Last Day of this Round!

I couldn't sleep last night, I was up with restless insomnia, so I painted the cover of my book--probably a bad idea, since I was tired and out of it.  But the thing has to be mailed today and tomorrow is the deadline for the Kresge Fellowship application which I am also working on.  And the paint needed time to dry.

When I painted it, I didn't realize the little protective cover I had made for the bar code went up as far as it did, and when I peeled off the cover, half my name and date were gone--too late.  Also, I painted the name on while the paint below it was still wet, because I wanted to go back to bed.  Bad plan.  I just left it--maybe I will do bette next time.

Sketchbook Cover
Acrylic heavy body.
(It has LOTS of texture)

Since my book's theme (which I let THEM assign) was the companion book. I made a companion for the white cat (already a companion).  Acrylic heavy body.

Black Cat
colored pencil

Two-page spread

One of the pages I had left had really bad bleed-through, and on previous bleed-through pages, I had tried all kinds of things--pastels (nope, they bled back through the other side), converting the bleed-through into a changed image--some were so bled through that the new image was boringly like the first one, and so on, so this time, I created an images on artrage on the computer, printed it, and pasted it in--last night while up at 2 AM.

"Surf"
artrage on iPad

At the top and the bottom, you can see the bleed-through, but it is worse in the center.  I hate that paper.

and, finally, the inside back cover:

Companion VII, Citrus
Acrylic and colored pencil
Yep, that's my companion

Two of the many moods of Keith.  What looks like dark brown in both images in the scan is actually somewhat shiny antique gold acrylic.

I am not terribly happy with this sketchbook, but it is the first sketchbook I have ever completed entirely on my own.  So, that's an accomplishment and hopefully, I've learned something and the next one will be better.

I did sign up for the next round.  Are you doing it again?

I took a video of the finished sketchbook and am going to try to embed it: