Focusing on the professional side . . .

I consider this my personal blog, and in it I include what's going on with my life, what I'm seeing around the island, in the yard, etc.

Occasionally I include images of my latest work, but mostly it's personal, with a lot of iPhone shots.

I want to keep my professional images in one place, the ones I upload for sale at Fine Art America / Pixels, and the projects I'm working on.

So just to complicate my life, I've set up a "professional" blog here: https://carolleighart.blogspot.com where I can showcase what people are buying, what I've recently created, experimental images, etc., all directed to the professional aspect of my work.

My goal is to post daily, but we all know how that goes! If you'd like to follow me on that blog, please subscribe to it and you'll be notified when new material comes up. Thanks!

All images copyright ©2019 Carol Leigh

Daily Photo 20190127: Work in progress

This is a close-up of part of an image I'm working on -- a photomontage containing pictures taken in Anacortes. I like where it's heading right now, but it's definitely not done. Just something I'm working on today, good for my "photo a day" project.

All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you for your understanding and kindness.

Daily Photo 20190113 Work in progress

A bit of detail from the "Japanese" artist books I'm making. Lots of time spent in the studio today, experimenting with plaster, dyes, inks, and new papers. A fun/frustrating day. But not nearly as frustrating as the Los Angeles Chargers felt...

All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you for your understanding and kindness.

Daily photo 20190106 The beat goes on . . .

I’m so slow at this. I’m creating pages for a series of three handmade books, all with an aged and sort of raggedy/soft Japanese look.  I need to make at least 60 pages. And it’s taking me forever.

Right now I’m working on 16 of the pages, tearing papers, making small collages, integrating everything on all 16 at once, which means they will never be finished until all 60 pages are created and can contain no more elements. Then I will organize the pages, dividing them up into three completed books.

So I look at these pages daily, adding something here, something there, painting over something there, something here. What you’re seeing in this shot are the pages all spread out, overlapping one another, some stacked together.

But I’m also working on small handmade artist books — no text, just painted papers containing interesting shapes, forms, and colors.

I admire and envy other artists who seem to quickly make and show their books, their creations, while I slog through the process. Perhaps it's because I’ve devoted so much time to photography rather than making handmade books, and I’m learning as I go along. Okay, that sounds good! I’ll stick with that explanation!

All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you for your understanding and kindness.

Work in progress . . .

As I'm making all the individual pages for my three Japanese ledger-style artist books, I'm also making little collages, using small scraps of paper that get pushed aside. Each of these mini-collages contains maybe 3-5 bits of paper. And then, whenever/wherever appropriate, I glue them onto the book pages.

I know this is tough to visualize, but each page of the book contains what I think of as a big collage, consisting of inked, stamped, painted, torn papers. They're kind of like scrapbook pages. The books are always in a state of flux as I add more things, rip away papers, etc. No page (double-sided!) will ever be really done until I begin putting all three books together.

I'll show some of the pages in a forthcoming post, which might help you visualize my concept.

Whatever the results (and I truly think they're going to be wonderful), I am enjoying the entire process. To call it "fun" isn't quite accurate. I read the other day an unattributed quote: "Art is fun in retrospect."

Right now I'm sort of in a zone, picking, choosing, arranging, making decisions. I stick with it for a couple hours and then have to take a break.

So no, it's not "giddy" fun, not like being in the front seat of the rollercoaster, but rather a quiet, satisfying sense of making something. You know?
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I'm also on Instagram if you'd like to see more of my work there. Well, even if you don't want to see more of my work, I'm there anyway!
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All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you for your understanding and kindness.