Happy Halloween!

© Ellen Blonder

I had to reach way back in the archives for this one, a card I did for Carolyn Bean years ago. It's pen and ink, airbrush and watercolor. Happy Halloween, everyone!

Menorca 1981

© Ellen Blonder

Leafing through my sketches from my 1981 European trip (see yesterday's post), I came across this, from our stay on Menorca. I seem to have sketched as much about the food as the landscape.

Freiburg 1981

© Ellen Blonder

My sister Julie just told me they're going to Freiburg, Germany, this summer, which prompted me to find my sketches from my overnight stay there in 1981. We stayed at the Kreuz Gasthaus, and the building at the bottom was outside our window. The  five-inch-long room key impressed me enough to sketch it. The chickens in the backyard produced the eggs for our breakfast. I hope it hasn't changed.

Georgia-Ink Sketch

© Ellen Blonder

Playing a little more with the etching idea after the Rembrandt-Lucian Freud exhibit at Toronto's Art Gallery of Ontario, I used disposable pen to ink over a five-minute pencil sketch I had made last fall of Georgia from my drawing group.

Charlie-Study 4

© Ellen Blonder

While talking on the phone today, I idly sketched Charlie with a fine-tipped disposable pen. I've just returned from a trip to Toronto where the Art Gallery of Ontario had a show comparing etchings of Rembrandt and Lucian Freud. Made me wonder how Charlie might come off as an etching.

Not So Long Ago

© Ellen Blonder

I'm taking a few days' break for a family reunion, but while I'm immersed in thoughts of time passing, I will leave you with this job I did back in the 80s, years before I had my first computer. These icons were used for a corporate annual report; I don't remember the company anymore. What strikes me is how easy it would be to do in Adobe Illustrator now. Back then, though, everything was hand-inked with the aid of a compass, templates and straight edges. Making the lines uniform around the computer keys or the boards on the house icon was a nightmare. A bit of wet ink running under a straight edge or a speck of dust catching on a pen point could ruin a line and force me to start over. I thought twice about caffeine if I was inking.

Enough codger talk. See you soon.