Deer Print part 9

Got up to the Studio in the early afternoon today (dealing with school stuff in the morning) and started with a conversation with Nichole, since I didn't see her around yesterday.  Updated her about things happening in Belmar in the arts, since they overlap with things she wants to do, talked about upcoming classes, etc.  Then I went downstairs and got to work.  No Molly today, so I went back to blues, playing two discs that came out from Alligator Records, the company that was invented to make a Hound Dog Taylor album back in 1971.  Started with Years Since Yesterday from the Paladins.  Don't know if I would consider them a true blues band, and the album's liner notes bring up this question of is this band blues or jazz or country or rockabilly?  They choose not to make the call. (at one point back in the 50's there was no hard or fast line separating any of those genres and a lot of good music was made)  I do know that I played their blues songs on my radio show, and they recorded some albums for a blues label in Chicago, and they are included on the Alligator 20th Anniversary collection, so that's good enough for me. And the whole album is pretty good, even what I wouldn't consider to be blues. When that ended I put on Bar Room Preacher by Jimmy Johnson, a more traditional blues album, with some overtones of soul.  Johnson also appears on that 20th anniversary set, but I first learned of him doing my radio show in Virginia back in the 80's, when a student called in a request for a song from him.  I liked the song enough to listen to more by this relatively obscure contemporary Chicago bluesman.  Not to the level of the stuff recorded by Chess in earlier decades, but good to listen to, and to cut wood by.

And speaking of wood cutting, I picked up where I had left off.  My stated plan yesterday was to finish off all the sky stuff, and now the four cranes are completely done, inside and out.  Then I moved on to the white trees in the middle ground, in front of the large black trees.

Don't know how much of this shows up in the photo from today- the effect of today's cutting will probably show better when this thing is inked up, but that won't be until next week.  First I have to cut the lower part of the composition, the foreground scene of the deer, shrubs, stumps, ground, etc.  Don't know if I'll have time for that tomorrow or will be busy with more school stuff.