The title of this one is Austin Borders. I am pretty sad to see Borders go bankrupt. It was one of the first mega bookstores in the area where I went to college. I've met up with friends and dates in the cafe. I've spent hours studing and drinking coffee at the Bangor, Maine location.

Anyway, Borders closing makes me sad, Vicandwilliam serves up a poignant journal page.

For what it's worth, I also frequented the local book shops in Bangor, ME. Lippencott and Bett's Books were 2 favorites of mine, I would frequently find great deals on used books in their shelves, I think I paid about $10 (in 1997 money) for a used copy of the Apocrypha. Does anyone remember the name of that place in the basement on a backstreet in Bangor, where the guy had every issue of PlayBoy in his used magazine sales rack? 

I'm obsessed with making watercolor tins. I've been looking for more and more adaptable methods since I  made my first with medication blister packs. (I have a UStream about this.)

On my way home a few nights ago I had the brainstorm to try to make the pans out of moldable epoxy putty, like that Mighty Putty stuff. I have a bunch of tubes of that but can't find them so I stopped by Ocean State Job lot to look into their glue section. (They generally have a ton of weird glues.) If I hadn't found it I'd have headed to Home Depot. I found a tube of Elmer's Automotive Epoxy putty. You could also use Mighty Putty, Sugru, or JB Weld's Putty.

The key to this project is that you get MOLDABLE epoxy putty. The Elmer's has a working or open time of 2 minutes after it's fully kneaded together, which works for this project.

You cut a chunk off, knead it until it's fully mixed, roll a snake and then press it into place in your tin and then mold it into a wall. Keeping your hands damp through the process helped a lot.

Once the walls firm up you can trim them with a knife. I used a utility knife to trim the walls into a nice straight surface, well mostly. Partially hardened the putty carves pretty easily.

After I built all the walls I let it cure and then sprayed it with a kind of even coat of white spray paint. I also sprayed the outside with a little gray spray paint.

This little adventure cost me the $2.50 for the gum and $2.99 for the epoxy putty. If I were chewing the gum anyway (which I do) it's sort of an even sum thing. If you have a friend who chews gum or is a mint addict this could be even cheaper. I used approximately 1/3rd of the putty. A larger tin like an altoids tin would use more and a mini altoids tin less.

I made myself 6 areas for paint and a small mixing area. The wells are 3/4 a full pan of a half pan and a half (this will only make sense to people who have half pan watercolor sets.) Anyway pictures:

Yesterday I went to Saugus Iron Works with my good friend Jane for painting, photographing and sketching time. It was great. The day was hot and the scenery was great and I drank 40 ounces of water. Thankfully, I wore sun block, by the end of the day, Jane’s iPhone was giving off temperature warnings! Yikes!

When I first got there I wandered around snapping pictures for a good 30 minutes or so. One of the Rangers spotted me with my camera and we chatted for a few minutes and he asked me if I wanted to see the water wheel working, of course I did, so he got another Ranger and they opened up the water and I got to see the water wheel working. It was pretty cool. It was especially amazing to see that almost everything there was built of wood or stone. Meaning they worked the iron with a lot of wood, crazy stuff.

I saw lots of  great stuff. Big ass wooden gears? Hell yes! Big white Great Egrets? Yup. A blast furnace with bellows that stand 10 feet high? Mhmm.

It was funny that I would sit down and paint a picture of the river leading away from the buildings but I enjoyed that scene as well. I’ll post a scan of the paintings I did as well as some of the sketches from that day.

All in all, Jane and I both agreed that this was a sight we’d be returning for many more sessions of drawing and sketching. If you are looking for a free thing to do with kids in a quiet spot not too far from civilization Saugus Iron Works is it.

I'm being a terrible blogger these last couple of days. Just know it's for good reasons, m'kay? So here are some pictures I took over the last week or so.

 These are PINK day lilies. I never thought I'd be a fan of them but these kick ass, and people like to trade other day lilies for them. This is a nice sunset shot of one.

Apparently my city has a couple of "working" docks and not just docks for fancy boats. In this case, a  lobster boat is at the dock. 

*SIGH* Teenagers and Jager go hand in hand, sadly the drunk teens leave "stuff" behind. This will make some great sea glass later- dark gree is great. (I also found some err used "protection" in the beach trash. Seriously people, dispose of it in better ways!)

Another shot of the lobster boat. This may become a painting later this winter, or not, who knows.

Taht being said, I'm getting to know the camera better and I'm thinking more about the shots themselves, not just pointing and shooting. I'm better at composing a scene just by looking than I am through the lens, I guess years of en plein air painting has some positive effect. I've figuring out how to start teh pricocess of applying how I look when I'm painting to the lens of my camera. It's not that different, it seems to be about looking around, like i do when I'm painting and then holding up the camera and clicking.

On my lunch break I did  a little reading today about camera settings, you know that funky stuff- ISO (the sensitivity of film to light), aperture- how wide the opening is in the lens, and stops or shutter speed. I didn’t have my fancypants camera on me but I did have my point ‘n shoot. My point and shoot has controls for shutter speed and ISO. I set it to macro and started to snap pictures of a G2 pen I had on my desk, in the back ground is a stack of folded letters ready for mailing.

The first picture is at ISO 1600, with the camera’s self setting for shutter speed.

The second picture is the same image at ISO 1600 set to expose at the camera’s setting of +2, or double the camera’s regular shutter speed.

In this one you can see the graininess of the background, which I rather like in comparison to the foreground. Additionally the image itself is not quite as crisp as images shot at 200, 400 or even 800 ISO.

The 3^rd picture is the same image at ISO 1600 and down 2 from the camera’s regular setting.

Below check out the same item, shot at 400 ISO at the camera’s internal “regular setting.”

Anyway, the whole thing is fascinating to me in that I’m learning I can control the camera to get results I want before transferring the images to my computer and editing, even with just a point and shoot. This clearly opens up a lot of options.