I've resolved that next year I am going to live someplace sunny. Enough of this perpetual rain. I always hear objections when i complain about constant rain, "but i love the rain" someone will chime in. And you know what? I did too, back when i drove everywhere. But when you're stuck to biking (*sigh* i miss my bike) through the rain or trying to tame an ornery umbrella while walking on a particularly blustery and rainy day, you get pretty fed up with rain. However, it does pose a good excuse for sitting at home at night and feasting on my pot of minestrone soup while watching episodes of Mad Men online.

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Tuesday put me in such an amazing and wonderful mood! I met with Yuri (who is finally back in town) and I finally realized that my project is going to happen. Discussing the logistics of the project and getting set up with contacts made everything I had been imagining start to become realized. It was the same feeling I had when I knew I had finished my last thesis draft and all i had left to do was fix a few typos. I'm going to start coming in to the studio on Tuesdays to work on creating artist books with Yuri, along with the regular Saturday classes with Smolny students. This Saturday we worked on figure drawings for the first half, and started with dry point printing for the second half. You can see examples of Yuri's dry points here in his illustrations of Kharms stories
I think I will be using dry point for the first book project that I'll be working on. I have a picture here of Ryan and Me when we were really bitty that my grandpa took of us. My Mom sent it out as a Christmas card years ago and i stumbled upon some extras while hunting for an envelope. I remembered the photos he took of Ryan posed as "the boy with the red balloon" and i was thinking of illustrating a version of the story. Thanks to youtube I was able to find the film and sketch out some ideas. Mine will take place in Petersburg instead of Paris, so hopefully the boy with his balloon won't mind all this rain.