Thumbtacks...a lot of them!

I have no idea where this came from, but for a couple of weeks, I kept on seeing drawings and paintings of thumbtacks in my head. I tried to ignore them, but I kept on seeing them. I hope I'm not developing something weird. But anyhow, I finally decided that I should just do a drawing of thumbtacks:



Took me over 10 hours to fill up this sheet of 26"x40" Rives Lightweight with little drawings of thumbtacks; they're roughly life sized, although I would not say precise — some of them look just like the letter T, and some look like those tags you find on cloths. The color variations and color shapes are random. I mixed 3 colors: silver with red, silver with turquoise, and then charcoal gray, and just started putting down thumbtacks on paper. Now I suppose I'll have to count to see how many thumbtacks there are.

MiT book, "texturizing"

This was a very low energy day. For some reason, I really just didn't want to do anything, and not much was accomplished for most of the day, except for sitting around and reading the paper.

But I suddenly got a burst of energy after 7pm, and so work continued.

I want to use the mahjongg theme for my 4th senior's book, and also because all of her prints were photo-based and very cleanly printed, I want to create some contrast with the images I print. So here's the plan: laminate the heavier Rives BFK to her prints which are on Rives Lightweight. On the BFK, I will print a set of mahjongg related images; I want these to have the antique patina look of those old bone mahjongg tiles.

To achieve that, I put down 2 layers, using the same 2 open screens that I used for these two prints.

On the left, the first layer printed with some reddish brown ink daubed on the open screen with a palette knife, and printed very lightly. On the right, the 2nd layer printed with the mustard yellow mixed with white; this was printed using a different open screen which was created by flashing against a black output from my laser printer, and THEN some of the emulsion completely removed by sticking some scotch tape on there and peeling the emulsion off. So you have some areas of very dense ink and areas of lighter ink elsewhere. That's perhaps the most obvious on the upper right, where you can see the shape of a piece of scotch tape.

Each press yielded a slightly different and somewhat unpredictable result, which is just fine for my purposes here. I'm only about 1/3 way finished printing these. The 3rd layer will then consist of various mahjongg related images.



I've been thinking about changing my hair...it's been long and straight for many years now, and I've been thinking of going shorter and wavy. I found this picture of Annette Benning with short wavy hair (isn't she a cutie pie)—



And stuck a picture of yours truly in there (don't look too closely, it's a sloppy photoshop job)—



But blond hair just makes me look Japanese, so I took the blond out (along with some color from her right ear)—



And although I'd love to have silvery hair, I don't think that's quite in the cards for me either. So here's a somewhat more "likely" rendition. "Likely" in quotes because it's really much more likely that I'll wear it limp and unwashed, and not the stylish version you see here—



You can compare this new look to that of my James McAvoy impersonation here.

Pudding issue #23, day 3...and I'm a redhead!

OK, finished printing the cover page for Pudding #23. They should be dry and in the mail by Saturday! At last.

And the topic of women & facial hair (and no hair) seems to have struck up some interest (see comments in this entry). And gl—I don't just think I have a funny shaped head, I know I have a funny shaped head! But in either case, having just had my hair turned red today, I'm not going to shave it off any time soon

Especially since it took forever: I went in for my once every 6 months hair cut today. Unfortunately, the guy who cuts my hair, who's actually a neighbor and was doing it out of his house (and I could just walk there), had moved to a salon across town. And since I went all the way out there, I figured I might as well go all the way and have my hair tinted Scarlet (that was the official color name).

I thought this was something you shampooed into your hair and washed off. But noooooo. You paint it on with a brush, hair by hair by hair. Well, it seemed like that anyhow. Anyhow, THAT, took all afternoon.

