Inner Artist

Short-eared Owl in Watercolor

2012-01-26T10:44:00.000-08:00

Here it is in watercolor. Mostly loose and (hopefully) not too over-worked but I did have to redo the left eye a bit.

The outcropping behind the owl is a buffalo jump, or pishkun. Until the Spanish brought horses to North America, the native peoples would drive bison herds off of pishskuns like this one. Hunting from horse-back was much safer and easier, so pishkuns fell into disuse over the centuries. The top of this pishkun is now an expansive prairie dog town. We spotted a long-billed curlew up there. We were also hoping for a burrowing owl but no luck. Maybe we were being a bit greedy since we'd already gotten such fabulous looks at this short-eared owl.

Back on My Feet

2012-01-21T13:10:00.000-08:00

Ugh, I came down with my first cold in a year and a half and it was not fun. Doing any art during this time was out of the question as it was dangerous to tilt my head at even the slightest descending angle. I kept the tissue people in business, let me tell you. My week was spent just getting through the essentials and resting in between. I'm not 100% yet, but I feel 100 times better. Being able to breathe is a wonderful thing.

As is usually the case when I can't do art for a while, when I can get back to it I want to dive right in. I haven't been doing much drawing lately and I miss it. I know a lot of artists hate drawing. I know a lot of artists look on drawing as a necessary evil that you have to do to get to the good stuff, like painting. Crazy person that I am, I actually love to draw. I find it so soothing, and the feel of graphite on good smooth paper is truly a pleasure. On the first day that I was breathing (mostly) normally and had decent energy, I went right for the pencils.

The result was this drawing of a short-eared owl my husband and I saw one morning outside of First Peoples Buffalo Jump State Park, near Great Falls, Montana a few years ago. It was sunning itself on a fence post and allowed us to watch it for quite a while. Being the high plains, it was a windy day and I tried to stay true to the wind blowing the owl's feathers and tufts around a bit. Also notice that the owl's one pupil is much smaller than the other one because of the strong morning sun.

I may turn this drawing into a full-blown painting. I am tempted to just add some light watercolor washes to it and keep it as more of a sketch. We'll see. I still have more work to do on the spoonbill and oystercatcher paintings as well, but I'm saving that for another post.

More Works in Progress

2012-01-08T14:15:00.000-08:00

The spoonbill painting continues to develop. I'm starting to block in the leaves, but still deciding if I'm happy with the sky. The blue seems wrong somehow. The sky in the photo this painting is based on is a deeper blue which certainly makes the bird stand out but somehow it feels like a stereotypical and boring blue, if that makes sense. Any suggestions?

I've also started another painting. I'm painting it for our living room and I wanted it to be more loose; less realistic. This is the first painting I've ever done specifically to hang in our own home. I switched to a canvas panel and I want to allow some of the canvas texture to show through. My main complaint about canvas panels is that the panels have a tendency to bow a little. I am hoping that once the painting is finished I can flatten it out somehow.

My models for the painting are from the Seattle Aquarium. The camera's flash really brought out the brown in their feathers, but I'm trying to paint the bird as you'd see it in the wild, where the natural light brings out more of the grays, blues and blacks in the feathers. These birds are called black oystercatchers, but their main diet is actually more along the lines of mussels and limpets that they find along the tideline in the Pacific. We love the Oregon coast, and look forward to spotting oystercatchers amongst the rocks on our visits so it is an appropriate subject for us. I'm still developing the background, obviously still painting the mussels, and still fussing over the bird's bill. Oystercatcher's bills are a bit unusual in shape and it is throwing me off a little. Overall I'm really enjoying the project though.

Keeping Myself Accountable

2011-12-31T13:28:00.000-08:00

Please finish me. I'm a nice spoonbill.

Everyone seems to have stories of moving and not unpacking things for months, even years afterwards. I'm certainly no stranger to the phenomenon. I am rather ashamed to have just discovered this unfinished painting amongst my still-packed stuff, though. I started this waaaay back last spring and it got put on hold and then forgotten when we moved over the summer. What a shame! I see so much potential in this piece. My subject is from Myakka River State Park in Sarasota, Florida. It was sunning itself up in a tree in beautiful morning light. (I found it amazing to see a whole flock of spoonbills perched in the trees!) So I am posting this piece here to keep myself accountable. You all are my witnesses that I am making a commitment to finish this poor forgotten painting, agreed?

In other art news, for years I've wanted to have cards of my paintings available at my shows, or to send as thank you notes to anyone who buys my art, but the price and large inventory involved kept me from doing it. With the advent of online printing-on-demand, getting cards has now become quite manageable so I got a few made of some of my best work. I just ordered another two sets from Zazzle.com, being very pleased with the price and quality of the first two. There are a couple of shops here in town that carry local artists' cards, so I may approach them with my new cards. I've toyed with the idea of selling on Etsy or someplace like that, but I have to admit to being a little intimidated by internet selling. (Cue chicken noises in the background.)

The beginning of my note card collection

I guess this will be my last post in 2011. Thanks for following my blog thus far. Happy New Year to you all!

Full Moon

2011-12-11T16:32:00.000-08:00

I was too lazy to get up at 5 am on a cold Saturday morning and see the lunar eclipse, but I couldn't resist getting a photo of the full moon rising over the mountains at dusk the night before.

Painting Finished

2011-12-06T07:50:00.000-08:00

It is done...or I am done; I'm not sure which at this point! This one really was a struggle. Thanks to Marianne, Sonya, Ken and Elva for their invaluable suggestions and support through this process.

My new favorite palette earned its stripes!

Because I suspected this painting was going to take a while from the outset, I was trying to figure out how to keep my acrylics from drying out so I didn't have to mix all the colors again every time I wanted to paint. A few years ago our local grocery store was having a give-away and we received a set of sealing plastic containers. When we moved last summer I threw out most of them (they weren't very practical) but there was one shallow square one that I kept just in case. Turns out it makes a perfect small palette and it kept my paints moist throughout this whole painting, even in this incredibly dry climate.

I may take a short break from painting now. I've been feeling the urge to work in pen & ink lately, so stay tuned.

Work in Progress - Surfbird

2011-11-30T06:51:00.000-08:00

Still a Work In Progress

I'm still struggling with this painting. It just isn't going where I wanted it to go. The scene around the bird feels flat to me, so I shall have to work on creating depth in it. And the bird just feels blah to me. Funny how I'm struggling more with a subject that's typical of my work than I did with the landscapes, which were new to me. I guess it is all about expectations - I expect more of myself when I paint birds. I didn't expect much when I did the French doorway or the landscapes so I just let the paintings happen. They were experiments, just as the abstract background of this painting was an experiment. I will have to try to approach all of my subjects with that experimental mindset!

Of Snow and Sea

2011-11-24T13:04:00.000-08:00

Two snowstorms paid a visit last week, leaving everything in a blanket of the white stuff. It still feels too early for snow to me, but it's a La Nina year so I suspect I'd better get used to it. It's going to be a long winter.

I've mentioned the multitude of magpies on campus in previous posts. Their antics are wonderful, and now with snow on the ground I can see signs of their visits even if I miss seeing them.

After snooping around the birdfeeder, this magpie flew off,
leaving a beautiful pattern in the snow for me to discover.

I discovered this collection of tracks right outside our front door.
I wonder what they were doing.

While it is clearly winter outside, it is summer in my studio - at the beach no less! This painting is not finished yet; a few problems have slowed my progress a bit, but it's been enjoyable to loosen up and experiment.

Step 1

Step 4

I built up the sand and sea colors with layer after layer of thin acrylic glazes painted over the original background. I wanted to keep the textures but define the areas as beach and surf. I am very happy with the background, but I'm having trouble with the bird. As I develop the details even further than this photo shows, the bird image feels cut and pasted on, rather than belonging with that background. Looking at this photo now, I almost wish I had left the bird like this instead of adding more details. I'm going to let the painting sit for a few days and perhaps a solution will come to me.

Meanwhile, a very happy Thanksgiving to all of my US friends out there!

Spring Flowers in Autumn

2011-11-03T20:38:00.000-07:00

Nearly all the leaves are off the trees now, and I have to scrape the frost off the car windshield every morning. Fall is well on its way to winter. I have summer stored in my computer though, in all the photos I am still slowly processing from our trip. The sunshine, warmth, and potential subject matter will sustain me through the long winter.

Pencil sketch of trillium

I believe this is Pacific trillium, Trillium ovatum. It was blooming in profusion at the DeVoto Cedar Grove along the Lochsa river in Idaho. Such a peaceful place. The only sound was the river, extra high this year because of all the snow in the Rockies. The smell was of rich, damp earth. And the ground under the silent, towering cedars was strewn with trillium.

The DeVoto Cedar Grove always makes me think of my father. He grew up in Idaho and loved the Lochsa river. He fished, hunted and camped along the river as a young man and then as a father he brought our family here on vacations. In many ways he was not well-suited to be a parent, but he did pass on to me a love of nature and art and I will always be grateful for that.

