rainy day - back to the studio

I thought I was going riding today - supposed to be sunny and dry. Instead I woke up to steady rain and decided it was time to go into the studio.

I've been picking away at this project for a week or two - I decided to pull the paintings off some of these panels to reuse them so that was step one. Once the canvases were off I sanded and re-sealed the panels. Now I'm working on a little experiment with my surface prep. These have some molding paste mixed with gesso and I tried brushing it on for the first coat here. Then for the one on the left I sort of troweled the mixture on with a painting knife and did a second brushed coat on the one on the right. I'll probably sand it a bit too when it's dry. I'm not sure the texture shows up that well in the photos - it was very gloomy and dark today :P

I'm hoping for a thick and smooth texture on these but with some tooth to it so I can paint like it's gesso but draw with a pencil like it's paper. I can't really draw straight onto canvas the way I would on paper so I'm hoping this will give me some more options.

things I've learned in the past week or so: a list.

(Cat included not to show scale but because you can't take a photo in this house without a cat stepping into the shot)

While talking to my mom about my pinhole lens for my digital camera she mentioned she still had some of her old cameras. So when I was home visiting this month I had a look around the basement to see what I could find and possibly use for my own purposes.

The little Brownie Holiday at the top is the camera is the one she used when she was a kid and it appears to be still in working order as far as I can tell. The other two look like they still work too...the Pentax takes 35mm film so it will be easy to find out if it's still working but the other two take 127 film. I assumed that anything I found that took an odd film size would only be useful for looking at or doing through-the-viewfinder images but apparently you can still get film for them online and even still get it developed, although not surprisingly you have to send it out. I think I'll get some film just to see what they can do. This may be a short-lived project since I don't really miss having to deal with developing film now that I have a digital camera but the temptation to try Mom's little Brownie is too strong to ignore :)

So to sum up some things I've learned:

I want to buy film for a camera which hasn't happened in forever

You can buy some really weird film formats online

Film people (as in, people who scorn digital cameras) are kind of scary

My mom keeps a lot of random stuff in the basement

And some things I've learned recently that do not involve photography:

If you think that you can go riding even when you have a miserable cold because once you've gotten the saddle on the horse, the rest should be easy, think again! Once you're away from your handy step to get up on the horse, you have to get on from the ground! And in my case this meant that even while standing on the uphill side to get a better start I still almost didn't make it. Which would have meant walking back to the house.

Double check that your new mp3s actually are on your mp3 player before driving back to your hometown (5 hours there and 5 hours back, for me).

30% chance of rain might mean anything from "a 30% chance it will rain at all" to "it will rain 30% of the time today" to " the air is made up of 30% rain." I had one very exciting ride this week :P