Bookplate Dot

The phrase means "inspired by the Spirit."

More Squares

I can't leave this one alone. It would be fabulous on 20x20 inch canvases! A version with very bright and contrasting colors might be interesting too.

Lots of Squares

This began as a doodle on graph paper. It's hard to stop once I get to modifying in Photoshop. Below is the the original drawing in magic marker.

Flatland No. 1

Now that I have my new Nikon Coolpix camera (thanks to the miracle of credit card miles!) I've been trying it out by catching up on some collage and shop photos. Here's the first of what will be a series of four 12x12 inch collages based on crossed squares. The original spark was the discovery of a book titled Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions which you can view on the Internet Archive.

The gray background is Thai unryu tissue over #5 black "stringth" which is a popular bead stringing material. I used a couple of leftover face quarters from my Zinc Pennies project. The suggestion is that of a rolling or flipping television image. The substrate is canvas board.

The Costly Star by Margaret Slattery

I have a copy of what I have seen described as a "scarce antiquarian book" titled The Costly Star by Margaret Slattery. It was published by The Pilgrim Press of Boston in 1917 and is illustrated by Frank T. Merrill. I haven't been able to locate an original copy of this slim (32 page) volume for sale anywhere online. The listing in WorldCat shows four copies in libraries.

Other titles (some with links to the Internet Archive) by Margaret Slattery include:

• The American Girl and Her Community.
• The Charm of the Impossible.
• The Girl and Her Religion.
• The Girl in Her Teens.
• He Took It Upon Himself.
• The Highway to Leadership.
• Just Over the Hill.
• Living Teachers.
• New Paths Through Old Palestine.
• The Second Line of Defense: A Plea for the Men and Women of To-morrow.
• Talks With the Training Class.
• When You Enlist.
• You Can Learn to Teach.

The illustrator, Frank T. [Thayer] Merrill (American, 1848-1936) is listed in Mantle Fielding's Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors and Engravers (Enlarged and Revised edition, 1974).

Merrill, Frank T. Painter. Born in Boston in 1848. He studied art at the Lowell Institute, and at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; he also studied in France and England. His water colors are free in wash and color, and he has also been very successful with his etchings. Merrill's work has been used extensively in illustrating and may be found in Thackeray's "Mahogany Tree" and in Irving's "Rip Van Winkle."

Merrill's work is available at the Childs Gallery. A search for Frank T. Merrill on the Internet Archive yields seven results:

• Captain January by Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards (two copies)
• Colonial Stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• A Loyal Lass: A Story of the Niagara Campaign of 1814 by Amy Ella Blanchard
• Six Boys by Elizabeth W. Champney
• The Young Moose Hunters: A Backwoods-boy's Story by C. A. Stephens
• The Interference of Patricia by Lilian Bell

Contact me if you are interested in purchasing this copy of The Costly Star. It is not an ex-library copy. There is a small portion of the front endpaper clipped off and slight damage to the spine which is shown in the photograph.

Blotted Cross How-To and More Warhol

I was able to achieve the "blotted line" effect using Photoshop. My original sketch was in red Sharpie marker on a yellow lined tablet. (Does this depend on the color red to achieve the effect? I need to check that aspect out. . .)

Starting with a .jpg file I went to Image, then Mode and selected Grayscale.

And then, again under Mode, I converted the image to Bitmap (Input Resolution 72 pixels/inch; Output Resolution 1200 pixels/inch; Method use 50% threshold). The result is a .psd file which I resized to 600 pixels wide and then saved as a .gif.

Then, using the brush tool set to white, I cleaned up the background, preserving the cross design. (Note to self: straighten up the image in the first step while it is still in .jpg format because you can't do it once the image is in Bitmap!).

I need to experiment further to see what happens with different Resolution and Threshold settings.

Recently I've been noticing other blog posts related to Andy Warhol. My friend Jim at Dull Tool Dim Bulb links a coloring book published by Pittsburgh's H. J. Heinz Company to Warhol's Heinz Tomato Ketchup drawing.

And Mike over at Unremitting Failure published a great self-portrait in the style of Warhol's Marilyn Monroe portraits.