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Friday, August 5, 2011

Poison Oak is Turning

This morning marks my 20th page from my Sit Spot, and to celebrate, I herewith offer it up.

Here's something funny that happened. While drawing this I accidentally wiped a drop of "water" from my sketch page, not realizing that the water-droplet-looking-thing was poison oak blood from the broken stem. Then I realized what I had done. Duh!

Still, there's a wonderful antidote, Tecnu, a solvent which you can rub on, even hours later, then wash off, which nullifies the oils so that you don't bubble up like a pudding and itch like crazeee! So I continued to work, but I was hypersensitive about touching the leaves in any way.

Later, when I had finished coloring my sketch of the red leaf and the lower green one, and was painting the top green one, I happened to set the side of my hand down on the lower green leaf of my drawing ~ and SNATCHED my hand back up (don't touch the poison oak!). Then, of course, I laughed and laughed. I wonder what my brain was doing to process that. Does that mean my subconscious thinks my sketches are the real McCoy? Weird!

Interestingly enough, over the course of about an hour and a half, the poison oak "blood" darkened from colorless through orange, cinnamon, dark-brown, to nearly black where it was concentrated. The less concentrated area is still brown. I wonder if it will all darken to black.

And I did remember to apply the Tecnu as soon as I returned to the house about an hour after contact. So far, so good. Wish me luck!

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