

It's February in Michigan. And while the weather has temporarily calmed down — you know, it was a balmy 39˚F out yesterday — the scenery is still maybe a little bleak, or maybe I'm a little short on time to go wander around and take better photos.

There is a project that I started on 10 years ago that I never finished, and I'm engrossed in it at the moment. Every couple of years I return to this project, so time will tell if this is the time I actually just do it — finish it.

In the mean time, because I am a professional procrastinator, I finally put out some bird food. Well, that and as I said: t was a balmy 39˚F outside. Sorry birds, but when it's freezing it's just too damned cold for me to feed you — fly South.

Anyway, the crop of regulars showed up. There is a lone black-capped chickadee, the house finches, the gold finches, assorted sparrows, and the juncos.

Juncos are amusing birds. I've heard that they don't eat off of feeders - but that they scrounge around on the ground under the feeder. That was exactly what I saw when a small flock of them showed up yesterday. But they're making progress, at least one of them is. If the goldfinches and house finches can do it, then the juncos can learn it too (as evidenced by the last photo).

I like stuff

2011-02-13T02:15:00.000-08:00

Wikipedia could probably tell you all about the history of Valentines Day... and Google probably could point you in the direction. Admittedly, I'm not really a history buff. That doesn't mean that I hate facts, I'm just indifferent to some things.

Valentine's Day is about that heart shaped box of chocolates, and seeing pink and red and white and hearts everywhere. It's trying to remember expressions of love... it's not quite as much of an "invented" holiday as "Sweetest Day," but it's about consumerism nonetheless.

I'm a participating consumer; otherwise I'm indifferent to the concept of consumerism, because it's just not something I spend a lot of time thinking about. I buy groceries, I buy stuff, hell, I even like stuff. I distinctly remember my seventh grade English teacher telling us that "stuff" is a dead word. But well, *eyeroll,* that hasn't ever stopped me from using it.

I like stuff. Yes, I said it: I like stuff. I mean, you know, if you've looked at any of my previous entries then you may have noticed that I happen to make stuff. So, it's not out of the question that I like stuff. Plus this is a blog, so I need to write about stuff or post some pictures or something... and it's Valentine's Day time, so I guess it's time to talk about love or stuff like it.

I'm not terribly obsessed with Valentine's Day. I buy a heart-shaped box of chocolates, I get a box of heart-shaped chocolates, and if I'm feeling frisky, then maybe I remember to make a couple of greeting cards. BTW, I like eating chocolate.

So, this is a post about stuff I like. Particularly some stuff that I like that happens to be in my "office."

I enjoy knick knacks, or inappropriately appropriating objects as knick knacks. Many of my knick knacks are toys or things that are apparently supposed to be left out in your garden (where presumably the birds would do their business on them and the insects would crawl all over them). I have an infinite collection of lizards, turtles, and frogs (and the occasional bird). A few of them are legitimate knick knacks, the rest were apparently intended for the garden. The more realistic the replica animal - the better. So, these are some shots of my menagerie.

I like books by Hunter S. Thompson.
I like the music of Warren Zevon, Pink Floyd, Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchell, Everclear, John Denver, Rush, Jethro Tull, Bob Dylan...
I like listening to music I like.
I like watching tv.
I like doing nothing and imagining stories (which I believe they call day dreaming).
I like the color violet, and buying violet-colored things.
I like irises.
I like Coca Cola; regular Coke & Cherry Coke.
I like Mary Janes and striped socks.
I like those ridiculous and often gaudy patterned sheets from the seventies.
I like chocolate, particularly those Lindor bars.
I like coconut.
I like pleasantly warm weather.

I like a lot of things, as I imagine we all do, so listing them might get a little frivolous, but this was my "Valentines" theme post, so, I hope you take a moment to think about the stuff you like, and maybe remember why.

sale at sarahkdesigns

2011-02-11T05:12:00.000-08:00

8X10 Print Sale!
2-11-2011 to 2-13-2011

All 8X10 prints (regularly $15.00) are just $10.00 each this weekend only!

All orders placed during the sale will be shipped on Monday 2-14-2011.
come to SARAHKDESIGNS to view the inventory

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Yes, I'm having a sale. It's been one of those weeks. I blame the weather. It's been miserably cold here. So basically, every day was: get up just in time to eat dinner, eat dinner, feed the fish, get dressed, drive to work, work 8 hours, drive home, feed the fish, somehow spend 4 hours in front of the computer whilst 'watching' CSI reruns, feed the fish (they're well fed), get to bed an hour late in spite of not really doing anything... and get up to do it all over again... Lather, rinse, repeat.

Yes, it was one of those weeks.
This is my fish Ozzy essentially expressing the word "Meh." He's ready for the warm weather to commence as well...

Hopefully you had a busy (and yet well rested) & accomplishment-filled week.

snow pictorial

2011-02-05T16:25:00.001-08:00

So, yeah, it snowed... again.

I tried to have a sense of humor about it, I suppose. But really, now I hate snow. I've had enough. I don't want to spend any more time shoveling the driveway or that part in front of the mail box... or an extra half an hour driving to work, and another extra half an hour driving home. I really just want it to stop.

In the mean time, I suppose, I have hot chocolate and animal crackers. But really, I'm just ready for spring. (as recent additions to my "sarahknight" etsy shop can attest)

••∞•∞•∞••

Oh, but on a non-snow related note: I now have a Tumblr
You can find me at: http://sunshinesight.tumblr.com/

I'm still a technophobe, so honestly, I'm not quite sure what exactly the point of tumblr is. It seems like a middle point between twitter and a blog. Still, don't expect to find any nude photos there or anything.

••∞•∞•∞••

On an optimistic note:

new episode of "Supernatural" this week (a + that it wasn't pre-empted)
FX reruns "Archer" at 11pm on Saturdays - so I can actually watch it
my socks are all folded (so now I don't have to pick through the pile to find 2 that match)
Brett Dennen has a catchy new song which I keep getting stuck in my head.
Found Zachary mellowcreme "valentine mix" when I was browsing the Holiday candy aisle - yum

Picture Story: violet night

2011-02-04T08:14:00.000-08:00

It occurred to me when I was scanning my 11X14 acrylic paintings that I was inevitably going to be making new scans of paintings that I have used as backgrounds for my illustrations. Yes, that's part of the magic of photoshop — the painting I used as the background of an illustration is actually completely separate from the illustration. Mostly because while I render the vast majority of the 'parts' of my illustrations by hand - ultimately they are digital collages and assembled on the computer.

So, it took me a ponderous moment of searching, but I found the "violet night" background.

It is via the magic of photoshop that this painting became part of the background of this illustration:

"violet night"

"violet night" was created mostly out of the parts of other illustrations. It's just one of those compositions I assembled for the fun of it.

The irises are something I created for "purple martins & purple irises" which is an image I originally made for one of my calendars (it was for June, since that's when my irises bloom). Anyhow, the irises were originally a pen & ink drawing, which I 'filled' in photoshop — the petals were created from parts of a scan of a salt on watercolor painting and the leaves were created from a scan of an acrylic painting.

The luna moths came from a graphite pencil drawing that I had done as a teenager for the county fair. I scanned them into the computer, colorized them, printed that file, and then colored over it with prismacolors, and scanned that back into the computer. The luna moths are kind of the only part I formatted specifically for this illustration, even though they originated with another composition.

The starry sky came from the background I made for "deer in the winter woods." This illustration was the January picture for one of my calendars. I'm pretty sure the star is a vector graphic, which I spent many hours rotating and layering in a file. For violet night - I used the graphic as a layer over the scan of the painting, and then literally faded out half the graphic with the eraser tool.

Obviously, I color adjusted the scan of the painting that I inevitably used as a background, because, well, I wanted it to be a cooler and bluer shade of violet.

I admit, there are some illustrations that I like just a little bit more, and "violet night" is one of them. Probably mostly because that's my favorite shade of violet — that sort of milky bluish violet color.

pining for spring

2011-01-29T05:41:00.001-08:00

I'm ready for spring. The only kind of "snow" I want to see is flowering tree petals on the ground.

I did a bit of work a couple weeks ago on some "spring" photos and got a number of them up on Artfire. You can find the images here. Of course, right now when I look out my window - the Bradford pear tree is covered with snow...

How about an early spring this year? I'm tired of winter...

cold days are best spent indoors

2011-01-26T09:12:00.001-08:00

The world's blandest chili
Ingredients:

1 16oz can dark red kidney beans
1 16oz can mild chili beans
1 26oz can tomato soap
1 tbsp chili powder
1/2 tbsp Hungarian paprika
1/2 tsp red pepper
1/4 tsp allspice
1 lb ground chuck
1 8oz package shredded mild cheddar cheese
1/2 soup can of water

Brown ground chuck, drain grease. Add beans, add soup, add water. Stir. Add spices. Stir. Add generous handful of cheese. Stir until it melts. Serve garnished with cheese.

I'm sure this is full of calories and "bad" for me. But it's cold, and well, it's dinner. Plus, it's delicious, especially on a cold day in January.

I am the daughter of a craft project hoarder. My mother has hundreds of unfinished craft projects... and while I don't have hundreds, I do have a few. I did a bunch of paintings a few years ago for a project and just never got around to phase 2 of the project. So, they have been sitting in a pile in a cabinet in my office. They were sitting in a pile on a shelf in my office, but I "reorganized," so, yeah, they ended up in the cabinet... Not the greatest place to keep paintings.

So, I pulled them out, separated them from themselves... spent a morning with brushes and a bottle of alcohol and the exacto knife with the curved blade cleaning 'transfer' off their fronts (they're painted on illustration board; the backs are gessoed, the weight of the pile stuck blips of gesso onto the surface of the next painting...). I spent a morning scanning them (see last entry)... And yesterday I varnished them and signed them. Well, okay, there are still like 5 paintings I haven't scanned yet, but I got most of them.

So, now the place has that faint odor of varnish... I suppose I'll choose to think of that as the scent of accomplishment. It definitely feels more purposeful than shoveling the road out in front of the house - yes, it snowed again.