More Experimenting

2011-10-24T16:34:00.000-07:00

I just can't seem to stop painting new subjects. And I am finding these 5" x 5" Gessobords a bit addictive as well.

A few years ago, Paul was lucky enough to be invited to Paris to present an academic paper. We jumped at the chance to go to the City of Lights. Despite the raw November weather, I was in heaven. And I discovered a fascination with all of the old doorways scattered throughout the city.

This particular doorway really inspired me. It was in a lovely old neighborhood near the Sorbonne. I don't have much experience working with perspective, but by carefully studying the photo and working the angles over and over until they looked right, I was really pleased with the result. I then sketched the doorway onto the Gessobord with vine charcoal and started painting in layers of color.

Obviously I took some artistic license with the doorway. There are some things that make sense in a photograph but I don't think I'm at the point yet where I can make them translate well into a painting. The beautiful, intricately designed metal panels in the windows were one such element, so I made them look like glass instead. The wood panels in the upper windows were not aesthetically pleasing at all, so they were replaced with glass, too. I also filled in the chunk of doorway that was missing in my model.

The wood texture on the door was fun to paint, as was the stone archway and building. I continued to build up the color and details carefully layer by layer.

Voila - the finished painting. My husband was so thrilled with it that he begged me to let him hang it in his office. How could I say no?

Photo of the Day - Biting Off More Than You Can Chew

2011-10-19T09:00:00.001-07:00

Ever have a day like this?

We spotted this perplexed gull on a ferry pier in Seattle, WA this summer. It was trying to eat a starfish, but the starfish was too large and kept getting stuck in the bird's throat. The gull would try to swallow the starfish for a while, then it would cough it up and patiently try a different angle. At one point you could clearly see the jutting outline of one of the starfish's arms in the gull's throat. I have a distant memory of hearing about this sort of thing happening. I consider myself (but not the gull) lucky to have witnessed it. Unfortunately the ferry we were on left the pier before we got to see how this situation resolved itself. I suspect the starfish won, but the victory was likely short-lived as other birds probably came and pecked away at it, or it eventually dried out and died. A starfish version of "from the frying pan into the fire"? Ah, the trials of life...

Pittsburgh Aviary

2011-10-12T19:50:00.001-07:00

On our road trip this summer we made a special trip to the National Aviary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This has been a favorite place of ours for many years and I was happy to visit again. It is essentially a birds-only zoo, so I was like a kid in a candy store. We'd had a long drive from Kentucky that day, so we only had a few hours at the Aviary before it closed but I took full advantage, snapping reference photos and sketching when I could.

African or Jackass Penguins; so called because they are said to make a donkey-like sound.
They were being cute but quiet when we visited.

An Inca Tern sporting its chic white mustache.

Victoria Crowned Pigeon from the rainforests of New Guinea.
Imagine this as your typical city pigeon!

Rhinoceros Hornbill. How cool is that?
I am in love with these guys. Plus they sit fairly still for sketching.
The Aviary says they are from the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Java and Borneo
so I will probably never get an opportunity to see them in the wild.

First Snow

2011-10-10T10:11:00.000-07:00

When the clouds finally lifted over the weekend and revealed the first snowfall on the mountains, it lifted my heart as well. There's not much that is as beautiful as snow-capped mountains.

The Visitor

2011-10-04T17:33:00.001-07:00

Pencil sketch of the mystery moth.

I went hiking with a good friend on Saturday evening. The last time we went for a hike together we had to walk back in the dark, so this time we brought flashlights to avoid potential twisted ankles or surprise attacks by bears. When we arrived back at her house, this lovely moth was waiting for us near the porch light. Except for the delicate black marking on its wings and fuzzy body, it would have blended in perfectly with the wall. Notice the lack of antennae - just two stubs; I thought that was interesting. I have been trying to identify the moth, but I haven't found this specific type yet. I suspect it is in the subfamily Acronictinae, but I'm no expert. Has anyone seen one like it before?

Coasting Along

2011-09-29T12:39:00.000-07:00

Ouch, bad pun for the title, I know. Sorry! But I do seem to be on a landscape painting kick here. I learned so much from the last one I did I just had to try again. As usual, I chose a challenging subject despite my beginner status; the Oregon Coast on an overcast day!

This time I decided to try a different painting surface. Our old art store had these Gessobords on sale last year in 4 packs so I bought some to try out. I did prime* the surface before I painted on it and the first layers of paint took a bit better than the unprimed surface of the Claybord. The Gessobord has a very slight texture to it, which made it feel almost sticky as I was applying the paint. I didn't like that, but I made it work. I guess I really do prefer painting on an extremely smooth surface.

* I should probably clarify that both the Gessobord and the Claybord are already primed and ready to paint on. I just like to add another layer of primer in a mid-value gray.

Although I've been really enjoying the challenge of landscape painting, I think I'll be going back to one of my usual subjects for my next painting. My brain needs a rest and time to absorb everything I've learned this week. And I've got some butterfly reference photos that are just calling out to me.

Learning Landscapes

2011-09-27T15:16:00.000-07:00

I love landscapes, but haven't had much of a chance to practice the painting technique. The challenge for me is getting my head around the color value choices that allow one object in the painting to appear in the foreground while another seems to be pushed way back into the distance. Since most of my work is essentially bird portraiture, this is not something I regularly think about when painting and I haven't worked with it enough for it to feel natural yet.

Although I well remember the classic exercises in art class where you draw a series of mountains going off into the distance and the mountains become bluer and fade as they progress, those always seemed to be stereotypical mountains. What happens when the distant mountains are not all that distant and are covered in dried grasses (warm colors) rather than trees (cool colors that lend themselves to distance)? I suppose the next question would be why would I choose such a subject when I'm just a beginner at this. I have to learn to crawl and then walk before I can run, right? Well, I've always been stubborn like that.

Anyway, while Paul and I were essentially homeless this summer we took a road trip across the country and one morning we had the good fortune to go to Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. I know North Dakota ends up being the butt of a lot of jokes and people look at me funny when I say it is beautiful there, but it is! We had a wonderful time in the park (stay tuned for future posts on that), the wildlife and scenery was so inspiring and I knew that eventually I'd be using my reference photos for some paintings.

So here I am, twiddling my thumbs waiting to hear back on the countless job applications I've filled out in the last few weeks. What a perfect time to put all of that nervous energy to work! I also had some Claybord laying around that I was just looking for an excuse to try out.

EXPERIMENT 1 - BEFORE

Everything was in place but it lacked depth. (The trees also looked suspiciously like evergreens, not cottonwoods.) Time to think about my color values.

EXPERIMENT 1 - AFTER

Hopefully this version has more depth, with the river, trees and hills falling visually
into foreground, mid ground and background.

I'm not sure the study is actually done yet. I may still go back and change a few things, but you hopefully see the difference (and some improvement) between the two versions. I had fun with this and hope to do more again soon.

And now some thoughts on painting on Claybord -

1). Prime it! Even though the Claybord is essentially already primed, I paint using very thin washes of acrylic and that pure white background just shown through my first few layers like a light. Next time I will use a good layer of mid-tone grey before starting my painting.

2). I liked working on something with a good solid back and being able to pick it up while I was painting on it. I know a lot of painters work on masonite for the same reason, but I haven't tried that yet. I've worked on canvas panel before and although that's solid, it does have a tendency to warp a little with use.

3). I don't actually know if this is a function of the Claybord or of the extremely dry environment we're now living in, but my paint layers dried almost instantly. Sometimes I didn't have time to move the paint around on the surface before it dried. Also, sometimes when I painted a new layer on top, some of the previous layer lifted off a little. Again, I don't know if that was the climate or the Claybord.

I'd be interested to know anyone else's experiences with painting on Claybord, and your thoughts on landscape painting as well. Thanks!

I Can't Believe I Climbed The Whole Thing

2011-09-25T20:12:00.000-07:00

Looking south from the mountain

I have this sense of urgency, this drive that I've got to be outside doing outdoorsy things every waking moment before winter sets in. And around here, winter lasts a looong time. I've heard rumors of it snowing during finals week in May and when we came here for a visit early last June, the trees had only just put out their leaves which makes me inclined to believe the rumors. So I've got my snowshoes at the ready, but I still want to soak up as much warmth now as possible.

To that end, the other day I decided to go out and do some sketching in the field. There's a magnificent mountain, with cool rock formations jutting out of it, fairly close to town and I had it in my head that I wanted to sketch that mountain. I knew that there was a US Forest Service office at the base of the mountain with some nature trails around it and I thought that would be a good place to find a sketch-worthy view. I walked some of the nature trails and was having a hard time finding just the right vantage point when I stumbled onto a trailhead I didn't know about. This looked promising - a trail up another mountain that was across from my objective. I wouldn't even need to go all the way to the top, I reasoned; just get high enough up to be above all the dense shrubs and small trees on the nature trail and have a clear view of my subject. Just a little hike, sketch, and come back down. It didn't even matter that I was wearing jeans and had no water with me - this was going to be a quick climb.

