Jes Lee

Re-newing studio days

Often my weekly schedule changes based on photo jobs, art work projects, and where I spend my studio days when I have them. This spring has been no different in that way. My long studio days re-new me. The days when I can focus on making, creating, and put most of the maintenance work of being a working artist aside for a bit. In many ways I live for the days were I can just create. Today is one of those days for me.

What I’m working on:

2014-04-30 10.15.06

The first task today is to finish printing pages for the new book I’m working on. This is the ink jet printing run for this book, and I’m starting out with three copies. The final edition will be somewhere around 40 copies of this little book, but I am starting with only three to work out the glitches with. There are 28 pages to print 3 times over….each page has to be hand loaded in my printer….you can imagine that this task takes up a lot of time!

2014-04-30 10.18.36

Of course there are two bunnies at my house that are very willing to help with any paper that just happens to fall where they can reach…

2014-04-25 17.22.53

After the ink jet printing is done, each page will have various layers that will get letterpress printed on it. I’m hoping to get to some of that today. This is the linoleum block I carved to give some of the paper for this book a water texture. The letterpress step will involve many test runs, and a lot of press set-up time.

journal square

My last task for today is getting materials measured and cut for making more journals. This is one I made recently for myself. I enjoy blogging and posting online, but I find I need to write by hand somewhere as well. I know I’m not the only one out there that keeps a journal or a sketchbook. I plan to get a few more made similar to this one that I can offer for sale at some of the upcoming festivals. Maybe I will meet a fellow journaler that way!

I have also been working hard on keeping up with my Etsy shops!

Newly listed today:

‘Spring’ print in my photography Etsy shop and a blue colander bowl in the pottery Etsy shop I work on with my dad.

Wherever you are, and whatever you are working on today, I hope you have a lovely and creative one.

~Peace~

And the weekend comes to an end (Website re-design coming soon!)

It has been an up and down weekend filled with waitressing shifts, a family photo shoot, quite a bit of time spent on the couch processing photos and re-designing my website, and ending with a trip through The Soap Factory’s Haunted Basement. Whew! I am steadily working on getting artwork done for all of the upcoming shows. I think I am more organized this time than I ever have been. I’m hoping that continues! I admit I was in a bit of a funk for the first half of today, missing friends and feeling overwhelmed. A few Facebook messages and a visit from a couple of friends while I was at work made things seem much better. I’m ready to take on another day tomorrow! I have been working with my *webmaster* to re-design my website a bit. You may notice a few changes here and there. More are on the way though! (Hopefully soon!)

I’m off to bed with the steampunk novel I’m hooked on. Until next time,
~Peace~