Diane

50,000 and Counting

This is dedicated to my friend Penny, who I was hiking with when we stumbled upon the first Lady’s Slipper I ever saw. Thursday was a big day at the herbarium where I work. We, as a group, collected our 50,000th specimen: A Pink Lady’s Slipper. Dr. Jim Matthews, who is the founder of theContinue reading “50,000 and Counting”

Reduction Linocut Step by Step

Many years ago on a former blog I had a tutorial on how to do a reduction linocut. A reduction linocut, said to have been invented by Pablo Picasso as a means to economizing on linoleum, is when you use only one block to make a color print instead of the traditional one block perContinue reading “Reduction Linocut Step by Step”

World Atlas – my new pastime

I have always loved maps, especially very old maps and maps of odd things. Along with all of this is an interest in geography in a very broad sense – from land masses to the types of signs you see different places. So I figured it was about time that I owned a world atlasContinue reading “World Atlas – my new pastime”

Another Friend-Made Surprise

My dear friend Claudia has been very invested in making Tiny Houses and knows my love of such things. So here is one that Claudia made for me! The loft space is my studio. See more of her work here.

Time Capsule

I have been coming to the Hill School as an artist in residence off and on since 2009. It has been a few years since I have been on campus so when I arrived in the classroom, a box (see below) was on the supply table and Mrs. Nelson, the art teacher, suggested I goContinue reading “Time Capsule”

‘Beets me!’ Sketches

The title for this post may seem a bit odd but the following pages from my sketchbook all started with stained parchment paper from cooking beets and a few scones. But ‘Scones me’ is not an expression and, therefore, a poor title for this post. Anyway, The richly colored pieces of parchment I could notContinue reading “‘Beets me!’ Sketches”

A Wonderful Gift (and letterboxing too!)

Yesterday I met my friend Alice to go letterboxing, which we do occasionally. As we were getting started, Alice wanted to show me somethings she recently made. One was a book about a park in her neighborhood. When I met Alice, she was working very hard on a committee trying to save the park fromContinue reading “A Wonderful Gift (and letterboxing too!)”

The Birds

I was going along in my sketchbooks happily drawing funny shaped houses and buildings and out of nowhere, birds crept onto the pages. These are very different from my Dirty Birds series that I did back in 2003/2004 when I was obsessed with, mainly, pigeons but other common urban birds as well. Clicking on anyContinue reading “The Birds”

The Round Houses

A few weeks ago, I was posting lots of building sketches where the buildings were very elongated rectangles (you can see them here and here). Then I decided to try using one of my brush pens to see if I could change the line. What resulted were buildings that had softer, organic shapes. Here areContinue reading “The Round Houses”

Garden Sketches

Sorry if you are opening this post expecting a quaint garden scenes complete with water features, statues of St. Francis, and a rainbow of color but instead you are finding these: The great thing about sketchbooks for me is that I never know what is going to appear. For the top piece, which I willContinue reading “Garden Sketches”