Neo Color 1 On Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve. Riley woke me up about an hour before I wanted to be awake. He wanted to go outside and dig up frozen things. If you have a dog you know what I'm talking about. If you don't, it's better not to know.

I enjoyed making my Neo Color circle on black gesso. I added white Prismacolor pencil lines and the pencil went on smooth and creamy also. A very satisfying art experience. I had intended to make a mandala but the first thing I drew was a circle and then more and finally the page was full and I was done. I colored, using the crayons in the order they were arranged in the box. This may be the only month where they are arranged and not jumbled. Then I went back in and changed the direction of my crayon marks in a few places. Just enough nervous energy.

G and I did many errands yesterday. The streets and parking lots were packed. G had to return some books he had purchased at Borders and there wasn't a parking space. We had to wait for someone to leave. Usually, there are only two or three cars in the whole lot. G said each customer in line had a stack of 3 or 4 books to purchase. The same size stack I had just picked up at the library, for us. Books just aren't written well enough anymore to actually buy them. They aren't edited. So we borrow and we don't purchase. That way we can return them half read (if that) and not feel we were cheated.

I felt cheated by the recent purchase of ArtQuiltStudio magazine. $15. There was very little satisfying written content and lots of over enlarged photographs (which were very popular in the comments section at the front of the magazine). The articles could have been better if they had gone into more depth on the subject. Sketchy. The interview with Jette Clover was more of a travel log. Telling us about all the moving Jette and her husband had done for the past 20 years. Could have just said Jette and her husband have lived in many locations in the US and Europe and that would have been enough. The art was very interesting but I would have liked more about the making of it. Another article by Danita, Frida in Bloom, was so badly written that each new paragraph caused me to back track and read the ones preceding to see if I had missed some transitional material. I even read the entire article aloud to my husband, hoping for clarity. I think the publisher/editor printed the queries with photographs. And didn't ask the authors to write MORE. A query isn't an article. It's just an appetizer. And if you are going to charge $15 then there should be MORE educational/artistic/editorial content. This is the same direction that Quilting Arts has decided to take. Sketchy written material and huge pictures (of the same stuff over and over). Cloth, Paper, Scissors is still a much better choice because there is innovative content and the pictures are smaller (because they actually still have written material). That being said, I haven't opened the newest issue that arrived yesterday.

I have been disappointed by the Art Quilt books I have purchased in the past year. One reading and I have no interest or need to look at them again. So many pages, so little content. And they were expensive. I have looked, with keen interest, at the books generated by blogs. This seems to be where book editors now go looking when they want to find a new book or author. I haven't found one yet, but keep looking and hoping, that wasn't less rather than more. And, each would have been helped if they had NOT been "self edited". Never let the people writing the book, edit it. A well educated editor with a red pencil. That's what they needed. But then, a rewrite would take too much time. Why bother? And the readers of these blogs will buy the books, anyway. Read them and then forget them. In the same way they buy things from the blog Etsy shops. Another curious and disturbing occupation.

When I was at the library, I asked the person behind the Circ desk, who happens to be an excellent quilt artist, what sort of art books she was reading lately. When I worked behind the Circ desk, I always noted what titles were being requested by this artist, and would read them also. She made good choices. Her answer yesterday? Mysteries.