An Artist Desk, Continued

Here we are again looking at my desk.

I guess the most obvious is the bright pink sketchpad.  Last week I taught my two youngest groups of classes about Japanese gyotaku.  Gyotaku is an art form that developed from fishermen that wanted bragging rights!

The Japanese fishermen would take out ink and newsprint, or simply newspaper.  When they caught fish they liked, they would ink them, lay them on the newsprint, and voila! Fish prints!

The other way of doing it was simply to lay the fish on a newspaper.  The cheap, watersoluble ink would stick to the fish, and a negative space print would be made.  Fishermen would hang these on their walls to show what big fish they caught.  Today, gyotaku has become an art form.

Because I didn't want to use real fish for my sometimes squeamish students, I purchased a very nice bluegill, meant specifically for this project.  They came in many choices, but bluegills always make me happy.  After classes, I had two fish prints left, and decided to stick them into my brand new sketchpad.  One is on the inside cover (I have a deck of art cards weighing it down).  The black one you see I had done on tracing paper.  Because I enjoy layers, I wrote on the paper, then adhered the fish on top, adding paint as I progressed.

There's a little sketchpad on the right with monkeys in it.  A friend of mine is making a baby blanket and these monkeys are the main pattern.  You can see little strips of scattered material that will enhance it.  It'll be adorable.

Two new on-sale stencils on the far left.  Use these with my classes and big spray-paint-in-the-driveway events.

Top left, a picture for my picture file.  Like most artists, I have LOTS of reference material.  When I saw her I got a nice idea for painting a girl with flowers in her hair.

I've got a tiny box of Conte crayons at top; thinking about this for classes next year.  Around this time of year I start experimenting for next school year.  I've got kids that come back to me year after year, and they know I change everything so they can do so.  Art!  Such a deep and wonderful thing to go into!