Deer Print part 5

Got up to Ocean Grove in the early afternoon, but it looked almost like evening.  A very dreary gray day, the kind we have had a lot of around here.  Appropriate music would be blues I had decided, and grabbed a few compilation discs on my way out of my apartment.  Compilation albums can be a disc jockey's best friend- when you have just a few minutes to find something to play next, grab one, drop it on the turntable or in the disc drawer, and you are bound to find something with the right tempo, the right length, to get you to the next one.  On the other hand, they can be a solution for lazy dj's.  On a few occasions I was listening to blues radio show someone else was doing and realized that most of the songs could be found on a few common compilation albums (I am familiar with many) and knew the jockey was just doing a show from a few sources.

Of course in my Studio, it's just me (still no sign of Molly today) and I can listen to whoever I want. First up was The Best of Duke-Peacock Blues, which collects 18 tracks that had been recorded by those legendary Houston blues labels, late 40's to early 60's.  Some big name artists, some I never heard of, but all enjoyable.  When that ended I put on Atlantic Blues: Guitar, part of a series of double albums (LP's in those days) that came out when I was first doing a radio show, the piano one a good emergency music source for me.  Picked up the guitar set on CD a few years later.  Back in the day, Atlantic was one of the biggest blues labels, but that was back when artists cut and released single songs, not albums.  A lot of these songs had been released on LP's collecting a single artist's work, but probably out of print. One advantage of the compilations is that you bought it for its inclusion of a few known artists, but you got exposed to a lot of other cool stuff.  Learned about T-Bone Walker, Blind Willie McTell, and Guitar Slim from that album, and later bought albums from all of them.

Today's art task was to continue the drawing phase of the new deer print.  Most of it was done, so the focus today was on adding some texture, and all on the lower part of the block. Left the brush at home and did it today with a permanent marker.

I wanted to put back the space that should have been between the shrub and large tree on the left side of the block, but you can't erase ink.  Luckily I always have some sandpaper. which can also clear the space in a case like this.  All over the ground in the image I put down lots of little black marks, similar to the ones found in the original print.  An optical gray.  I wasn't too careful about matching the exact size and location of those original marks, as it wasn't needed.  These are just a guide and suggestion for when I cut the block, and I'll just work them out in the cutting process, what is sometimes called drawing with the tools.  I do this pretty regularly, and have confidence it will work. Also erased some unneeded pencil lines, added a few marker lines to fix a few shapes.  Unless I find a few other issues that I must correct, I'll probably start cutting the block by the end of the week.