amo

Skip the vegetable peeler. This is faster and easier.

. . . just not a shape that is easily covered. We have had various temporary window coverings for our round window. I’ve had this idea for a while, but it took me a very long time to gather the materials and put it together.

I found (eventually) 3 old doilies that were the right size. Over the course of several days, I put each one in a freezer bag with a mixture of white glue and water and squished it to ensure complete and relatively even saturation and spread it out on waxed paper to dry. This stiffening process is permanent. If you think you might want to reverse this process later, there are reversible stiffening methods. I let each one dry completely before stiffening the next.

And then I forgot to take any more pictures. Oops. But after they were all dry and stiff, I stacked them in order of descending size and used a combination of more white glue and some haphazard sewing/ties to attach them together. The stains bothered me a bit, so I took some white paint and tried to make it all blend together by daubing white paint here and there to both cover some of the worst spots and balance the differences in hue.

And then I put it up. I’m pretty happy with the result.

(A 5-year-old plays basketball, punctuated by his older sister’s bobblehead dog creation. Techno music. 3:10)

Narnia’s Lamppost
A.M. Otwell, 1992
Pen and ink on bristol board.
Original not for sale.

Cards and prints are available on redbubble. The style shown is a laminated print and is $17.10 plus S&H.

I’ve just returned from visiting my family in California, and while I was there, I photographed this drawing that I did years ago.

My first attempt at creating a video.