"A Wise Old Owl" Editions Completed

Mid-January I launched "A Wise Old Owl" Kickstarter campaign to make 100 accordion books (50 black and white and 50 hand-colored) illustrating this Mother Goose rhyme:

A wise old owl sat in an oak, 
The more he heard the less he spoke; 
The more he spoke the less he heard; 
Why aren't we all like that wise old bird? 

Tonight I finished the edition. I purchased some Thai marbled mulberry paper for the covers, which adds to the uniqueness of each book in the editions. Here's a photograph of the 60 scheduled to be mailed out to campaign contributors next week. The rest will eventually be for sale direct from my studio and possibly at a couple of local stores.

A Wise Old Owl in Color

I'm heading into the final hour of my latest crowd-sourcing promotional campaign for Words On Woodcuts Press. Last night I finished hand-coloring the first proof for this promotion's incentive - a hand-made accordion book illustrating the Mother Goose rhyme A Wise Old Owl. I'm always amazed how color transforms the black and white woodcut. Many interesting and beautiful visual elements are lost as the color more strictly defines certain objects. It is playful and seductive. I love that I'll be making an edition of both color and black and white for contributors and future buyers. The two versions truly are two different works of art.

A Wise Old Owl: Process and First Proof

A lot of artists who blog tend to share photographs and explanations of their process as it goes along. Generally I have not done that with this blog, opting instead to frequently feature the works of other artists that have evoked certain thoughts and feelings or otherwise inspired me.

I break my usual habit today by featuring photos of the process I went through creating the first proof for the handmade book (which is currently still in-process) A Wise Old Owl. The reason for this exception is that I ran a fundraising campaign for Words On Woodcuts Press featuring copies of this book as a reward. Posting photos of the sketches, final drawing, carving, and first proof of the book on social media provided a means of continuous promotion including hashtags and a link to the campaign page. I'm living in an age where we artists have many methods of directly reaching out to an audience, and anyone familiar with my work and press knows that I've spent a number of years attempting to "raise my platform" using these contemporary resources (in between my teaching career and raising my kids - whew!)

Anyway, I'm glad that I've decided to share these photographs with my audience as it has compelled me to more deeply reflect on how I translate what I see (and think about my subjects) through several stages of sketching, transferring, carving, and finally printing. Viewers might notice that certain shapes in some of the animals are echoed in the plants or rocks immediately around them. I place them that way sometimes intuitively, sometimes deliberately, but the emphasis on these visual relationships doesn't really come out until the final print, and even I don't know exactly how it will appear until I pull off that first proof.

Okay, I've already written too much. I'm starting to participate in an activity I intentionally swore off years ago. Forget all these words words words. Just look at the art. See what you see.

Sketchbook Sunday: Barred Owl on Neon Green

I sketched this taxidermy Barred Owl at the Wagner this week in preparation for some prints of owls I'm working on and the A Wise Old Owl book project (limited edition, order yours here!) I will embark on soon.

The reason it's on neon green paper is because I went there in between classes and I forgot my sketchbook! The only paper up in the museum was a stack of flyers printed on neon green paper, so I just used the back of one.

There were a bunch of adorable little kids from a local grade school doing a scavenger hunt in the museum at the time, and they kept coming up to watch me draw and ask if I was an artist. It was a fun hour.

Sketchbook Sunday: Spotted Owl for Make 100 Kickstarter Campaign

A wise old owl sat in an oak, 
The more he heard, the less he spoke; 
The less he spoke, the more he heard; 
Why aren't we all like that wise old bird. Kickstarter is encouraging people to create Make 100 campaigns to usher in the new year. So I'm beginning 2017 with a new Kickstarter campaign (click here and please share!) - if I reach my goal I'll be creating an original, hand-made book illustrating the above Mother Goose rhyme A Wise Old Owl.

I've decided to use the Northern Spotted Owl as my main reference for the book. It has such beautiful markings. Today's post features two preparatory sketches.

Contributors can choose either the black and white version ($25) or hand-colored version ($40.) The campaign runs through February 13th.