Above, taken on an easel, below photoed on the ground and showing the Moleskine sketchbook too.
(testing spraying inks on a rendition of ma'self) self-portrait, 2015, ©Brenda Clews, 8.25" x 11.75", 111lb acid-free Moleskine Sketchbook.
I'd like to say that the underlying drawing was a better rendition, but maybe that's not important. I am currently into spraying ink like a crazed spouting whale. So I went to Active Surplus today and bought a bunch of spray nozzles without any jars since they didn't have any that fit the nozzles. They were only .50c each, so no matter. I stuck them right into the ink bottles. But, oy ya, the spray nozzles from Active Surplus spray hard and fast, without any delicacy. The $2. watercolour spray bottles you can buy in the art store are more like clumsy ballerinas, allowing you to arc the spray and to increase or lessen the intensity of the splatter of ink onto the paper. I don't know how many times I completely buried the face when I sprayed with the over-active Active Surplus nozzles and how many soaked paper towels there were at the end of the painting session covered in ink daubed off. Beginning of a new Moleskine too!
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Written last Sunday night around 10pm:
Writing presents its own challenges, certainly, but submitting, oy ya. Something I have to bribe myself to do. Last week was an almost sleepless week of editing in between everything else. It got done. Today, on the last leg, I bribed myself with a brandy and some sweet cranberry concentrate swirled in (I do like this combo). After wrapping a tin's contents of organic wild Salmon and chopped tomatoes with Nori, a sheet of seaweed, for my main meal of the day, I chained ma'sef to the chair in front of the computer. I worked, did laundry in the background, dipped cherry tomatoes and carrots into jalapeno humus, drank Earl Grey tea. It took about 7 hours. Copied and pasted from Pages into Word, gone through again checking Word's flags, the red and green dotted lines. The covering letter, done (had already written a draft, but...). All the chapters linked to their respective text, done. Off to the copy shop tomorrow to get it printed (where it will cost less than half of what it would cost to print it at home). The novella is 250 pages single-spaced (was told single-space is fine with this publisher but it is about 10,000 words too long for them - hey lotsa flabba to cutta - or perhaps another publisher will take it, or no-one will, or it'll be composted, who knows). Now for that well-deserved drink...!
Hand-delivered the manuscript before 10am the next morning. That felt a bit strange. Than I came home and worked on a list of other publishers to send it to if it comes back from this one. That research took all morning and took the edge off of the feelings you have when you submit a manuscript in person (of been strung, mid-air, over a canyon when you have just handed over a batch of your feathers). After that, I read Andrea Thompson's first novel, 'over our heads' from cover to cover - it's very good and worth reading. And ended the evening with some standup comedy on LOLFLIX, 'Louis C. K.: Chewed Up, (the link will take you to the show on YouTube, though I watched on Netflix). Good to end the evening with some laughs.
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