I'm ready for spring, how about you?

this post is "not exciting"

2011-01-23T07:33:00.000-08:00

I do a lot of things that I could only describe as "not exciting." And I spent the weekend doing "not exciting" things. While painting is fun, there is something ironically rewarding about the part right after the painting where I'm sitting there in my living room waiting for paint to dry while chuckling at the idea of waiting for paint to dry and trying not to act impatient about it... it's downright existential.

It'd be one thing if I was going to keep them all for myself, because, well, then I could just leave them be until I got around to framing them... but that's not how it works when you want to sell the things that you've made to other people.

So, I spent the weekend doing the "not exciting" task of burning files off my desktop onto cds in order to make more room on my desktop to scan my paintings... which in the circle of life will eventually need to be burned to disc so I can make more room for new things on the desktop. It's really quite "not exciting." But it is time consuming.

Yesterday I scanned, edited, and saved 13 watercolors (not unlike the detail pictured below), and this morning I scanned in 20 acrylic paintings. The thing about both of these endeavors is that the paintings are larger than the scanner bed so they have to be scanned in two parts and then I have to align those parts and mesh them together...

Are you bored to tears yet? ; )

(this is a little snippet from "astral indigo")

Yeah, it's not exciting (the post-painting process stuff), believe me. It's time consuming, but definitely not exciting.

Anyway, I have a project percolating in the back of my mind... something about doing watercolor painting over a print. I sat down this morning and sketched up a prototype for the "print" portion of this endeavor while finally watching the Johnny Depp version of "Alice in Wonderland." I like Johnny Depp. I can't say I'm an uber-Depp fan or anything, because I've never seen any of those Pirate movies (nor have I ever been able to convince or force myself to watch "What's eating Gilbert Grape") - but I do generally enjoy anything Johnny Depp or Tim Burton. So, yes, I know, I'm way late to the party when it comes to finally watching Alice on dvd (which I think has been hanging around the living room since at least September)... but somehow, this weekend was just right for it. Besides, my other movie choice involved homicidal clowns... apparently I was just not down with the idea of killer clowns this weekend.

Time will tell if I get on this current project - and finish it. Ironically, the acrylic paintings I scanned in this weekend were painted 4 years ago. I made them for a project that I just never quite got around to finishing... and now, I suppose, it's time to let them go. Eventually, they will appear in my "sarahknight" shop on etsy... that is, of course, after I type up the listings, calculate the shipping, and format graphics for the listings.

Yes, the painting part happens so fast... it's the post-painting activities that draw this out.

In the mean time, I look forward to season 2 of "Archer" this week. It's apparently my new favorite show. I caught a little marathon of it on FX a while back and I was smitten. Plus, new episodes of "Supernatural" return this week. And "Fringe" is back from the abyss of mid-season reruns and whatever happens to tv shows when they disappear in the middle of the holidays. Yes, I have the tv likes of a geeky college student, I know. I'm just not ready to start watching "Nova" yet...

I hope you have something keeping you busy during these dreadfully cold January days.

couch potato

2011-01-21T08:40:00.000-08:00

The head cold officially ate my week. I bought the sinus tabs, I bought the cold medicine, I drank orange juice like there was an orange juice fountain in my kitchen and I was very thirsty, I ate soup, I slept... and I still sort of have the cold. I did watch a lot of CSI reruns though, somewhere, somehow that must count as an accomplishment.

Yes, that really is my couch. I believe, technically, it's a Klobo. However, I upholstered it. Yes, I picked out that fabric. And I measured and cut out all the pieces, and I sewed the vast majority of it by hand on a muggy June evening while watching "Carolina Moon" and some other Nora Roberts movie from Lifetime on onDemand. I recall it distinctly. Mostly because the couch sat in pieces in my living room for about a month before I suddenly upholstered it that evening... oh, projects.

I'd like to thank LarimarLounge, I am totally honored that my "nest" photo was included in their collection, which then awesomely made the Artfire homepage! Very cool.

You can check out my Artfire shop here.
Hopefully, the cold passes soon... and I can get back to more productive activities than watching tv.

hibernation

2011-01-15T22:20:00.001-08:00

I was never a child who liked to take naps. When I was too young for school and was at home with my Mother, she used to try to sneak in a daily nap. Translation, as a 3 year old I was like "Sleep during the day? What, you mean peak playing hours? What about my dolls?" So, basically, as I recall these events I would lay down and wait for the sound of my mother's door closing, and then I would get up and play 'quietly.' This sleeping in the middle of the day thing never made sense to me... it still doesn't.

And yet, it's January. January isn't so much a time for napping as it is a time for 'hibernating.' I don't mean I go into my bedroom and sleep for a month, I just mean January is the month when I'm just tired.

It snows here in Michigan. And what that actually means is that it takes me an additional 20 to 30 minutes to drive to and from work, plus 5 minutes of scraping my car, plus me driving in my car with frozen fingers waiting for the 2 mile point when the heat might finally come up. In other words, a 35 minute drive just turned into an hour... cold weather = giant time suck.

