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It’s a gray morning here. It’s been like this all week—gray, overcast, marine layer in the mornings (which means much cooler temperatures at night), burning off midday and getting really warm in the afternoons.
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Some days the haze was more smoke due to the wildfires. We’re safe where we live, but we do get smoked out sometimes.
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This week, I spent a day “failing fast” as it were. It’s a concept I picked up at the day job eons ago. It was being used in terms of coding software. Basically, the idea is to check for errors early, to work your code in chunks, making sure that each piece works without failure before adding the next.
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The term also applies to the arts. More than once I’ve heard writers use it to mean work on smaller projects in a world, like short fiction, before committing to a 700K novel series. Or for comic book artists, to do a short, eight page comic before trying to do a three hundred page graphic novel. Etc.
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I’m still trying to get the paints for my marbling correct. I have some of them locked in, but I ran into errors with those as well at times.
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So I decided to take a day and just “fail fast.” I took some of the paper that I’ve prepared for marbling and cut it into small squares, so instead of doing one large sheet, I would do four small ones.
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I have a test tray that I use for testing paints. Again, much smaller than the big tray.
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I wasn’t testing patterns. So the pattern on my test papers was much the same, just paint swirled around. I was testing for colors, and to see how different paint in different combinations worked together.
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Something I learned: if there’s too much paint on the surface of your sizing, it will stop spreading. There’s no place for it to go. You have to add more surfactant to it to force it to spread.
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What will I do with these pieces? I have no idea. Still thinking about that. I don’t consider most of these good enough to use. Then again, I might be the only one who sees all the mistakes, and a regular person wouldn’t. We’ll see.
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Anyway, here’s part of the collection:
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Blaze had some metallic paint that I experimented with. It was very selfish, no matter how much I watered it down. It took up all the space. Here are a few pieces done with it. You can’t see it in the pictures, but up close you can tell that there’s a faint shimmer to the paper.
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And these are some of the pieces that I like, and may (or may not!) do something with at some point.
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Today, there will be more marbling. However, it’s time to marble books.
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Next weekend, August 22nd, I have the signing for “The Bad Apple Witch” at Bundok Books in Puyallup. I need to have all my fancy stock ready for that. I doubt that I’ll sell it all next weekend, but I want it all ready for the rest of the shows I’m doing this year.
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So today, I’ve enlisted my husband’s help, and we’re going to be marbling Water Witch books. First, I want to do the edges of all six books in the series as one piece. I also want to marble the edges of the two omnibuses together as one.
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The plan is to get at least two of each set done today, which means four “books” total. I’ll be ready to do six, but I don’t know if we’ll have time.
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The actual marbling of a book doesn’t take long. It’s the process of getting the book clamped and ready, then everything I have to do afterward, like drying off the book with the hairdryer, that takes the time.
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I’m sure I’ll post more pictures if the progress is good.
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Hope that you’re enjoying your summer! What have you been working on?
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Yay! It's here! The next novel in the Water Witch mystery series! It will be available in the KRP store on August 10th, while generally available August 21st. On August 22nd, I'll have a signing for the book at Bundok Books.
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AJ’s latest vision shows a witch poisoning a man dressed in Renaissance garb. As the troupe of actors coming to put on one of Shakespeare’s plays won’t travel to Milltown until the end of the week, AJ and Roland decide that they can still take their vacation safely.
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Only to discover when AJ and Roland arrive that the troupe hasn’t left the mountain resort town. And that a witch travels with them.
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AJ had hoped that she’d get along with any peers she might meet.
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However, the murderous leader of this coven lacks any remorse.
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And it takes only one bad apple to spoil the entire barrel.
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The Bad Apple Witch—the latest Water Witch Mystery—pits AJ against women with magical powers. Fortunately, AJ has friends (as well as other witches) she can rely on solve not just the current murder, but a whole slew of them. As well as an entire oceanside community full of quirky characters who are also more than willing to help.
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Come enjoy AJ finally finding her place, and maybe, perhaps, a sustainable living situation with Roland, her lover.
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