I've been working on my website and on archiving lately. I had a site for a long time that I could manage myself, but Square bought out the company and basically destroyed it. I've switched over to Articulation (drag and drop, excellent customer service), and I'm rejuvenated about my site. I'm also grateful not to lose 16 years' worth of blog archives. That all came over seamlessly, which had been my biggest worry about trying to find a new host. It's a huge weight off me. 

I've been dealing with a lot of family papers as my dad declines, and it's got me thinking about my own papers, especially my art ones. I'd really like to be able to archive my work for the future. Now that my website feels secure I'm beginning to work on preserving my sketchbooks one by one. I've scanned lots of individual pages and have them saved by location (home, neighborhood, other places I've visited), but I don't have them as full books anywhere. I'm just beginning to flip through book by book, save each page in order in a separate folder, and archive them on my website so people can see them splotchy colors, bad pages, and all. So far I have my September to December 2025 sketchbook and my May to October 2026 one. I'll have to do more scanning for my dedicated travel ones – I'd usually get home and just scan the best pages – but my daily sketchbooks have almost all the pages scanned already, so it's more organization than anything. 

Ultimately I'd like to find an archive outside my own site to keep them all permanently. An archivist friend of mine said that digital is an easier sell to institutions than having to maintain and store physical items, which makes sense. I'm going to try to do it a bit at a time and get my files in order. 

  I've always loved book plates. I love finding old ones in second hand books. I bought a ton of them in middle and high school for my most treasured books, including an Arthur Rackham drawing. When I got my first press I thought I'd do some, and I went looking for that lick on the back paper and couldn't find any, and then I just got distracted. But recently I was looking at my small blocks I've done for cards, and I've been sorting my type, and it just seemed like a great thing to circle back around to. I've laid out three different ones so far and printed a smattering of each. I think I'll keep playing. Maybe even make myself an owl. Owls more and more feel like a sacred presence in my life. There was one just now calling from a tree in my front yard as Henry and I walked home from an evening stroll and a porch visit with neighbors.

It's also been nice to have some small scale projects I can do in the print shop – ease my way back into more standing work. So my first batch of bookplates is already in some of my books. I'm using thin Stonehenge printing paper and acrylic medium to paste them down with a paint brush. It's super satisfying. And I like that someday someone will buy my art books second hand and find a small bit of history and a little extra art in them.

Some combination of using a dip pen with an open ink pot and sketching out in the field with wind and/or uncertain conditions means that my sketchbook usually has more blots and smudges than I had originally hoped. That's the case for both of these.

I went back to sketch my tree the next day, with the destruction work still ongoing, and I chose a spot at a different angle with the Higbee memorial in the foreground instead of the back. This is still the Inferno ink, that felt right for the moment, and a snub nosed dip pen. I definitely dropped one enormous blob of ink toward the bottom right, but otherwise I managed to control things pretty well. It felt important to sit with her through that process.

Then the heat dome finally broke (50 straight days over 90 degrees for Memphis, second only to the crazy summer of 1980), and the air pollution mercifully cleared out, and for the first time in weeks I felt I could sit out on a patio without risking all the health conditions that pollution brings on. I celebrated with a last minute stop at one of my favorite local restaurants on the way home from picking Henry up at daycare. He's a lovely plus one. And fortunately I had my sketching gear in the car, not just my tiny purse sketchbook, since I hadn't thought to bring a book for company. It felt better to sketch anyway. I didn't dive into watercolor, and since I was thinking just line I went ahead with the Diamine Ancient Copper ink that I'm always drawn to but that turns into a hot mess very quickly with paint on top. I really do love it, but I have to pick my places. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening all the way around.

It’s Revive a Troubled Print day here in the studio. I started this one last year as a three block print (the third image), and it clearly has registration issues where Henry's outlines don't line up. I thought it would be fine with just one background block instead of two and tested that out today.  I spitballed the sun placement but will do better once I get serious about printing it, and I tried two different greens. I can maybe raise the black key block a little to line up the Henrys, or I might need to recarve the base layer, but since it’s almost all solid that won’t be a huge chore.

Here are the two bottom layers and my print shop door. The door is a handy place to tape up in process works and stare at them from across the way, and also as I pass through regularly on the way to my kitchen. Getting back away from them and letting them settle a little while both help me see them more clearly.

I have a new favorite spot to visit in St. Louis – Papillon Press, a letterpress/stationery/pen lovers paradise. I often get myself some new art supplies in the summer to play with, usually on trips, but I haven't been anywhere, so this year it was September instead. Papillon has a whole wall of bottled inks (I love fountain pens with converters or piston filling wells so I'm not limited to cartridge colors), and they have a book of swatches of all those inks on real paper so you're not dependent on a printed label. It's a delight. They also had a Twisbi pen, which a friend of mine had highly recommended, with a stub nib, not great for fine writing but tons of fun for sketching. So I ended up with one pen plus three new bottles of ink. Plus a delightful small linocut by one of the owners.

They also had a Chandler and Price letterpress in the window, similar to the one I used to have, so I could chat pens and presses both. It was a perfect stop.

So of course I headed out to Tower Grove Park to try my new inks. The first one, with the watercolor, is Inferno ink by Wearingeul, dark but not black, and I tried it with paint to see if it would be as overwhelming to watercolor as straight black is, and nicely it's not. I used a dip pen since I had already put green in my new pen, and I liked the outcome. I may find a pen to put this into for regular use. I also use waterproof ink with watercolors, especially in more controlled illustrations, but it's fun to have more spontaneity when the ink mixes with paint in my sketchbook.

Next I tried my new Twisbi pen with the Sailor Shikiori green. It's hard to find greens that aren't acid and unnatural feeling. I love Diamine's spring green, but I was drawn to this darker tone. I tried using water to wash over it, and I wasn't in love with that, but I think it would work well with paint on top and move a little but still hold its line. That last one I planned to paint over, but I ended up liking the line drawing and left it as it is. A rare moment of restraint for me. I'm looking forward to using all of these supplies more now that I'm home again.