I hate being cold. It just makes me cranky and tired (not unlike napping — which never made me feel refreshed, it just made me cranky; my brain chemicals don't like to be tricked with the prospect of sleep (8 hours) only to be pranked into wakefulness after an hour). Napping never worked for me, and I just find cold weather to be unbelievably irritable.

Anyway, one morning last week while I was watching CSI reruns on Spike tv, I did manage to crank out 15 new paintings. Which, of course, meant that I spent a day waiting for them to dry, spent a good hour 'naming' them, and then spent a morning & a half scanning them into the computer and saving them in 3 file formats after color correcting the scans. And then I varnished the paintings (another morning). And then I gessoed the backs to counteract warping (another morning). And then I printed out info sheets (artist, title, media, date) for the back. And then I remembered to stop at Walmart on my way home from work because I couldn't find a freaking glue stick, and then last night I glued the backs on all the paintings...

Considering how relatively quickly I can paint them, the process-y stuff after the painting part is enormously time consuming. Anyway, painting — or moreover: playing with color — makes me happy. So, I suppose that's my counter-January measure: colorful paintings.

I like color — as can be evidenced from the photo I took for the entry. My bedroom is actually lemon yellow, and those are, in fact, my sheets (300 thread count, from Target). I actually have 2 of my larger paintings hanging on the wall, one it very magenta-y and the other is peachy toned. Most of the 15 paintings I made last week were orange (except for the 2 blue ones). Apparently I was in an 'orange' mood, whatever that means.
Anyway, "astral orange sunshine" is one of the new ones, you can see it here.

Ironically, I seem to have contracted a cold: sore throat, cough, runny nose, weepy left eye... So, this morning I'll be going to the drugstore to acquire some more kleenex and stand in the pharmacy aisle for 20 minutes reading cough syrup boxes... and then buying some orange juice.

So, go have a big tall glass of vitamin C for me & take a nice long nap, maybe 8 hours?
; )

Christmas cookies... part 3

2011-01-06T05:44:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Part 3 of what I have otherwise come to characterize as the 5 hour cookie making extravaganza.
In the event that you missed out on Part 2 you can find it here.

So, yes, finally, these are the 135 cookies frosted in 16 different colors...

Yeah, that was a lot of cookies. But I only do it once a year. So, now I have 11 months until it's time to do it again :D

Christmas cookies... part 2

2011-01-02T01:33:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Part 2 of what I have otherwise come to characterize as the 5 hour cookie making extravaganza.
In the event that you had something to do yesterday (being that it was a holiday and all or something) and missed out on Part 1 you can find it here.

So, I suppose I should have posed this in the form of a question — as no one guessed how many cookies the sour cream cookie recipe yielded this year (except for my Mother when I asked her on the phone, she was off by 3) — but the recipe suggests that it makes about 10 dozen cookies. That's a lot of cookies. Generally, every year I count the cookies based on groupings of frosting color, and then add up those totals. Yes, Virginia, there is a Christmas cookie inventory.

This year (although my graphic only shows 12) I used 16 different colors of frosting. And the grand total was 135 cookies. Yes, one hundred and thirty-five cookies. In the approximate 2 hours it took me to listen to Van Halen's 5150 (three times) while cutting and baking them, I figured that maybe I'd make about 90 cookies... yeah, 135. It was a slight under-estimate on my part. You know, I was only off by a third... ; )

Every year I buy a sizable quantity of "nonpareil sprinkles." And every year I wonder why they're called "nonpareil" sprinkles... and usually don't bother to google it. Apparently, they're peerless — Ha! Yes, I know, one of the definitions is actually that nonpareil means sprinkles... Anyway, each of the 135 cookies is decorated with these little multicolor sugar balls.

So, when I was a kid, my mother used to make the frosting. And just like when my mother made the dough — she acted like this was the most difficult thing on earth. If only she had possessed a microwave and a pastry creamer — making these cookies would have taken much less effort... of course, she was still weirdly anal about making the dough thin, like as if she had amnesia about rolling out the previous year's cookie dough or something... let's just say, with Mom, all of these steps seemed to take an unnecessary amount of time. I suppose we're lucky she didn't get out a ruler and attempt to measure whether or not the dough had been rolled out to 1/8 inch thickness...

I bought vanilla frosting in a plastic jar and added powdered sugar and milk to it. It was much less difficult than adding milk to an entire bag of powdered sugar... and no one who ate my cookies complained about the frosting. Oh, modern convenience.

So, armed with 2 multi-packs of food coloring (one regular, one neon), my giant bowl of frosting, a soup bowl, the "happy-go-lucky" knife (it's a butter knife), my container of sprinkles, and an old foil pie pan (to catch the excess sprinkles), I began the 2 hour long cookie decorating ritual.

Each cookie would be frosted and sprinkled. I suppose, if I hadn't kept pausing to document the process with photos, this might have gone quicker...

