Hey Kids, We're Going on a Road Trip!

There are still many photos from our trip to Oregon in July that I haven't had a chance to go through and edit. One bunch of photos I knew I wanted to do a post about as I was taking the pictures. I think my friend Denise and I even used the word "blogworthy" at the time. Since things are pretty un-blogworthy around here right now, I figured it was time to dust them off and share them.


One day during our trip in July we all piled into the car and headed up the coast of Oregon and across the Columbia River into Washington. We were birding and hitting the Lewis & Clark historic sites along the way, but there was one stop we had to make just for the sheer silliness of it. In Long Beach, WA one can find Marsh's Free Museum, home of Jake the Alligator Man. How could we travel all that way and not pay Jake a visit?

Jake gets plenty of press time.

The, er, man himself. Watch out kid, don't get too close.

Packed in amongst the shelves of keychains, mugs, tee-shirts, magnets, toothpick holders, shot glasses and bumperstickers all sporting Jake's image, Marsh's also had other curiosities including a two-headed calf...


A shrunken head...

...a number of old music boxes and player pianos, a variety of taxidermied exotic animals from around the world, and a human skeleton on display in a coffin. The place kind of reminded me of a Coney Island-meets-Wall Drug-type tourist attraction. In one form or another Marsh's has been serving the discerning public since 1937. You gotta hand it to the family for being so enterprising.

When Life Gives You Turkeys - Painting 41

Nothing personal against turkeys, but it just kind of fit today. Paul went for his final exam this morning, and found out that one of the four members of his exam committee had come down with the flu and couldn't make it! So his final, final exam will have to wait until February! Argh! It's only just a little anti-climactic.

But life goes on. This is Painting 41. I need to complete 9 more paintings by November 20th to be at the halfway point in my 100 Paintings in a Year Challenge. That's kind of an exciting milestone to contemplate. I did this painting on the heavy cold-pressed watercolor paper I've been working on in Laure Ferlita's Imaginary Trip to Paris class. I used to swear by hot-pressed paper, but I've been very pleasantly surprised at the amount of control I still get with watercolor on this paper. Another bonus is that it takes a lot of water to make the paper buckle. I'm a lazy watercolorist, so not having to stretch my paper is a real perk to me.

For those of you wondering whatever happened to my ornithological ABC series that I had started, I hit a bit of a snag at C. I wanted C to be for crane, and I remembered that Paul had gotten fabulous photos of some sandhill cranes with their chick. Well, we have moved three times since he took those pictures and I am still looking for them. I may skip to D while I continue my search. Stay tuned...

Hibernation - Can I join in?

I think in another life I was a bear. Or a groundhog. Or one of these box elder bugs. Whatever I was, the desire to go into hibernation this time of year has followed me into this realm of existence, as has the desire to eat everything in sight. And I am confident that the daylight savings time change this weekend will not help the situation one bit.

On top of the sleepiness, I have been so restless and listless lately. Maybe it is just because Paul and I are headed into the two most pivotal weeks of his PhD program to date, but as his supportive spouse there's nothing I can actually do about it except just wait. And bake cookies (with a rather Leave It To Beaver mentality that home-baked goodies made with plenty of butter and love will make everything all right). While the cookies may clog his arteries, hopefully they won't clog his brain cells as he needs them to pass his comprehensive exams. This is kind of like passing the Sphinx, or Fluffy the giant three-headed dog; making a mistake would be very, very bad. I have every confidence that Paul will pass with no problem, but it is still a long, nerve-wracking process for both of us. My preference would be that I go to sleep now and he can wake me up when he's got the good news.

So, to my little half-hearted sketch. I'm obsessed with these box elder bugs and I wanted to try something different tonight. I thought maybe using colored pencils for a change would shake me out of my stupor. However, I think they had about as much chance at really perking me up as trying to wake up a hibernating bear.

Out Enjoying the Weather

After a very rainy week and before more wintry weather arrives tomorrow, we wanted to get out and soak up the sun and fill our lungs with fresh air while we could. Turns out a lot of other creatures had the same idea.

A flock of about 7 wild turkeys were grazing in someone's yard.

We spotted this spruce grouse up in the mountains. Sorry about the quality of the picture. They move quickly and this was the best shot I got. Check out his gorgeous red eye combs!

