Today was just too wonderful to stay indoors so out I went to set up a little experiment. The paper I recently made from newspapers turned out to be beautiful so I thought I would try recycling some magazines. A couple of dear friends just donated some magazines so I chose Gardens & Guns ( who would have thought there would be enough subscribers and advertisers to publish such a magazine!! My friend got them in a bundle from her dentist. Anyway the pages were too thick for collage and were quite colorful ( the gardens not the guns...) When I blended the colorful pages and put the pulp in the vat, the pages came out a plain grey like newsprint!! Even the recycled newspapers had more character!! So I took some full color pages from a Sports Illustrated (not the swimsuit issue, I guess the dentist probably kept that issue... just sayin') After spinning these pages and adding them to the vat, beautiful tiny flecks of color appeared. I pulled only small pages probably 4" X 4". I do not know what I will do with them but they are very pretty and have interesting textures. One of the things I love the most about making paper is that you never know until you pull the screen out of the vat what you will get.  All in all a great way to spend a couple of hours on a gorgeous day!!

I noticed while painting at the same time as my students that I am a terribly noisy painter. When something goes well, expressions of joy. When something is NOT going well grunts, groans, even growls. I talk to the painting and the paint and the brushes. I may have to stop painting during class. No, I am sure that they learn something even from this quirk. I think new painters assume that experienced artists just step up to a blank canvas and create effortlessly. That may very well be true of others but for me it is an arduous process from the first germ of an idea all the way through to the last stroke of the signature. I love the entire process and find that without the struggle the end result would not be as satisfying. That is true of most things in life, I think. Now for those times when I go through the whole process and the end result is NOT satisfying, that is whole different story...