Anyway, I caught up on the season 3 2-part finale of "Leverage" while I was performing the 2 hour long cookie decorating ritual. Apparently, I almost missed the last 4 episodes of season 3 of Leverage due to the fact that I was watching Dexter on Sunday nights and totally forgot when the season would start back up when it went on hiatus in September or August... I really wish they wouldn't do that with shows — because I totally forget when they're going to start back up... but it did prevent me from listening to "5150" for a fourth and fifth time... Otherwise, every time I ate a cookie I may have had to have broken into a rendition of "Summer Nights." :D

Anyway, Damien Moreau was foiled, and I frosted 135 cookies in 16 different colors (there are 2 shades of blue & 2 shades of purple missing from that image) and then photographed them from all manner of angles, and then left them out for the requisite 1-2 hours on the kitchen table so that the frosting would dry. It's very important for the frosting to dry. Otherwise, when the cookies are stacked in the container — they will form one giant messy inseparable cookie clump, and the 5 hours it took to make them from start to finish will seem like kind of a waste...

The next installment will actually contain photos of the 135 frosted & decorated cookies : )

Christmas cookies... part 1

2010-12-31T23:26:00.001-08:00

Okay, while still working a 40 hour week I took a 'vacation.' Which basically means that for a week I came home from work and just vegged in front of the television with my sketchbook and took some quality time with some CSI reruns to try to figure out what projects I want to attempt in the next year...

Anyway, I've taken my week to recharge and relax, so now it's time to get back to the routine. Christmas may be over, but aside from cleaning, the last project I completed was the annual creation of the batch of Christmas cookies.

It actually only took me 5 hours to make them this year. Heh, heh. So, even though Christmas has passed, and I literally ate the last cookie yesterday morning: on with the Christmas cookies!

They're actually sour cream cookies. The recipe apparently came from my grandma, but you can find it online here. I'm not sure where that thing about the raisins comes from (it's not in Grandma's recipe, but anyway)...

The recipe is supposed to make about 10 dozen cookies.

The first hour of my 5 hour cookie making extravaganza was spent making the dough. I decided to microwave the shortening for about 30 seconds this year to soften it up. It definitely made the "creaming" process easier. I didn't even have to break out the pastry creamer. As usual, I skipped the part about sticking the batter in the fridge (my time is limited).

Every year I crank up the tunes while cutting and baking the cookies. Usually I manage to listen to some Warren Zevon and "American Pie" (the album) by Don McLean. When I was a kid we used to listen to that record when we were "helping" our Mother decorate the Christmas tree. Time has colored history, and I doubt she remembers this, but American Pie was a welcome retreat from her terrible Christmas records. Every time I hear the Little Drummer Boy — I groan. I am not a fan of Christmas songs outside of John Lennon and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. Eartha Kit's rendition of "Santa Baby" makes me want to find every copy of that song and obliterate them from earth...

Anyway, this year, since I'm pretty sure "American Pie" is out in the car — the cookies were cut & baked to the dulcet tones of Sammy Hagar's incarnation of Van Halen, more specifically "5150." Yes, I know, Van Hagar just brightens the holidays :D Besides, the CD was sitting beside the CD player, and the only other viable option was "Dark Side of the Moon" — which is not really Christmas music.

Anyway, check back for the next installment when I reveal how many cookies this recipe yielded this year :D

Are you ready for Christmas?

2010-12-18T05:36:00.000-08:00

In the event that this is my only blog entry before Christmas:

Have a Merry Christmas!
&
Happy Holidays for all you non-denominational folks!

I have to work every day this week, so as per the usual, all non-working / non-sleeping hours will be spent finishing whatever it is I was making for Christmas... and by the time Christmas finally arrives, I will be exhausted. At least I only have 2 graphics to finish for the traditional family calendar, the one shown in this blog entry is one of them. I'm currently waffling on whether or not there should be ornaments or lights on the tree or something... Surely, I will change my mind 5 or 6 times in the next 6 days.

I also apparently have a field of poppies to draw, which is what's holding up the other graphic, since I have all the other parts for that one complete.

Tomorrow morning I think I'm going to come home and make the traditional ridiculously large quantity of christmas cookies, so at least there'll be something to snack on while I'm wishing I had a clone who really really likes to work 10 consecutive days in a row all the way up to Christmas. That, of course, would be in addition to my other clone who also really really likes to tidy up :D Oh, imaginary clones...

These are some shots from last year's cookies.

The recipe makes at least 80 cookies. Excessive? Perhaps. But it's a tradition. Plus I usually end up frosting them in about 12 different colors (and sometimes more than 12). Yes, I am one of those people that owns not only the 4 basic colors of food dye, but also the neon pack. I just keep adding a little more color & a little more white frosting to my bowl until it's time to move onto the next color... it satisfies my inner artist, I suppose.

Anyway, have a Merry Christmas! And you only have 7 days, so get cracking and get your stuff done!

snow...

2010-12-13T07:57:00.000-08:00

Oh, snow.
Which quickly turns into "ugh, snow."

The first time it snows, and it isn't that powdery stuff that comes with frigid temperatures, it's kind of pretty. In a different time, under different circumstances, I might find snow delightful... but I don't.

