Ammon's Mole Goes to Washington

Ammon's mole enjoyed a trip to Washington, DC over Spring Break. Together we spent two days in the National Gallery of Art, which was a real treat. I worked on the spread above on the plane ride back, and all I can say is that it felt good to get all that minutiae out of my head! Detail shot of one of the pages below.



The spread below was a bit of a shortcut, as I used the image from the map of the National Gallery of Art. I'll try to find out who the famous artist is of this classic and let you know in comments, if you're interested.




Finally, here is the collaboration that Mary worked on when she had Ammon's mole. I added to it on the left side of the spread. Lots of fun.





Also have to apologize for the poor image quality. My scanner is not working, so took these with the good ol' iPhone.

My first page in Roma's book.

My first page in Roma's book. Sorry for the wonky scan.

Mary Stebbins-Taitt's Moleskine

in Ballookey's pocket

I had another plan, but the pocket of this book is already overflowing with stuff, so I had to make something small and flat. I don't know if you follow all my other blogs \ facebook \ flickr, but in the past few months I've been using a phone app called "sketchbook mobile" to make drawings on my phone. I usually take a picture and use it as a reference in the app, and combine tracing with freestyle finger drawing. Since Ballookey does a lot of computer art, I decided to use my phone app to make this little book and all the drawings and text here are made on the phone (this project totally saved me during a very boring meeting on Thursday...) You can see all the illustrations here.

Half a page for Molly

Now I need to make something for the pocket and then the book get to travel...

hummingbird in Ballokey's book (pages 9-10)

This is one of my all time favorite poems, it's so moving and so simple.

Pages 7-8 in Ballookey's book

There were still quite a few empty pages in Ballookey's book, so I decided to take over a bit more room then allocated to me...

Pocket item for Ammon

I almost mailed Ammon's Mole off today and then I remembered that I had not yet done a pocket item.

A Light in the Forest
5 x 7 Copic Marker and pen
on "bleedproof" paper (NOT!)

I bought some bleed-proof marker paper today--it does make a more precise line, but it bleeds through.  I was kind of disappointed because I wanted to do double-sided marker images for the sketchbook project.  This paper is very thin, almost like tracing paper.  The Copic blenders do NOT work. (or else I don't know how to use them).  By the way, the actual image (drawing) does not look as dark as this scan.  (This is an original, and I was experimenting with the media.  I am also including two 5 x 7 prints of paintings that have been accepted at an online Zine (The Browsing Corner) but will not be shown until June, so I am not to post them until after that.  This now completes the package and I hope to get it mailed tomorrow!

In Ammons, one new piece and Three collaborations

Nightmare #120224
Acrylic and micron pens
my picture is on the left and
the collaboration is on the right.

I made three collaborations because there were lots of pages and I wasn't sure when I was doing them who would be getting the book next, since I have it out of order.

Sunday Night - In Ballookey's book

I love how mundane this poem is, almost like a fleeting thought.

Margo - in Ballookey's book

I love this poem so much. The hair took forever.

I can't get flickr to work today, so I'm posting the images here, but I'll put a larger version on flickr once it gets back to working.

The Attic

A poem by my favorite poet, Raymond Carver, in Ballookey's book.
This was a good excuse for me to buy "A new path to the waterfall" which is a beautiful book.
What I love about his writing is that he doesn't use "poetry" words, and all the feelings and drama comes from life and from writing in a really simple way.

This tree was really challenging, first of all I rarely ever use green and never know what to team it with, second, there's something really "cute" and "childish about it that I just couldn't copy or interact with. I think that the crying severed heads sort of took care of that...

Finally...

Started to work on Ballookey's book.

Gretchen's book is on the way to Mike!

Collab w/ Ballookey

Mike, you can find my collab start with you on the pocket page in the back of the book!

In Ammon's: 60 Via de Cotocello, Marciana

60 via de Cotocello, Marciana
5 x 8 coated Moleskine paper
watercolor, micron pens, white goache

This is the last of these Virtual Paintout Pix I will be doing in Ammon's Mole. This was made, as were all my virtual paintout pix, from a google streetview.

Here is the streetview:

Streetview, 60 via de Cotoncello, Marciana

As you can see, I changed the design of the towels and changed the brick to stone.  Also, I had to crop a vertical (portrait) out of a horizontal (landscape).  They YELLOW is primarily from the stupid Yellow paper!!! (I prefer white paper!)  (That was why I put white gouache in a few places!

If anyone wants to participate in the Virtual Paintout, it's Elba for the rest of February.