I'm in love!

(Quickie note: I should clarify that I am in love with carving these blocks, not the naked little woman in the photo.)

Leann had a small art gathering at her house this afternoon. She had sugar skulls all set up to decorate and tons of food. Julia, Joan and Rose were also there and we were huddled around her dining room table working and eating (and drinking the chocolate ice cream/liquor shots that Leann created for us. Good woman.)

I decided to try out linocuts. Leann has done them before and is also a master carver of rubber stamps so I figured if I ran into problems, it would be nice to be able to ask someone. Of course, she was quite adamant in letting me know that since I refused to take the proper precautions in carving that she would not take me to the hospital when I chopped off a finger. Her husband, the loving and incredibly kind Mark, said he would so I decided not to be concerned. (Of course, Mark was concerned about stains on the hard wood floor so maybe his reasons were not quite that heroic but still, I'll take what I can get.)

I wanted to carve two blocks: one of a ginko leaf and one of the Venus of Willendorf. (As a side story, I had an interesting experience looking for an image of her the other day. I always refer to her as "that fat little booby goddess." I'm sure you'll be shocked to know that putting that phrase into google got me nothing. I even emailed Leann and said "Hey Leann, what's the name of the fat little booby goddess?" She didn't know either, even though she knew exactly who I was referring too. But I found her and now I know her proper name so there you have it.)

I am really thrilled with how they turned out!!! Here they are:


Here she is, the fat booby goddess. The print on the right is on fabric. I'm going to play around with printing with more ink on the block and also trying to print with acrylic paint. The ink I used today is Speedball's water soluble printing ink.



Here's the ginko leaf block. The print on the left is on paper with lots of ink (that one took a little while to dry) and the one on the right is on fabric. I think the image came out real nice.

I'm planning on using these two images to make prints on fabric for a fabric postcard exchange that I am in. I'm really pretty giddy at the possibilities these blocks have to offer.

And here is a wonderful shot of Leann being the hostess with the mostest:


She was extremely proud of this bread and I can't say that I blame her, it rocked! (I say "rocked" instead of "rocks" because we ate him. He is no more.) When we went on the
Dia de los Muertos walk, we saw several loaves of breads on altars that were skeleton shaped. She went online, found a recipe and made this guy. He poofed a lot so his ribs melded together (she kept calling him the Micheiln Man) but I think he still looked awesome! And he tasted great too!

It was a grand day. I made art, I tried something new and I'm excited to attack those postcards I'm running behind on.

Oh, and when I got home, this was in the living room:


Don't twitch too much. I'm hosting a holiday party here for the art groups I belong to on Dec 7 so it needed to go up earlier then usual. Yes, I know it could have waited until next weekend but my mom is the tree decorator and she was geared up to do it so she went to town on it. Looks pretty, huh?

Okay, I'm wandering off to surf the net and obsessively read about linocuts...