Otters And Kelp

Charcoal and Sepia

Francisco Preciado 1539

Chaos

This side okay...

...no one will see this side!

The diary...

The prototype wall...

:)

I thought it's a Garabaldi in the corner,
and that's what sold me...but it's some tropical
species...watercolor paper is floated,
frame over three feet tall...artist went back in
with opaque white, so not a true
transparent water color...on 140lb paper it seems...

Watercolor sketch is at Sugar Pine Bridge...a fine place to picnic, and I believe the Bridge is named for the Old Sugarpine there...cool warm cloudy...I retrieved my Portola expedition diary book from my sister's in Bakersfield, and for the months it's been up there, I've been wanting it back for the drawing in it by one of the Spanish Explorer Topographers,...the drawing does what I want to do, it links a Fauna with its Flora...in this case, California Sea Otters with Giant Kelp...some other pairings might be Koala Bears with Eucalyptus, or Panda Bears with Bamboo...and I just liked the little drawing immediately when I saw it...when the Spanish galleons came from the Philippines, they would keep an eye out for floating seaweed, and heading East as they were on the return, they would immediately turn South when they saw it...they knew the Califonria coast was dangerous, and when they reached it up near San Francisco, they seldom saw it for the Fog, but when bits of seaweed were in the water, they knew land was near...I was making a prototype 8x10 frame, and needed one of my photos or drawings to put in it...and I lost patience looking for something...didn't want to detach anything from the notebooks...and so just sat down and drew the Otters and Kelp, which I've been meaning to do...drew them on paper too slick for charcoal...but I'm going to do more sketches until I get the look I want...and the captions explain the framing!...first part of the day, after Denny's, I went to an estate auction..or I thought it was an auction, but turned out to be an estate sale in a small industrial unit...I thought maybe to find some old framed art and scavenge for the glass, etc...but was taken by the sheer size of some of the framed art, and the bargain prices, considering I'm thinking in terms of prices for framing...and asked about the Whale watercolor, already lowered from $150 to $125...'75 dollars'...'oh'...rummaged through wallet...'here's eighty...for the tax'...a smile by both of us...I discovered the local estate auction web page last night...there's a lot of them...I once had the thought to find art at auctions, and try and re-sell art...in fact, I went to the auction of a framing shop in an industrial shop, but only had enough cash to come home with four warehouse size metal racks filled with mat boards that had been cut out of, but saved the middles...all kinds of sizes...my little trailer could hardly roll for the flat tires...I had enough mat board to last like forever...all, racks and mats, for one hundred dollars!...auctions for some, like me, are a magnetic field to be avoided!!!...donated the racks,  mats, and the trailer, to a charity eventually, during the move to Rainbow from GG...much fun making the little 8x10 frame...I used yard stick for edges, and now thinking to get my own custom printed yardsticks... Nature Rules Art And Photography...:)...one yardstick makes one 8x10 frame, and is already marked for cutting and drill holes!...I can't find the Whale watercolor artist...painting is signed B.Murphy (and this might be him, as gallery history includes wildlife shows)...oh..I used one piece of rope to wind through for the gap between glass and drawing, and for the decorative border on top of the plexi...the plex I purchased after not having a glass cutter for the glass from a dollar store 8x10 frame (it wasn't 8x10!)...plexi was by the glass cutters at Home Depot, and expensive, but non reflective just for framing (Plaskolite non-glare)(oh!...this site looks to sell it for under a dollar: MisterArt)...the rope had those fibers in the middle, and not to be used again!...need solid rope...if I used a mat, there would be just one wrap around...rope eliminated the glazing points, as it holds the glass down...hmmph...second pic down, the drawing, is reversed...