Happy Hallowe'en!

Happy Hallowe'en!

Minouette has chosen her costume; she's dressed as an angry box this year. I'm going to busy this evening, so I won't have as much opportunity to see all the little monsters dressed in their costumes, so it's sweet my darling cat has decided to dress for the occassion.

Neighbours might be interested to see the giant papier maché Totoro at Grenadier and Sunnyside. He's as large in real life as he was depicted in Miyazaki's films. Seriously.

it's a tapir, baby

I know what you're thinking. Wow, there's no toping the undeniable cuteness of the stupendous Malayan tapir, with its massive tuxedo-coloured core and its unexpected proboscis. Well, there was only one thing I could possibly do. Obviously, the only thing cuter than a Malayan tapir, is a baby Malayan tapir.



Unlike the saddle-back adults, the babies have a delightful pattern of what spots and stripes, and like most baby mammals, come complete with big round eyes, and disproportionately big feet.

This lino block print is one of an edition of 12 printed on Japanese kozo, or mulberry paper 21 cm by 20 cm (8.3 inches by 7.9 inches).

Like an aardvark crossed with an elephant, wearing a tuxedo.

There are four types of tapir; this linocut is of a Malayan tapir. He looks very dapper, if improbable, in his black and white coat. Like an aardvark crossed with an elephant, wearing a tuxedo.

The Malayan Tapir (Tapirus indicus), also called the Asian Tapir, is the largest of the four species of tapir and the only one native to Asia. The Malayan Tapir was once found throughout the tropical lowland rainforests of Southeast Asia, including Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, and Vietnam. Sadly, like other tapirs, it is now endangered due to deforestation. These were always one of my favorite animals to visit at the zoo and hope that they not only survive, but thrive and flourish in the future.

This lino block print is one of an edition of 8 printed on Japanese kozo, or mulberry paper 23 cm by 25 cm (9.0 inches by 9.8 inches).

Giant Pacific Octopus screenprint

My friend Faunalia and I are taking a screenprinting course. It's a nice way to try out a variety of methods. Our first class, we used paper stencils. Though this is the method with which I've made most of my screenprints, mine was a complete disaster. I managed to destroy my stencil on my first attempt at pulling a print by over-doing it and getting ink everywhere. Failure is a harsh teacher sometimes, but I need to remember I am there to learn, and I did learn something. I'm happy to say my second print is much more what I had in mind.



This is my screenprint of a Giant Pacific Octopus. It's large (the sheet is 50.5 cm by 36 cm or 19.9 inches by 14.2 inches). It's printed in a dark raspberry colour on white paper. I made it using screen drawing fluid and screen filler, which allowed me to paint directly onto the screen, so it has a rather spontaneous feel. This is one of an edition of 9 prints. I was inspired by seeing some of these amazing creatures off the west coast of Vancouver Island. Sometimes we work with remotely operated vehicles (basically, submersible robots) which allow us to see what, or who is on the seafloor.



Enteroctopus dofleini, also known as the Giant Pacific Octopus or North Pacific Giant Octopus, may be the largest octopus on Earth. They have been weighed at as much as 71 kg (156.5 lbs) and measured with arm-spans exceeding 6.1 m (20 ft) ! Though more typically, adults usually weigh around 15 kg (33 lbs), with an arm span of up to 4.3 m (14 ft). They are quite astounding creatures.

My former neighbour was a scuba diving instructor who had a job at certain BC tourist trap, where visitors were able to descend into a building with windows on the shallow ocean floor, where there was a small aquarium collection of creatures. More than anything, my neighbour dreaded the giant Pacific octopus, which he felt was mischievious to a frightening degree. He swore that the octopus pulled pranks. Often, the tourists would complain that there was no octopus visible in the window. So, my former neighbour D would have to enter the pen and coax the octopus into view. He said it would hide above the window, just out of sight. After the octopus tired of this game, it invented a new one. D would swim into the pen, only to find that the octopus had hidden above the door, swam out as he entered, and the latched the door behind him, locking D in the pen until he could alert his co-workers.

T. Rex with Flowers

So, I made another mini print (10 cm by 10 cm; or 3.9 inches by 3.9 inches for you metric hold-outs). RJH said, "Fierce, but pretty, just like you."

"That's right," I told him.



It's a Tyrannosaurus amongst flowers. The block is 10 cm by 10 cm (3.9 inches by 3.9 inches), inked à la poupée (i.e. one block inked in more than one colour, in tiny regions, like as by a little doll our 'poupée'). It is printed on 14 cm by 14 cm (7.1 inch by 7.1 inch) unryu or 'Cloud Dragon' Japanese washi paper, a beautiful tissue with visible silky fibres. Variations in the paper makes each print in the edition of 12 rather unique.

Tyrannosaurus rex (rex meaning "king" in Latin, "tyrant lizard"), commonly abbreviated to T. rex, is a well known giant Cretaceous dinosaur with tiny arms, which roamed North America up to the end of the dinosaur age at the the Cretaceous–Tertiary mass extinction event, 65.5 million years ago. Tyrannosaurus rex was one of the largest land predators of all time. Flowering plants evolved, spread, and began to dominate towards the end of the Cretaceous, so though whimsical in nature, the imagined scene isn't actually impossible.






And, a variation on a theme:


Tomorrow, RJH, my brother the DJ and his wife, and for all I know one or more of my step-sisters, will be running the half-marathon. Actually, L could be running the full marathon for all I know. I feel strange to be surrounded by such perverse behaviour so many runners, but I'm proud of them.

Winged Walrus

I wanted to make a linocut which would qualify for a mini-print competition. The printed area must only be 10 cm by 10 cm (3.9 inches to 3.9 inches) on a 18 cm by 18 cm (7.1 inches by 7.1 inches) sheet. So, I returned to an idea I've played with before: the winged walrus.



The walrus is printed on Japanese kozo (or mulberry) paper with collaged or chine collé wings pale yellow Japanese tama paper (a lightweight watermark tissue). There are 15 prints in this first edition.

I like the idea of a massive walrus supported by delicate butterfly wings. Here are some of the ways I've interpreted this before:

Ada Lovelace Day

Today is Ada Lovelace Day! Today, people around the world are celebrating their heroines in engineering, science, technology and math. Somehow, it crept up on me, and I would like you to consider my (lenghty) post on Chien-Shiung Wu and the Violation of Parity as my contribution for this year. I posted it an hour early... but Madame Wu is a great choice.

About the image: This is a lino block print of Countess, Lady Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), who published the first computer program.* She worked together with Charles Babbage, the inventor of the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine (the first - analogue! - computers), correcting his notes on how to calculate Bernoulli Numbers with the Analytical Engine. More importantly, she (a great communicator, daughter of mad, bad and dangerous to know Lord Byron) was able to understand and explain the workings of the analytical engine and the potential of computing machines. Her comments seem visionary to the modern reader. Babbage called her the Enchantress of Numbers and the Princess of Parallelograms.

The print is in gold, purple and turquoise water-based block printing ink on mauve Japanese gampi paper 15.25 inches x 10.5 inches.