My Easter Egg Tree

Years ago my Canadian friend Andy and his family were visiting. I was making pancakes for breakfast. It was and is my habit to blow eggs that are going to be scrambled up anyway so I can save the egg shells to decorate the egg tree. Andy came into the kitchen just as I was blowing out the egg. Bloop into the bowl. His eyes wide he asked me, “What the hell did you just do?”

Andy’s family did not have the habit of decorating an egg tree. I think my mother picked up the idea from a children’s book from eastern Europe. At least one of my sisters and I keep it up. Jenny’s eggs are far prettier than mine, more in the Easter egg style. And she putts a pretty colored button on the end of the thread to hold it in place as my mother had.

I developed a method of securing the string with half a toothpick and a drop of glue. I find it easier and more secure. It will even hold an egg that has been dropped and no longer has a bottom half.

Under it all

I wondered how many people know what is under their painting. The easiest and most popular ground for oil painting is ready made from acrylic paint. It is easy but I don’t like the look or the feel. My gesso recipe has been used since before the Renaissance. Hide glue and chalk. I add iron red for color.

I learned it from a Japanese egg tempera painter in New York who now works with software and images on line. Thanks Kenji.

Brushing on the gesso

new painting

I have been reading art students’ motivational letters - What they are trying to do and why, in hopes of their being accepted by art schools in other countries for study abroad.

I started wondering, What am I doing? Why?

After some reflection I decided that I don’t know. It surprised me to realize that my new paintings are all of local shops and restaurants all endangered by the pandemic. I thought I was painting them because I liked the night time light. But there may be more to it.

Today’s work in progress

I will add it is impossibly hard to correctly photograph these new ones, half dry, with the strange and different sorts of reflections on the surface.

A very new ink stone

It was a present. I just realized what it is. Of course it is an ink stone, an ancient technology for making ink from a solid dry stick of perfectly preserved ink, ground on this stone to be ready for the brush. But is also something else. It is 3D printing! A 3D printer carved ink stone. Wow. Old meets new, I’m guessing from China.

Geidai and the pandemic, the graduate exhibition

The National University of Fine Arts in Ueno, Tokyo Geidai, is the most exclusive art school in Japan. It may be the most competitive of all universities in Japan to enter, and that is saying something. Students study exhaustively and face years of rejection to enter. Once inside they get the stamp, the brand. Brands are important in Japan. You enter a room and for the rest of your life people whisper, "He went to Geidai you know," even if all you do is teach night school in Okinawa.

Geidai kids have distractions. They command good part time jobs at cram school's teaching others to pass the entrance tests. The school festival in early September is a wild drunken weekend that requires months to prepare and time to clean up. Every weekend offers another distraction.

This year's pandemic seemed to have blocked some of that allowing students to focus their attention. 

The graduate exhibition this weekend surpasses anything I have seen in thirty years I have visited.

Black ink, the colors inside

I cleaned my pen on a wet tissue and was surprised by the colors that flowed. It was black ink, pure black, but inside was more. I did chromatography on 3 inks black inks I had on my desk. The results surprised me.

I know every sumi painting ink is a different color black. but I didn’t suspect so many colors from fountain pen ink, as it is rarely diluted.

I decided to try chromatography on sumi ink made for painting and calligraphy. Here is some ink from some of the ink sticks I use regularly. There are both Japanese and Chinese, black ink. Traditional ink. I was surprised by the difference.