So where my hair had turned white, it's now a coppery red; where it was still black...it's still black. I think in the sunlight, you can probably see a red cast. The Good Prince, being color-blind, can't see anything different. I think you can see the copper in this shot:

Pudding issue #23

For a change, we had a sunny morning and early afternoon, and I was not already involved with another project, so I took advantage of the sun and exposed the StencilPro screens. And of course, I forgot to take pictures, until I was already all done. This is the StencilPro HiRes (SPHR from now on) screen (the red thing) mounted onto a previously used gocco screen. I cut out just enough of the gocco screen so that I can use double sticky tape to tape on the SPHR screen. The light blue part is the exposed area (I'm using light blue ink):



I exposed 2 screens, one using a transparency and a 2nd using 20lb weight white paper. I followed the exposure times on their web site. The screen exposed using the transparency exposed properly. The one exposed using the 20lb paper did not expose properly (I did the full 3 minutes, as instructed) and during the wash phase, all of the light sensitive material washed off.

So a quick comparison between the Gocco and the SPHR:

1. The 200 mesh Gocco screen is way, WAY, higher resolution than the SPHR. You can see the SPHR mesh very clearly, and those are some big holes in there. And because of the large/loose mesh of the SPHR, straight lines and edges end up jagged, if the line/edge is not parallel to the lines of the mesh. So my squares and lines came out with kinks in them.

2. Print Gocco is much easier to expose than the SPHR; but of course, most people need those disposable lamps to expose the Gocco screens, where as you use sunlight to expose the SPHR.

3. If you buy the smallest sheet of SPHR, it's actually more expensive than the Print Gocco (including both bulbs and screen); if you buy the largest sheet of SPHR (17"x11", on special at $18.99), than SPHR is cheaper.

Overall, I'm not happy with the SPHR print results. If you need to print small text or fine lines, Print Gocco definitely has it beat.

I still need to print the same image with the gocco, so the issue is not ready to go out, and probably won't be ready until after this weekend.

And, the Random Movie tonight was Penelope, which I thought was a very sweet movie, but the Good Prince thought it was ultra dumb. But maybe I'm just inclined to like it because James McAvoy is in it. He does look good with stubbles, which got me wondering...what would I look like with stubbles?

Back when my hair was shorter:



And take 2, back when my hair was WAY shorter:



He wears it better:



When I just now looked for images of him that I could photoshop, every single photo I found had him in stubbles. I guess that's just his look.

A treat!

I sent off my 4 boxes to Tennessee today, and only used slightly over 1/2 of my shipping allowance the university is giving me (and that includes the return trip). Yay!

I noticed yesterday that Jules of Morocco, a clothing shop in Multnomah Village, is having an inventory sale. So I decided to see if one of those embroidered coats that I've been coveting for years would be, perchance, on sale. Well, they weren't, but I decided to splurge and buy one anyhow, especially since they gave me a fairly large discount. It was one of the older coats, and the sales lady says that it was THE coat that convinced the owner to start doing business with the group in India that produced these coats. It is very nicely done, with silk lining and all (which I noticed when I put my hands in the pocket; you can tell). Anyhow, the story goes, the subsequent coats were not as nice -- the linings were no longer silk (which I also noticed in the other coats), and some lacked pockets. I noticed that some had pockets that were rather too low.



Behold the coat! It's mid calf length, and I wore it tonight already, to Mike's company dinner. With my chicken hat!

So, that was my clothing budget for the next 3 years...

Finished the training manual for Rebecca so she can update her web site herself. We'll be meeting for the training session tomorrow afternoon, after we visit the Iranian Women Speak Out Through Art exhibit at IFCC.

Hahaha!

Ooh, an extra entry today. This is the kind of language problem that my sister and I used to have all the time—the perils of speaking in both Chinese and English, switching back and forth in mid-sentence. She forwarded this from a friend, not sure if it's autobiographical or not. You can of course use Google Translate, which provides further entertainment value. Just note that it's an elevator that he's talking about, not an escalator.


上午我到一家外商公司聯絡業務完畢，乘電梯下樓。

在某一層電梯停住了，門打開，看見一個衣著性感的美女，一手挽著 LV包，一 手扶著電梯門，身體斜靠著，用挑逗的語氣問我： 夠淫蕩嗎？[Note, these last 4 characters are: gou yin dang ma?]

