Deborah Woehr

I set about starting my first clayboard drawing on Tuesday while I watched The Amazing Race. I had traced the sketch earlier in the evening and was confident that I would be halfway through the etching by the time the show ended. I used an H pencil, which was recommended by one of the artists at the art store.

In the past, I would trace the design and then transfer it by rubbing the pencil across the tracing paper until I covered the entire image. This saved the time of having to retrace every line. It worked very well with scratchboard, but not with clayboard.

My rub marks came through better than the traced lines. I set everything aside for the evening and didn’t return to it until just now. In the early afternoon light, I could pick out faint lines, but the rub marks were still very prominent.

I’d gone out earlier and bought a white charcoal pencil to solve the problem with the faint lines. I’m happy to say that it worked. No more squinting for me!

Once I transfered part of the drawing, I grabbed my E-xacto knife and started scratching away. I didn’t experience any flaking with the clayboard like I did with the scratchboard.

I’m now sold on clayboard. It’s a bit more expensive than the traditional scratchboard, but the quality of the coating material is excellent.

I’m not always good at this, but usually I’ll read what I’ve written before I proceed further into the chapter I’m working on. I’m glad I did because Wednesday’s work didn’t make any sense. Or rather, it seemed to jump forward too much.

Chapter 10 starts with Bud (my catalyst) standing in the cemetery, watching Travis and Amanda (my main characters) driving away. In the previous chapter, Amanda finally not only tells the sheriff off for stealing her car (effectively trapping her in Prosperity) but rails at him over his secrecy about the suspicious death of Naomi Zabien, who was the sole survivor of a crash that took the lives of the rest of Prosperity’s children. She does this in front of one of the pillars of the community, and then leaves him to answer hard questions.

So I began Chapter 10 with Bud being the unwitting victim of the sheriff’s fury. Bud admitted earlier in the story of having sexual relations with one of the minors, when he ratted Deputy Fred Wilder for robbing Amanda while she was konked out in the town’s boarding house. Needless to say, Fred is no longer a deputy. Not only that, but he and Bud are suspected of raping Naomi before she killed herself.

On Wednesday, I had the sheriff holding Bud by the throat and demanding answers to the location of the missing bloody underwear that was found and then stolen from the evidence room of the sheriff’s office. Yesterday, I looked the scene over and realized that this was totally out of character for the sheriff, who is “everybody’s friend.” I came to the conclusion that it would be better for the sheriff to manipulate the information out of Bud, rather than manhandle him.

I tried a couple of times to delve into romantic novels, but just couldn’t. A lot of it has to do with the characters, which are nothing more than Barbie and Ken. Then there are the sickly sweet/stereotypical descriptions these authors love to use. The whole thing just puts me off.

At any rate, I was browsing the book section in my grocery store and found this book. The cover grabbed my attention enough to pick up the book and read the synopses. I had just enough time to read the synopses of the stories (3) before one of the clerks struck up a conversation with me.

This is dark romance, the first two stories dealing with ghosts (my favorite subject) and the last involving werewolves. I just might be able to enjoy this. I’ll let you know how things go.

Here’s another personality quiz that I found on Carter’s blog, this time coming from an astrological point of view.

.:the Sun:.
“You are the leader of the system. While you
are always willing to give, you don’t like it
when people ask for things. You like material
goods and you desire a mate that puts you on a
pedestal. You are not always easy to work with
because you can be impatient and a bit bossy.
You are also very direct, sometimes to a
fault.”

. : : Which Astrological Planet are You? : : . [10 Gorgeous Pics!]
brought to you by Quizilla

Me bossy and impatient? Direct to a fault? Guilty on all three counts, although I’ve tried my best over the years to tone them down.

I spent much of the morning researching domain names and pricing for scratchboard portraits. Then I started blog surfing/commenting and lost track of time. Noon came and I knew that if I didn’t force myself away from the Internet, I wouldn’t get any writing done. Today, I churned out close to 1,000 and am close to finishing the first scene.

This is a new entry that I’ve posted in my recipe collection. I’ve developed this recipe over the last 27 years, adding and deleting ingredients until everything “clicked.” My boys love this meal. Feel free to print it out and tell me what you think.

Over the past decade, I’ve never had a problem with placing my credit card information online when ordering things. Well, today I received a phonecall from the fraud department of my credit card company. It seems that someone in Sweden somehow got ahold of my number and placed a $24.95 charge on my MasterCard.

The representative recognized this company/person because they’ve been making fraudulent charges on other people’s cards. I feel lucky that my credit card companies are good about calling me if they have a question about the transactions on my account.

This is one of my scratchboard etchings. Unfortunately, my son’s scanner made some funny lines.

Yesterday was a productive day (600 or so words) for Prosperity. Today, I just needed to get out of the house. With the sun shining so brightly, I couldn’t help it. The rainy season starts next month, so I’d better enjoy the warmth while it’s here. Like my excuse for laziness? I do.
At any rate, after I left the doctor’s office, I drove over to University Art to look for scratchboard materials. I hadn’t been there since December of 2003, but it looks pretty much the same. I picked up a 9×12 piece of clayboard, and then went to search for the scratchboard. As far as quality and price goes, clayboard wins.

While I was there, I also looked for a birthday gift for my youngest son. I couldn’t find any suitable paint-by-number kits, but I did find a cool paper airplane book that I know he’ll love. Plus, I found a coloring book about anatomy. He’s very much into science and technology, so these were perfect gifts.

I also found two scratchboard lesson books that deal with color. Those went with me to the cash register. I’ll try out the first one tonight as I’m watching The Amazing Race.

In the meantime, I need to ask my oldest how to use his scanner so I can upload some drawings onto my scratchboard blog. I’m getting very jazzed about this project as I haven’t picked up my knife since 1994.