Sabbatical: Week Two

Last week, I said this week was going to be spent with family... and that was true, but we did it in fast mode, with my parents coming into town one day, doing an early christmas the next day, and departing the next morning. It was a whirlwind visit, but in that day we had a wonderful family Christmas. Good enough that we almost forgot that we are doing it 3 weeks early.

That left me with more time this week to do some productive things, and I'm getting energy back to even want to do so. A selection of accomplishments this week:

Inventoried the coin collection...

This is a coin collection that I first ran into when I was a child. My dad showed it to us, we added a few things, and then it mostly just sat around. At some point, my brother took it. And when he passed away earlier this year, it came to me. I knew I wanted to get an inventory of it and start to evaluate what is in it, maybe pick the hobby back up now that I am old enough to appreciate collections of old and shiny things.

I'll be doing more work with it over the winter, but for the very first step, I inventoried the coins and made up a spreadsheet of the contents. We have 1175 coins in this collection. The oldest is from the 1850s, but so beat up I cannot read the last digit of the year. The oldest that is legible is from 1863, and a large variety of years and conditions from that point up to recent years. 

Continued dabbling with printing...

I am currently exploring printing. I'm pursuing two type of printing at this point: linocuts and monotypes.

The linoleum blocks are really satisfying to carve. I sometimes just want a project I can sit down and work on for a while that takes time, balancing process and progress -- where an hour of work or a week of work both feel satisfying, and you end with a finished product that makes the effort feel like time well spent. Linocuts hits the mark. It also results in a repeatable piece of work, which means that if I can develop any actual skill at it, there is promise for selling some work to at least pay for supplies. 

Monotypes are the opposite in terms of pacing - I paint the ink onto glass, and press paper down on the image once complete. It creates quick spontanseous unique images that match my history of doing abstract work as well as doing quick sketches. It is enjoyable, and fits my occasional desire to sometimes just whip out a result in a matter of minutes.

One bit of progress I made this week was thanks to some ink I was gifted by Spouserific that is designed for monotypes. It works so much better than using the same ink for both techniques.

Neither technique has produced anything worth sharing as of yet, but they both show promise for the future. 

Exercise Program...

It continues. It causes both feelings of strength and feelings of pain. But it does continue.