我控制住洶湧的思潮冷靜分析，人家外商公司就是不同，人家外商企業的女職員就是開放，怪不得有人說，我們比他們落後起碼三十年，這句話是有道理的

我平靜地說： 淫蕩是淫蕩了點，但我喜歡 !!

我知道我說這句話的樣子也一定很酷，作一個有骨氣的受傳統文化薰陶男子漢 ,要在新時代新潮流面前努力轉變思想，不能甘於落後。
突然間那美女用手袋猛地向我砸來，一邊還說：你這變態！ .....

直到晚上我才醒悟，

原來她說的是：
GoingDown 嗎？ (下樓嗎 ?)

Let me gush about the weather for just a moment...

Yes, a whole extra entry just so I can finish sipping my coffee and gush about this fabulous Portland rain!

Yes, the rain has arrived, and that makes me happy. Especially when it's accompanied by a breeze; that's the best kind.

I love that cool, moist breeze that comes in through the window and hitting me in the face. It feels wonderful as I'm falling asleep and as I'm waking up.

The breeze makes the venetian blind clink against the window, and it sounds like wind chimes.

The plants like it too.

OK, enough gushing, and my coffee is almost gone.

Where to begin?

Well, in chronological order, I guess -- finished trimming my paper, yay, now I just need to sit down and start printing. Had a fun visit with Samantha & Stephen in the afternoon...but of course, I had no prints in progress to show them.

For the web site, we decided to leave the banner alone for a while and get moving on other parts first. I'm experiencing banner fatigue -- this morning I woke up and thought, hmmmm, why do *I* care what the banner looks like? It should just be whatever she says she wants. Not an attitude I like to have.

But the highlight of the day was Andrew & Beth's Going Away AGAIN party. The hot topic of the night -- sock darning, and an actual sock was darned during the evening. Other lesser topics were discussed as well, like Andrew & Beth's cross country move, how Mr. & Mrs. 5000 met, and the length of Laura's femur.

The movie of the week (saw it last Tuesday) was The Simpsons. I wasn't sure about seeing it, since we had never seen the TV show, I figured I would miss all the jokes. Well, I might've missed some of the jokes, but it was still pretty good.

And this was another load of chard that I harvested yesterday, along with a big bucket of strawberries, which I think I harvested too early, in my haste to beat the raccoons to them.

Before & after

All the pages are there for Margaret's web site and I started to touch up the photos this afternoon. Here are a couple of before and after comparisons. She had shot the photos using a felt backdrop that had some wrinkles on it. Most of the shots were not too time consuming to fix, but these two took a little more effort.

So on this first one, wrinkles were removed on all 4 sides. These wrinkles weren't too difficult, but there was a reflection of her, the tripod and the camera on the bottom of the framed piece. So I removed that. At least removed enough so that it's not noticeable.



On this one, again, wrinkles on all 4 sides, and the image was pretty washed out. (I know this paper and know it's a much more saturated and darker red). The wrinkle on the lower right corner was hard to retouch out of the picture, so I just replaced the entire section with another section of the felt and merged it in.

You can click on the images to see larger versions of them.



Had to stop working pretty early this afternoon to get into town for a lecture and panel discussion on the state of religion in contemporary Tibet. Didn't get anything done after that. Tomorrow will be another 'workless' day, between weight room, DEQ, and hanging the Phillip Smith exhibit at the library.

Speaking of photo retouching, this was one of my more fun/frivolous projects. DMC, who was my boss at Tek, is CTO at the company Mike's at. He took this image of his plush mouse (yes, he carries around 2 plush mice in his pockets, complete with a variety of costume changes) sitting on top of Mike's bat and the whole things on top of Mike.



He sent the image to me. I found a photo I already had of my rat Kiki and made this composite. Notice the bat's name tag also changed...yes, that's the man who carries around plush mice...

Snowhenge

There's just too much snow to not have some fun with it.

And I even made good progress with the shadow book today. Here's one of the pages mocked up. The eye will be under the cut out; there will be a sheet of mylar in the cut out, and the eyeshadow and eyeliner will be printed on the mylar. The text for this page is not yet decided.