We watched as two gray jays made their way from tree to tree down a forest service dirt road. I wasn't able to get a picture today but I took this photo last year in the same general area so just maybe it is the same bird! (Er, yeah sure.)

Around our place the box elder bugs are congregating.

A couple of them always manage to get inside the apartment. Madeleine has learned that they don't taste very good so she leaves them for me to escort back outside. I think they are beautiful.

Thanks everybody for putting up with my whining about my cold last post. I was being a total wimp. I feel much better now!

Painting 36 - Exuberant Toucan

This toucan - which still remains unidentified - is everything I'm not right now. He's colorful (unless you count my red nose), he's smiling, he's exuberant. Well, maybe "exuberant" is taking this a bit too far, but he's certainly got more energy than me. After nearly two years of sniffle-free days, I have at last succumbed to the common cold. Not only am I reduced to a lot of sitting around feeling sorry for myself, I'm also downright grumpy. Okay, so I'm not really sick sick, but a cold is really annoying. Not so bad that you can stay home from work, but certainly bad enough to make you miserable at work. How could my immune system have let me down? What about all of those anti-oxidants I ingest; rooibos tea, leafy greens and dark chocolate? My serious attempts at 8 hours of sleep a night? Dragging myself out of bed after said 8 hours to exercise? But hey, I suppose while I'm sitting here keeping the facial tissue industry in business I can take comfort in the fact that, according to Star Trek, they still won't have found a cure for the common cold by the 23rd century.

Painting 34 - Monsieur Puglsey

I know I haven't posted any paintings lately. But I am still managing to squeeze in some painting time in between life. I am also taking Laure Ferlita's Imaginary Trip to Paris this Fall to try to improve my non-nature watercolor sketching. This little guy is the first natural history subject I've done in the class, so thought I'd share it here. We're each working in a hand-made watercolor journal for the "trip", so with keeping a travel journal in mind, I've left room on the left of the page to write my entry.

This was a tricky piece for me to do. We had a cute photo of this dog to work from, but I wanted to add some details that set the scene - in my mind the dog was standing under a its owner's chair at a Parisian cafe, patiently waiting for a treat, but to do that I had to work from my imagination and try to guess how the light would fall on the chair legs and how the dog would realistically look standing under a chair that wasn't really there. I also wanted this to be a loose watercolor sketch, with pencil lines showing and all, but I got so caught up in the details around his eye!

Meanwhile, I'm hunkered down, craving hot soup and other cold-weather comfort foods, waiting for this cold snap to break. The snow is pretty though.

Happy Birthday!

This month is Madeleine's birth month. She is 8 years old, making her a little older than us in cat years. Possibly why she gives us those looks "Oh, you youngsters!".

Not only is this her birth month to celebrate, but she just went to see her specialty vet today and her meds will stay the same and she won't need to go back for another year. Good news! Madeleine has kitty cardiomyopathy, meaning one of her heart ventricles is enlarged and doesn't pump blood very efficiently. It was diagnosed 2 years ago and our regular vet prepared us for the worse, giving her 6 months to a year before she started showing signs of heart failure and a fast downhill from there. We were referred to a specialty vet who put her on Atenolol (a human heart medication - go figure) and she has stabilized and has been doing very well ever since. We know eventually it will catch up with her, but for now we're thrilled she's holding steady and giving us a few more years of purring and head-butts.

Look What the Wind Brought

There's a wind advisory for our area today and tomorrow with gusts of 35 - 45 mph. I know this isn't even close to hurricane force winds, but this evening the wind was so strong that it knocked out our power for a couple of hours. We live in a basement apartment so when the power goes out, it's dark, especially on a cloudy evening. With nothing better to do, I stood at our door and watched the wind blowing branches and garbage cans around the neighborhood. So it is amazing that with all that movement all around, my eyes caught sight of two little birds hopping about the relative shelter of our garden across the yard. And they weren't the usual house sparrows, either. Cursing the fact that my binoculars were in the car, I grabbed my camera instead and zoomed in, through the dusty glass in the door and all the yard debris. This is the best shot I got. I believe this is an adult (right) and immature (left) white-crowned sparrow. (You more experienced birders out there let me know if I misidentified these, please!) Not a lifer for me but a first for our yard/neighborhood and certainly an unexpected treat.

Speaking of birds, Heather of the Hills jogged my memory by thinking that the first photo of the tropical birds in my last post was a trogon and sure enough, it is a white-tailed trogon. And Maree from Art & Creativity said that the second photo was a Bali mynah. She's got a lovely watercolor of one over on her blog, as well as some good natural history information on this highly endangered bird. Thank you ladies!!! I still have not tracked down what kind of toucan that is, though. Sadly and surprisingly the Woodland Park Zoo's website does not have a complete list of all of their species.

As I've been trying to write this post, the power has gone out yet again, so now that it is back on I am going to post this before it goes out a third time. At least this time when it went out, I had found new batteries for the flashlight!

S***, I realized I made a boo-boo. It was Eve who mentioned the trogon!!! I'm so sorry, Eve! I had lit candles during the power outage and it must've been the lead in the candle wicks affecting me. A million apologies!

Seattle Zoo

I've had a hankering to do some tropical bird drawings lately, probably inspired by the beautiful artwork at Drawing the Motmot. Since I am sadly not going to be heading to any tropical rain forests anytime soon, I decided that a trip to the zoo was imperative when we planned our quick visit to Seattle. I knew I wouldn't have time to sketch, but at least I could get some photo references. I could kick myself for not taking better notes, but we were on a tight schedule with a ferry to catch and I was kind of snapping photos on the run. Anybody know exactly what these birds are?

I didn't realize there were so many species of toucans. This one really posed for me.

I was not on a mammal mission but I couldn't resist this picture. He/she just looks soooo relaxed. That's the life!

Seattle

Hey Folks! I know I fell off the Blogosphere there for a little while. My husband was in England for two weeks at an academic conference and doing some dissertation research. When he returned from across the Pond, we wanted to have a little escape together so we hopped in the car and headed to Seattle. I'm back now, and trying to sift through everything that piled up while I was away (and I was only away a few days!!!). The freelance design projects are coming in a mile a minute, which is a mixed blessing. I appreciate the work and the extra income to help us through, but it also cuts into my art and blogging time! Anyway, here are a few pictures from our trip to tide you over until I can put together a real post.

Seattle has some great public art, including this sculpture of
an umbrella that moves with the wind.

The Seattle Public Library is an architectural wonder.

Painting 29 - Mountain Lion Sketch

This is a really fast watercolor sketch of a mountain lion that knew my husband. (Yes, you read that right. More in a minute.) When we lived in the Philadelphia area, there was a wonderful little zoo in Norristown, PA that specialized in North American animals. I loved going there more than the Philadelphia Zoo because 1). parking was easy and free 2). it wasn't crowded and 3). you could see everything without exhausting yourself. They had a prairie dog town, pronghorn antelope, elk, foxes and wolves, bison, a great assortment of owls, etc. And they had a mountain lion.

This mountain lion loathed Paul. We have no idea why, but it did. One time I went on ahead and positioned myself so that I could see the lion as Paul approached. It was just hanging out, lying down, watching the world. Then Paul came into view some distance away and that cat went from laid back to Red Alert in half a second. I was amazed. If Paul remained in front of its enclosure for any amount of time, the cat would start snarling and occasionally even lunging. So as not to upset the animal too much, Paul usually observed it from a distance. This is what was happening in the photo that I did this sketch from; Paul was a ways away and the cat was keeping an eye on him. I was hoping to catch the intensity of the cat's gaze, maybe even a hint of aggression in this painting.

Painting 28 - B is for Blackbird

Taa-daa! Still working the kinks out with the lettering, but I am loving this! I used an X-acto knife to scrape away the paint to create the fluff on the cattail. I have also discovered that painters tape - the colored stuff you use to protect moldings and create a clean edge when you are painting walls - works very well to preserve the edges around these watercolor pieces, too. Go figure.

You may remember the quick sketch I did of this bird a few months ago - I used the same pose for this piece. It makes such a difference having my own reference photos! The avocet in the previous painting was a made-up pose based on a bunch of different photos from various sources and I think it showed. So from now on I'm going to try to choose birds that I have good photos of. It makes such a difference. Hmm, I wonder what I've got in my photo collection for "C"...

I do find that the imperfections in the lettering attract my attention away from the piece as a whole though, and I'm beginning to wonder if maybe I should skip painting the lettering by hand and just do it digitally. (Please let me know YOUR opinion on whether I should go with digital or handpainted lettering or even include any lettering at all, in the comments section. Thanks!!! )

These ABC pieces take a lot of time and planning, so the paintings are not materializing as quickly as they were before and I have fallen behind in my 100 Paintings Challenge. I am thrilled with the series, but I'm not about to abandon the Challenge. And this is still quite a ways in the future, but I'm also wondering what I am going to do for the letters "X" and "Z"!

Painting 27 - A is for Avocet

Happy September! As I drove through town today, I noticed some of the maple trees starting to look a little less green; a hint of yellow in their leaves. And the local meteorologists are claiming that the morning lows will dip below 40 F mid-week. Can this be possible already? Ah well, I've still got a couple more months before I have to dust off the snowshoes.

I know that I haven't posted any paintings in a while. I think I needed a mini-break to recharge my batteries. But hopefully Painting #27 will make you think I'm back with a bang. (I did paint a Number 26, but it was no great shakes, so you didn't miss anything.) I spent Labor Day laboring over this one. I did not use any masking fluid this time - it has caused me no end of headaches lately - so I chose to freehand this one. I think I did pretty well for my first venture into the wonderful world of lettering in watercolor. The concept for this painting has been floating around in the gray matter for a while. A friend had a baby shower over the weekend and while I was deciding what to make her, the idea of a ornithological ABC series popped into my head. ABC series have been done millions of times before, but I still like them. I ended up making a baby quilt for my friend, but the painting idea remained with me and I began to sketch and research and, well, here we are with the prototype! A little different style than my usual, but it is fun and refreshing to break away from the norm sometimes, not worry so much about being anatomically correct and just to get the essence of avocet down. Personally, I love the color scheme. I think it leans a little towards Halloween colors, which is just around the corner after all!

A HUGE Happy Birthday to Laure over at Painted Thoughts!!! She's being very hobbit-like and giving presents on her own birthday. Check it out!

Plant Shopping Spree

Not bad for the first year, eh?

I am a plant addict. Other women get off on buying shoes or handbags or the latest must-have piece; I get off on buying plants. This weekend I noticed that our neighborhood nursery was having a sale on native plants and my palms got sweaty and my heart began to race. Should I get kinnick-kinnick for an evergreen ground cover, or our local lonicera honeysuckle to bring in the hummers? I've been pining for some penstemon, but sticky geranium would add some nice spring color. Decisions, decisions!

When I got to the nursery, I realized I had completely forgotten about native grasses. How I love grasses, particularly in fall when they change colors from greens to golds, tans and reds, and in winter when they add a little something to the bleak landscape. So first into my cart went a little bluestem - a lovely clumper with hints of red and not too big for my little garden.

Little bluestem Schizachyrium scoparium meeting its new friends in the garden.

Then, just as I was about to put a sticky geranium in my cart, I realized that it had pink blooms! Gorgeous blooms, but pink, none the less. I really need some spring color other than pink. Jacob's ladder has sky blue flowers in spring, which would be a nice change, and this fantastic fern-like foliage to add interest (as the gardening magazines say). So into the cart it went. Little bluestem - meet Jacob's-ladder. Jacob's-ladder - this is little bluestem.

Jacob's-ladder - Polemonium pulcherrium

I was just about at the end of my budget, but I had to get one more plant (I'm an artist - things look better in threes). I hadn't gotten anything to attract hummingbirds yet, and I still wanted more color variety in the spring. So I opted for a penstemon with showy bluish pink flowers.

Large beardtongue - Penstemon grandiflorus

I rushed home with my precious plants, awash with the flush of success. I couldn't wait to get my loot into the ground. However, the weather had other ideas - dark storm clouds were building over the mountains to the south and the wind was starting to pick up. So I left the new editions in their pots and retreated inside.

I was able to transplant my purchases into the garden this morning, and take a few pictures of the other treasures I have there. And they are treasures. In a few weeks the fall rains may start, and then our first frost and then that will be that for the garden until next year. Six months of winter is long time for a plant addict!

Liatris blooms up close and personal

A grasshopper retreats into the leaves of Autumn Joy sedum.