Postcards from a Heatwave

Quick Thoughts and Assorted Things

Okay, the post title isn’t quite apropos for today. The temperature broke last night and it’s a grey, drizzly morning. The sound of rain on the leaves outside my window is a welcome one. Hot coffee once again holds a charm.

We’ve hit the point in summer where everything has stilled. School is out, vacations are underway and there’s a wonderfully languid quality to this time of year. Sitting still makes me wildly uncomfortable, but I’m attempting to lean into the seasonal sense that time is expansive and rushing serves no purpose.

Assorted things that have risen to the surface in the past week:

• I’m getting back into portrait drawing, still riding that post-Rome workshop high. In looking for reference images, I ended up over at this collection of public domain daguerreotypes. There’s an intensity to daguerreotypes that I love and it translates well to graphite. This collection from the Public Domain Review and this assortment from the Library of Congress are great, too. Also, I’m late to the eraser pen party, but now that I’m here, I’m never leaving. For precise mark making, they’re a dream come true.

• The concept of inherited memory is fascinating and this article a good read. I was joking to my cousin that there has to be a genetic basis for why our entire family is obsessed with getting the trash out on time and in totality. Maybe I can attribute it to a long ago ancestor surviving the Bubonic Plague, their DNA living on in a low-grade obsession with garbage pickup.

  

• After writing last week’s post, I decided to put my money where my mouth is and try something new’ish: cyanotypes. I’m hooked! Watching the image appear once exposed to water is pure magic. I used cut paper for the silhouette and words, as well as flowers and ferns. At this time of year, the paper develops quickly. I had found pre-treated cyanotype paper here, but would love to do this with fabric in the future. To that end, Dick Blick has a terrific assortment of sun printing goods here.

• This story about the Pink Soup Festival would make the perfect picture book.

• I’m still plugging away at book revisions. Editing reminds me of the rock tumbler I had as a kid, that slow, slow process of taking something to another state. I hadn’t appreciated the see-saw nature of change-making: take out one part, add another, read again to see if things are balanced, lather, rinse, repeat. More on that at a later point, when my brain is back to rights and no longer being powered by iced coffee and window fans.