Deco Pages

I find that doing some small-scale artwork every few days keeps me sane (less insane?). At the moment, that means that I'm slowly working through my stash of established decos. Someday soon, that will hopefully mean that I'm back to making ATCs. Instead, it will probably mean chipping away at my round robin obligations. Oh well. I shouldn't complain. I did sign up for the round robins in the first place. I should know better by now.

To the right is my page in a hand-drawn deco for Elaine. Ptichka and I have taken to sitting outside for most of the evening during the week and for most of the day on the weekend. We have a wonderful tree-shaded spot with a table, some chairs, and a grill. Once we have patio lights, we'll never need to go back inside again, except to pee and sleep. Oh, and to get beer from the fridge. In this spot, there's a sad, misshapen tree. Out of a single stump, there are four trunks. I find it endlessly fascinating, so I drew it a couple of weeks ago and then copied my drawing into the deco and coloured it in. When I sketch in pencil, I tend to go over my lines repeatedly. According to Ptichka, it looks like shading. Actually, it's my inability to get anything the right the first time. But I must admit, that I like the look of it, which is why I tried to reproduce it with my superfine (in all senses of the word) sepia Pitt artist pen. Then I coloured the whole thing in with coloured pencil. Whee!

Here's a page in a fish deco. I decided to try on someone else's style for this. Not for the fish, but for the background. I must have succeeded because when Ptichka saw the background sans fish, she asked who had done it. Me! I had. I've always loved Chrysti's little viney, tree things.

The fish itself is made from chiyogami (yuzen) and unryu. I don't remember what kind of paper I used for the eyeball. Something glueable.

I'm revising my introduction at the moment. It looks as though it will be around twenty pages. I always wonder about people who have thirty-fourty-fifty page introductions. It seems like a tactical error to me. Then again, I've come to realize that most dissertations are about one hundred pages too long anyway. Much of what's being written doesn't need to be there. Oh well. In between revisions and studying French, I've been watching this animated short for inspiration. Isn't it sweet?

ETA: The above link doesn't take you to the actual short I've been watching, so scroll down until you find "Sébastien."