It was fun & wonderful for a while when it was falling from the sky like a scene from a Christmas card... and that's when I took these shots.

As you can see, it was still very wet. And I was at home. Hence the relative mundanity of spruces and the apple tree covered with lichen covered with snow.

But then it snowed all day, and I had to drive to work in the snow, and it was really apparent that no one bothered to plow anything (proficiently). And then I drove home from work. Let's just say that US 12 was a sheet of ice and we were doing an average of 30MPH (on the 'country highway' part), crawling around each of the 6 curves, avoiding that tree that toppled into the road, and watching the traffic in the other direction come to a complete stop on the highway (not for an accident, but for an ice covered curve).

Snow is fun & pretty if you don't have to drive in it in an area where the road commission didn't bother to take care of the roads.

If it all melted, that'd be great.
I'm enjoying a cup of dark hot chocolate as I type this and thinking about how tired I am of spending twice the amount of time to make one trip to work. Of course, this is just the first day.

Ugh, snow.

If you have warm snow-free weather wherever you are (and it isn't like monsoon season) then relish in your good fortune and easy travels.

Sidewalk tourism: tree bark

2010-12-08T01:52:00.001-08:00

It's cold here now, so, outdoor photography has pretty much ceased. I really don't like being cold, so the less time I spend in the cold — the happier I am.

Anyhow, every year when I go out on treks of sidewalk tourism — along with photographing leaves and flowers — I also take pictures of tree bark. I'm sure this must seem very weird to anyone who sits on their porch or in their home who happens to be watching me do this. Of course, I'm sure it also seems weird that I'm taking pictures of the leaves on their tree too. Apparently photography is a weird hobby when not being done at a nature sanctuary or a tourist attraction or a family gathering...

I never sat down in school or at home and learned to identify plants, so half the time I have to ask someone what it actually is that I have taken a picture of. I know this is a birch, a pine, and a sycamore respectively, but I'm not all too particular with my tree types or identifications... although, apparently there are a lot of sycamores in town, as well as maples... but not too many birch trees. There aren't a lot of oaks either.

Photographing tree bark was actually something I started doing for my Christmas cards. I thought it would look cool as a background. And the process of doing it actually taught me how to use my camera more effectively. Let's say my first sets of photos were annoyingly out of focus, since the camera is one of those autofocus digitals, and I had yet to figure out to flip through the settings to find the "close up." Once I had this figured out, the picture quality improved dramatically.
You can check out my cards here:
birches | sycamores | more birches | variety of barks

Holy cow, it's December, and I have like 2 weeks to finish 4 graphics for the family calendar! Eek! No matter how far ahead I have attempted to plan, this happens every year. So, I hope you're all out & about & getting ready for the holidays in spite of the cold!
: )

let it snow

2010-12-03T09:49:00.000-08:00

I feel like I need a note from my mom, something that says tomorrow I'll visit a cajillion blogs, but today Sarah is being analog and needs to stay off the computer and go to bed on time.

Yeah, it's been a busy and sleepless week. And holy crap: it's December! How did that happen? November, where did you go? I have 4 graphics to create for a calendar and Christmas gifts to figure out... I think I need 30 more days and to figure out where I can find some cheap peanut brittle.

Anyway, I spent the morning catching up on some beloved reruns on the television while putting up the winter decorations (which I may get around to taking down approximately around April). I literally took the hummingbirds & butterflies down a couple days ago and it snowed for the first time. Appropriately, my winter decorations are snowflakes.

And as usual, I got halfway through actually putting them all up.
I have a collection of snowflakes. Most of them are plastic or resin and covered with glitter, some of them are metal or wire or have mirrors or rhinestones. The vast majority of them are unique (in that mass produced holiday decorations can be 'unique') - in other words, it's not like I just went to the store and bought the package with 10 of the same snowflakes in it 10 times over. No, I have about a hundred snowflakes, and 90% of them are not multiples.

I hang them from the ceiling, which means that each snowflake is strung on fishing line. Now, if I was "organized" — then I would probably possess some sort of box with dividers in it so that when I finally get off my lazy bum and take them down well after spring has started— well, they'd be neat and organized and I could just plow through hanging them. Pfft, where's the fun in that? Besides, it sounds like work.

No, these things go in a plastic bin, so every year there is a comedy routine involved in separating them from themselves, because the fishing line somehow gets tangled... I pick up 1 snowflake and end up holding a clump. Yes, it's silly, and probably time consuming, and yet amusing enough that I cannot be bothered to buy one of those ornament boxes with the dividers.

So, I'm covered with glitter, the floor is covered with glitter, and so far there was only one "clump" that I had to separate with scissors...

Hopefully tomorrow I'll be done, and then I have to vacuum. And even then everything will still be covered with glitter.

Hopefully, your home is decorated for the holidays : )

Christmas card giveaway

2010-11-30T01:30:00.000-08:00

The holidays are over, right? I don't have to make sure I didn't set the house on fire cooking the turkey or wonder what in the world happened to that extra can of whole cranberry sauce that I was sure I bought until I was in the kitchen rummaging through the cupboards pondering where I could have possibly put it (only to find it in the trunk of my car the next day)...

