DIY Music Stand Extender

Oh, the cleverness of me!

I am feeling quite smug.

I am not a musician, but I do goof around on the ukulele. I picked it up a few years ago. I prefer fingerstyle to strumming chords as I don’t sing. I have books. I have sheet music. My music stand will easily hold a book opened up or two letter-sized bits of printed paper. However, beyond that, I have to resort to turning pages, and that is not an easy thing to do when your two hands are busy.

So what is a girl to do? Of course! Go shopping and look for an overly large music stand for a small fortune or poorly rated extenders for a smaller price and much less durability.

But, nothing appealed to me, and then my leetle grey cells went to work: make one!

The big question was what to use? And then it dawned on me to use the same material I use to support my watercolor paintings, is lightweight, at hand, and cheap. The material is called Coroplast which is thin, easily cut to size, and good for all sorts of things. All I needed to make my extender was a ruler, a utility knife for cutting, a cutting mat, and a bit of tape.

My music stand measures about 12″ high by 16″ wide with a 2″ lip to hold the book. I took an existing large piece of Coroplast I had lying around and cut it to 14″ x 30″. Along the long edge, on the reverse side of of the Coroplast, I created a cut 2″ up from the long edge, making sure not to cut all the way through. The purpose was to keep the piece intact but with the ability to fold the piece 90 degrees to mimic or recreate the 2″ rest for books or sheet music. This I bent forward, and then used a piece of green masking tape to cover the part I cut.

This is how the Coroplast extender sits on top of my music stand. I have an LED lamp which clamps to the top of the stand, providing light, and I am using this to hold the extender in place. If you look at the bottom of the white extender, you can see my green tape over the “hinge” of the tray.

Above, you can see the fold creating the surface upon which books and sheets can rest, as well as a tray. On the right, you can see the cut edge of the Coroplast.

Altogether, this project cost nothing as all the things I needed were at hand. It just took a bit of thought. It fits easily on the existing stand, is lightweight, and can easily be replaced it it gets disgusting. Total time was about an hour once I figured out what I needed to do. One of the best things about Coroplast is it is inexpensive, so mistakes can be made. The sheets come in at the hardware store measuring 4′ x 8′. Have at it if you need it!

Deep in the Canyon

Utah is home to many amazing national parks. These include Zion, Bryce, Canyonlands, Arches, and Capitol Reef. All of these are located in southern Utah and feature many different geological formation. In addition to the deep red canyons, there are ginormous hoodoos and sandstone arches. Rivers and streams run through the canyons, sometimes dry, sometimes filled with raging torrents, other times calm and serene. Flash floods are something to beware as they can come out of nowhere – storms elsewhere can cause floods miles away.

Here, an imaginary canyon in the autumn, complete with red sandstone and cottonwoods and evergreens. Colors are strongly contrasted when the sun slants into the canyon, bright and dark.

Getting the colors and the contrast “just so” is really challenging. I am playing around here with applying thin washes to tint large areas of the paper and then moving to more highly pigmented paint for deeper and brighter colors. I don’t normally paint like this, and it really makes me think a bit. More practice with this technique is necessary to find that fine balance.

Anyway, Arches 10×14 rough 140# paper; watercolor.

A Way to the Sea

There are just times when life is too busy or not busy enough. Either way, a deliberate decision to just goof off and let life happen helps me out. So, nothing planned but following my mood. My mood usually requires some kind of art work, and this weekend’s was a bit of gouache. I spied my gouache pan in the refrigerator where I keep it stored to reduce mold growth. Pulling it out, just a bit on my red, rinse it out in the sink, and find some paper and subject matter.

It’s been quite some time since I did gouache, but every time I do it is always a pleasurable experience. It’s opaque like oils, and paints anywhere from dilute like watercolor to opaque. Using artist’s gouache lets me re-wet it and fix things as I go along.

As always, when I am feeling rusty with painting in any medium, I fall back on a landscape. Of late, I have been looking at the works of Wesson and Seago, two British painters who specialized in the eastern bits of England, focusing on marshes and landscapes which are probably long gone now. The landscape is often flat with rivers used for boats. High and low tides run through these areas and the paintings and photos I have seen have boats in the water or tilted on their sides, waiting for the tide to return.

So, based on a lot of paintings and photos, here we are: “A Way to the Sea” – a bit of a pun on “Away to the Sea” – you choose!

Gouache, Bristol paper, about 8×10.