Dia de los Muertos

Here's a printout of a scan of one of my etching plates. In other words, Jon took one of my etching plates home with him and scanned it into his computer. Then he opened the file in PhotoShop and played around with the color some to come up with an image that he printed. I then took a photo of it with my cellphone camera and that's what you see at the left. Talk about going through lots of steps to capture an image! But when he gives me the file, I'll play with it myself in PhotoShop and create a series of prints using differne color combinations. At least that's my plan.

Last night it rained and it was raining when I arrived at Spanish Village this morning about 9:00. It rained until about noontime. At that point, I went outside, thinking I was going to sit at my outside worktable and draw on some of my etching plates. My chair had been out in the rain, but I thought if I covered the back and the seat with some plastic bags, that would protect me from the wet seat. What I didn't realize was that the seat is somewhat curved and acted like a shallow bowl to catch a large amount of water which soaked into my pants even though I tried to sit on the plastic. So Philip helped me take it over into the sun and turn it on its side to let the water drain off. Then this evening Jon brought it in my studio. Hopefully by tomorrow I can sit on it. In the meantime, I spent the whole afternoon standing and working at my table. Fortunately my table is high enough that I can do that.

In addition to some of the etching plates that I've been working on, I began a new one that will be an etched cross in preparation for the Dia de los Muertos show at Mixed Media. That show takes place at the end of the month and celebrates the Mexican tradition of the Day of the Dead in which families seek to welcome their deceased relatives back and keep them happy so that they will intercede for them. I think that's the way it works. Anyway, my plan is to make a necklace with wooden skulls and a large etched copper cross. I have participated in the show before. I had planned to do a sort of collage, but that's what I did last time and so I'd like to do something different this time.