It's Tuesday now, and I finally got my make-up sleep for the holiday.

Anyhow, Christmas is around the corner, and I design snowflakes & make Christmas cards — so it's time for a giveaway.

Up for the taking are 8 snowflake Christmas cards (the ones pictured above; the winner gets 4 of each design)

The cards measure 4.25 X 5.5 inches & come with envelopes.

The message inside of the cards reads: Have a lovely Holiday Season! Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!
The message is printed in violet colored ink in a cursive style font.
(wanna see: click here)

To enter:
send an email to sarkni@live.com with the word "giveaway" in the title of the email.

The names of the entrants will be written on paper, and one will be drawn from a vessel of some sort. The drawing is this Friday (3 December 2010). I will then email the winner, because, obviously, in order to send you the cards — I need your address, and I don't expect anyone to publicly declare that sort of thing in a blog post, hence the relative privacy of email.

I don't have a mailing list, newsletter, or forward email addresses, or anything spammy like that. The email is exclusively for the giveaway.

Happy Thanksgiving

2010-11-24T04:09:00.000-08:00

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Eat, drink, be merry, but mostly eat.

I spent a good portion of the morning making food - and I look forward to eating leftover turkey for a week : )

Autumn Leaves: more of my favorite maple

2010-11-23T04:30:00.000-08:00

Please excuse my brevity and / or lack of posts this week. It is, as perhaps everyone knows, Thanksgiving week here in the States. I have to go procure a frozen turkey, get those last odds & ends for various family dinners that I haven't yet gotten, and then tomorrow I have to make a bunch of food... and then turn around and do it again on Friday. On top of that, by Thursday morning I will have worked 8 days in a row...

I would like to see a nap in my future.

Anyway, these are some more shots of my favorite maple...

Yeah, I took like 60 shots of this tree — hey, it was a cool looking tree.

Anyway, I hope you all have lovely Thanksgivings. Hopefully, there are no food catastrophes or mishaps.

If you enjoy cynicism or sarcasm: read on... otherwise, I am about to be snarky (it's working 8 days in a row with no days off coming up on a series of dinners that is making me neurotic)

This Thanksgiving my inner-cynic is hoping that some of the people on my Dad's side of the family + extended family will have sharpened up on their culinary skills. It's not that I'm a food snob, but if you're going to bring something to what is essentially a potluck, then it should be edible without hassle. When a steak knife with teeth is required to cut your "home-made" apple pie, this is a learning moment. You should feel a little embarrassed looking at the mess in the pie plate. You cannot add extra water to pie crust (whether it's regular or dutch) it just turns into cement.

I'm serious, this has actually happened multiple years in a row: apple pie that cannot be cut with an ordinary knife. And I sit there at the table and wonder how hard it could possibly be to make apple pie. And I say this as someone who has made a number of pies in my day (in fact, I have made apple pies). Because if we can't crack the crust of your pie with a regular knife, how the hell is a fork supposed to tackle this problem once its on my plate? Just ponder this with me for a moment (and laugh). I mean, there is no shame in walking into the grocery store and walking out either with a frozen pie shell or Betty Crocker pie crust mix in a box, and then following the directions. Hell, apple pie filling in a can - have at it.

I'm cynical, but honestly, I don't understand how I'm supposed to appreciate the "hand-made" effort that went into a food item that in the end is inedible, especially when it's apple pie of all things...

And then there's Grandma's new found recipe for "chocolate pie." I wish Grandma would lose the recipe for chocolate pie, or that someone would have the heart to tell her that it's terrible and that in her 70+ years on this planet she has made some excellent food items, but this is not one of them. You know, I like those frozen triangular patties of fish (the ones that come in the blue box) — but I also know they're 'horrible,' and I only buy about 4 boxes of them a year.

You might be thinking — chocolate pie — that sounds fabulous. Sure, it does. I mean, there's like chocolate cream pie, Boston cream pie, chocolate mousse pie, chocolate pudding pie, chocolate cheesecake... but this chocolate pie is none of these things. It's like if you could suck all the fun, taste, and chewy-deliciousness out of a brownie - and then throw that in a pie shell. It barely tastes like chocolate, it isn't chewy, it crumbles apart, and like the aforementioned apple pie - it's a mess to cut.

Every time we have an event and this "chocolate pie" thing appears, I want to run screaming in the other direction.

Don't get me wrong, I have made some terrible food blunders in my day... there was that time when I tried some recipe involving cake mix without making it as cake mix — it was terrible. It has not since re-appeared in my kitchen... So, yes, figuratively, my fingers are crossed that cement-crust apple pie and chocolate pie will not be appearing on Thanksgiving day.

Don't get me wrong, I am being snarky, but man, do I hope Thanksgiving goes off without the same weirdly annoying dessert blunders this year... and in the even that it doesn't, in spite of the fact that I'm working 8 days in a row - I am bringing a pie. All things left to chance, 1 out of 3 desserts will be sliced without turning into a mess and have an edible crust. How do I know this? Because my pie filling comes from a can, and because graham crackers + butter is pretty hard to screw up. When all is said and done, the thing that matters most about a food item is that it tastes good and you enjoyed eating it, without guilt, shame, hassle, or having to use inappropriate utensils to apportion it.

