Sketchbook Challenge--Adding More.......

St. Louis Cathedral, viewed straight on through Jackson Square

I think, with this challenge, the high point for me will be tinkering with methods I do not usually use. Take for instance transfers from transparencies. I tried this ages ago and had a horrendous experience. Well, to be honest, I had SLOP.

So I pitched the pack of transparencies into the ever growing paper pile and computer supplies and forgot about them.

Until making the tags.

I really wanted images for the front and back and somehow, those transfers kept bubbling to the surface. Thus, I took a deep breath and tried them.

Tag with soft finish transfer and remaining image on transfer plastic.

St. Louis Cathedral turned out excellent. I had done a nice wash of earth and sky color on the tag and all I had to figure was where I wanted to place the transfer. I opted for a little further toward the bottom to get the feeling of the image sinking into the soil; everything built in NOLA is slowly sinking. It's just a fact of building on waterlogged soil. I was pleased with both the colors and the image on this tag! Yes!

So then I was a bit too cocky, and when trying to transfer the image of Jean LaFitte's Blacksmith Shoppe (a tavern serving exceptionally potent drinks......exceptionally...) it decided not to transfer worth a HOOT. 

The transfer plastic shows how little effectively went on the tag, though the amount of red left is interesting.

I had a very vague image on the tag, which I had colored with sea and reef colors, and the remnants of the image still stuck on the transparency plastic. Okay, the unavoidable is happening. I am forced to take out Sharpie and gel pen and DRAW.
Hey, Anne, it is supposed to be a sketchbook.......hmmmmmm......

Yes, this building really sags. BAD. And you don't need a few drinks to see it either.

An aside.
You may think that LaFitte's is drawn cockeyed. Truly, it is not. The building sits at angles that defy logic. It is one of the remaining original structures from the very very OLD Vieux Carre, from the time before the massive fire that destroyed most of the city. The plaster has fallen off the brick, the timbers have sagged with time, the roof has not one straight line.
I probably have given it a bit of a facelift.......
Anyway, back to the tags. These will now be the front and back. There is still a bit to do on LaFitte's rough drawing, but that will be finished. The area where the soft gel transferred the image takes ink fairly easily, but the parts without it are much more difficult to draw on. And it is not easy to see where one ends and the other begins. Nor do I remember what all I used on the background..... I also edged out the tags with colored Sharpies, so areas where the white primed ground showed through are now covered and part of the design.
Totally unrelated to ANYTHING in this post, another *odd things in my hand* photo.

I should super-glue these to my forehead.....

I did a little work on the bench grinder with these crab claws and now have a perfect set of horns for some mixed media project, somewhere down the road. They were just too good to throw away. But I think they need to sit in some baking soda for a while as they still smell like, well, a CRAB.
So this has covered sketchbook pages, a Pirate bar and reuse of a dead crab shell.
Things are just normal here at El Milagro......yep. Life is good!

Pax....