The Elm Tree // Relaunch video

If I were a colour, I would be the exact colour that is painted on the back wall of the shop.

Pre orders // The Hipster Lumberjack

Getting my illustrations ready for printing seems to be a tragically chaotic process...
It should be a lot simpler.

The Hipster Lumberjack is heading off to the printer soon, so if you are keen to order one for yourself, send me through an email to eleanor.mccomb@gmail.com 

The print is on A3, but takes up the space of an A4 piece of paper.
All the prints will have either the blue shirt, or yellow shirt, - but if you want one that is 100% yours, I have a limited number of lino prints on 225gsm A3 that can be coloured.

Pre-orders (before April 5) get FREE SHIPPING Australia wide.

I will have more new work up soon in the shop (there is a new link in the side bar!) and if you go give it a click, you can buy the pictured print!

Yes. That's red riding hood again.

Maybe it is the workshop tables being set up in the middle of the shop, or the awesomely green wall, or maybe its just because I haven't done my own art for such a long time - whatever the reason - I have been making quite a bit of art recently.

Mostly lino prints... or rather. Rubber block prints.
I have blogged about how I work with this stuff before - it is so much easier to cut than lino or wood - and as I don't have a press, it is also easier for me to print.
Everyone who sees them tells me about how they 'did that in high school' and I am not sure why more people don't do it now.  After designing the print, there isn't a heap to think about and I kind of like the mindlessness of just cutting... I don't know what that says about me...

I thought I would share with you some process photos though.

 the initial drawing.

 the block (this is actually after printing the orange, and then cutting away the next layer.)

 ORANGE

the first print... aligning the prints is reaaaally difficult when you are just kind of eyeballing it...

 I kind of got the hang of it eventually.

 it seemed kind of unbalanced (too orange) so I added some extra white with this sweet gouache pen I got from Daiso.

The final print (original on the left the drawn on one on the right.)

A challenge

Challenging is one of those slightly euphemistic words that people use to politely describe things that suck. "Challenging" is what February has been for me.

This print is some of the only work that I have been able to produce this month and I kind of like it.
I could do with being a little more deliberate about the life that I am choosing to make for myself, planting the seeds that will grow into the trees that I want around me.

So I'm working on it.

One of the things that I am working on is cutting out plastic bags from the house. Plastic makes up an enormous amount of the rubbish that we have polluted our world with so I have started carrying tote bags around with me everywhere. I've printed them with pictures like this (because that's just me).

It is incredible how dependent we are on plastic bags. I still find myself bringing home bags from shops when I haven't remembered to mention it... but I'm getting there!

Do any of you use fabric shopping bags? fabric snack bags? alternatives to glad wrap?

Escape (the Australia Day long weekend)

After all of this, I felt claustrophobic and depressed when we came back to our apartment and it's cluttered balcony. The only nature we have here is a very determined infestation of moths and three pot plants in various states of senescence. I am sure the mint is not recoverable so really we only have two plants.

I feel like I am surrounded by stuff. Stuff without a place to be stored. Stuff with limited purpose.

I am more determined than ever to convert the store into a place for environmentally connected products. Things that are beautiful and useful. Things that last.  More determined too, to get rid of some of the build up in my house of abandoned craft efforts and small toys and clothing I don't fit and CDs of who knows what (why so many? and where did they all come from??) and the plaque caused by having too many hobbies.

--

This year I have been taking time every day to write down at least one thing that I am grateful for. It has made for a very happy year so far, though I recognise that it is still stressful and not without aggravation - I see every day something that I can hold onto and love and today I am grateful in hindsight for learning how to use a cameras manual settings (Thanks again, Analiese) and even though I am a complete noob, I am grateful for these moments - captured and filed - and attached to memories that are full of the sounds, and the smells, and the stories that go with these visual moments. 

And this face. I love this face... (these faces I suppose I should say)

Eleanor and Eleanor

I read a book.

An 832 page monstrous book, and it was wonderful.
Not just because I liked the book (which I did) but because I feel like I have accomplished something. I read very fast, and have a tendency to abandon books if they can't hold me attention or if they are too long (this one is very long) my interest also wanes when I read books that wax too lyrical in descriptive prose, so to finish a book this size and in this style is unheard of. I like hearing characters voices and seeing their actions, and though Catton described all of her characters, the firmest picture I have in my mind of all of them is of their characters and personalities rather than the detains of their dress or particulars of their height or even hair colour. I can't go past a mystery though, and after forging though all the clues that were collected in the first (and longest) part of the book I chewed through the rest of it, keen to know what had happened, to whom.

I haven't reviewed a book since high school I think, or even before then, so I don't know that I am especially qualified to do so - so I won't. If you have read it and have an opinion of it, then share it with me, because I am full of opinions, and I loved how several details were left out of the resolution - leaving it up to us to decide what may have happened.

The thing that I loved the most though, about this whole book reading adventure - was that I went looking for this book because Eleanor is my name too, and Eleanor Catton was born the same year as me, and while she wasn't born in New Zealand she works there now, in Auckland where I was born - and I like to see my peers (if I may presume to call her my peer) succeed. Especially ones called Eleanor. 
The book is full of mystical themes like pre-destiny, fate, astrological connection, and so as I read it tickled me to think that it had been something that I was meant to do.

In any case. I am glad that I have finished it and can at last move on, knowing what happened to Emery Staines, and Anna Wetherell, and that poor bastard Crosbie Wells (though I probably as most sympathetic to Mr Sook...) I started reading in November and 'The Luminaries' can probably be pointed to as being the chief reason why my NANOWRIMO attempt this year was so pathetic - though that's not entirely honest of me to say.

This isn't a usual blog post for me, but it has been so long since I posted anything I thought that I should. I have been re-doing everything here, and on the shops website for a relaunch in March. It's nice to do some non shop related things.
 

Belated updates

It's been a long time - I know.
Since I last wrote I have opened a store and that was nearly a month ago.

Gabriel turned 3, he now tells everyone who looks at him "Me Gabriel, three years old" *holding up three fingers* and if he has his birthday present scooter with him he will stop scooting, hold it up and say "My cool scooter!"... basically everything you need to know about him I guess?

In a week or so my little Samurai will be 1. ONE. I swear I was just blogging about leaving the hospital after having him. Time goes by faster and faster.

So a lot of things have happened.

At the moment I have no interest in writing about any of it though. 
I haven't sat down and done anything arty for ages so in that sense there isn't that much to tell.

Kyle was able to put together this awesome video of our shop for those of you who live away and won't be able to see it.
For those living close by who haven't come to see us yet. Shame on you. 

Come visit us - I'll talk to you in person. It'll be great.