Yes, I am confident in my ability to follow the directions on the can.
--------
Anyway, on Friday is when I put on Thanksgiving. The menu is as follows:
• turkey
• bread stuffing (bread cubed, craisins, diced apple, onion, celery, sage, parsley, chicken broth)
• pink jello salad (strawberry jello, sour cream, whipped cream, pineapple + coconut)
• cranberry sauce salad (whole cranberry sauce, raspberry jello, diced apple, walnuts)
• Betty Crocker cheesy scalloped potatoes
• Betty Crocker cranberry-orangebread + cream cheese
• Pumpkin pie / cheese cake hybrid (garnished with walnuts) for dessert

Anyway, we'll be eating Turkey for the next week...
Enjoy your Thanksgiving — I hope your food is good and edible, and hassle free.

New Snowflakes

2010-11-19T06:14:00.000-08:00

September is when I'm supposed to get all the "Christmas stuff" done... and that never happens. I think I'm on year five of this pattern. So, it's mid-November, and I finally sat down on the couch and watched M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening." Yeah, clearly I'm a bit behind on my bad movies... that and it beckoned me from the cheap DVD bin at Walmart. The funny thing is, I generally like M. Night Shyamalan movies, but this one - I think I wanted a plant to reach out and strangle Mark Wahlburg by the end of the movie...

Anyway, the point is that popping in a movie that I had paid for was incentive to actually sit there on the couch and fill in an entire snowflake template, which is what I did.

I now have at least 16 new snowflakes for this year — TA-DAH:

I think (actually — I know) I have now designed over 100 snowflakes in the span of 5 years.
You can see 94 of my designs in the listings in my "sarahknight" shop on etsy: snowflake prints
They're spread out in 3 'templates' — 1 | 2 | 3

Are you getting ready for Christmas? Eef, I still have 4 graphics to produce for the holiday calendar. I so need a clone, specifically one that likes to do work.

: )

Autumn Leaves: colorful still

2010-11-16T03:45:00.001-08:00

I think these are some shots from Saline. I took a lot of photos, so it's iffy sometimes if I remember where they were.

It's been a busy week so far (yes, I know, it's Tuesday). I spent 2 of the last 3 days coming home from work to then spend my awake time filling orders, printing things, packing them, and finally driving off to the post office just to come home and head for bed. So, my scenery has pretty much been the printer, the other printer, the other printer (is 3 printers really that excessive?), the paper cutter, and my beloved imac.

I just needed a little change of scenery.
That and last night I literally had a dream about getting in bed and trying to fall asleep. I'm sure dreaming about going to sleep is my unconscious mind trying to tell me something...
Who needs sleep?

I'm a glutton though, so if you're looking for something colorful & whimsical, then stop by:

sarahkdesigns | sarahknight | sunshinesight

Sidewalk tourism: heirloom pumpkins again

2010-11-14T05:14:00.000-08:00

This post is a sequel to my previous post about the heirloom pumpkin pile (which can be found here).
I took a lot of pictures of those pumpkins & squashes... I mean a lot. And then I went back and took some more photos a couple weeks later. And eventually I went back and dropped off some prints of some of the pics I had taken.

Anyway, since I do all of my wandering around in town where there are sidewalks (on which people presumably wander) - well, it's in town. There are a lot of two story houses with fancy architecture and tiny manicured lawns. So, when I saw this pile of pumpkins & squashes one of the things that I wondered was where they came from. There's actually a chain of grocery stores in the area that had been selling heirloom pumpkins and squashes, but those things were like $5.99 a piece (scroll down to the last picture and do the pumpkin math - eek!). That would have been a hell of an expensive decorative seasonal yard display...

As it turns out, the homeowner actually grew them on a friend's farm out in the country (like where I live; where we lack the city amenities such as sidewalks, city water, and street sweepers).

So, there was a lot of effort & care that went into this tremendous display.

Have a lovely weekend!

Sidewalk tourism: my favorite maple

2010-11-12T08:03:00.000-08:00

Of all the trees I photographed this fall — this was my favorite maple. It's somewhere in Saline, MI. Of course, I don't live in Saline, and I'm one of those people who is terrible with street names, so, I know where it is, and yet I have no idea where it is...

Anyhow, I was mesmerized by this tree. Standing under it and photographing it was a sublime experience, even if it did happen to be really really cold that day.

I would like to thank Hilary at The Smitten Image : )
for being featured on her blog post: Three Photos and the Posts of the Week
http://thesmittenimage.blogspot.com/2010/11/three-photos-and-posts-of-week.html

Thanks!

Please excuse me if it takes me a day to make rounds with comments. I've been working on a time consuming project this week, complete with a number of "5 hours of sleep" days. I am exhausted. Fortunately, it should be done today (I hope). So, take a nap for me : )