Not far from the start of the trail, I came to a fork. The left-hand trail was labeled "steeper" and the right-hand trail was labeled "easier". But the easier fork was headed back behind the mountain, away from the one I wanted to sketch, so I took the steeper fork to get the view. I quickened my pace, anxious to get to the perfect spot. And as the trail wound around the side of the mountain, my mountain started to come into view. But now the trail was going into forest! This was no good! Well, I would just have to continue until I was clear of the forest again. But instead of opening up, after a little while the forest became denser and I started thinking about bears and mountain lions and the fact that even though the trailhead parking lot had been full, I hadn't seen any people on this part of the trail in a while. At this point I also realized that if I wanted the view of my mountain, I was going to have to hike all the way to the top of this mountain, and since I'd come this far already, I might as well suck it up and go the whole way. So I did. And I promised myself that I'd take the "easy" fork back because I'd probably never hear the end of it from my knees if I took the "steep" route down.

Long story short, I got to the top of the mountain. The trees gave way to scattered junipers and I had a beautiful 330 degree panorama of the surrounding valleys and mountain ranges. There was even a thoughtfully placed bench on which to rest. But the remaining 30 degrees were taken up by a thick tangle of wind-twisted evergreens and my magnificent sketch-worthy mountain was right behind them.

Later in the week when I was running some errands I found that the best view for sketching that mountain is in a box store parking lot. But somehow by that point I'd lost interest.

One of the lovely views from the west side of the mountain.

The Towsend's solitaires were not being very solitary,
probably because there were lots of junipers, too.

False Solomon's seal

Snowberries

And look, another magpie!

Sketching Magpies

2011-09-20T11:00:00.000-07:00

Magpies have had no trouble adapting to life around humans. This magpie spent quite a lot of time checking out the bed of this truck and eventually I saw it jump in and fly off with what looked like a small piece of brick.

There are lots of magpies on campus. Many people are annoyed by their loud calls and opportunistic habits, but I find them highly entertaining. And how can you not admire the iridescent feathers and that gorgeous long tail?

A family of them live around our apartment building and I've been enjoying observing them. When we were moving our furniture into our new home, we had our front door propped open and at one point we watched as a very bold magpie stood in the doorway peering into our place, deciding whether to explore further. Luckily it didn't - I'd hate to think of the carpet cleaning bill.

It's been a bit showery lately, with the usual post-rain worms scattered about the ground and sidewalks. Today I watched as our group of magpies went worm-hunting. There was a lot of picking them up and then dropping them again, so I was never quite sure if they actually wanted to eat them or were just having fun playing with their food.

Pencil sketches of some of the magpies on campus. Sketching them is a little challenging as they never stay still for more than a few seconds. I had to use photos to supplement my live sketching.

New Home, New Birds

2011-09-17T11:50:00.000-07:00

One of my new favorite walks in town.

I was so disappointed when I woke up to rain this morning. I had planned on going on a walk in a lovely preserve area on the east side of town. But by the time I had showered and eaten breakfast, the rain stopped and it looked safe to venture forth.

The walking trail is at the top of a rise that overlooks the town and you can see the whole valley stretched out to the farthest mountains. On a clear day, you can see all of the mountain ranges that ring the valley but today I could only see the ones closest to the northeast. Still, a lovely view.

The walking trail is in a natural area that has been carefully preserved. In summer, there's a great diversity of prairie wildflowers in bloom. Now in fall the aster family puts on a show, including this blazing star.

Dotted blazing star - Liatris punctata

I was disappointed that there weren't more birds in evidence on my walk, just the usual robins and ubiquitous magpies. As I was descending back down to the parking lot at the end of my walk, I saw some little birds hopping around in a shrubby area. I pished a bit, and one bird popped up in a clearing. I'd never seen one like him before but my brain was recalling an image from the field guide. I flipped it open and Bingo - a lifer!

My lifer green-tailed towhee. He was a bit of a stretch for my little point and shoot camera.

Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.

2011-09-15T07:36:00.001-07:00

Our new home comes complete with complimentary Richardson's ground squirrels.
We named this one "Hawkbait", but our ground squirrel-watching was short lived.
They are now already in their burrows for hibernation.

It was 33F this morning when we got up; frost on the car windshields. It's only September 15th!!!! Our new home will take a little getting used to.

We've moved 1,600 feet up in elevation and 30,000 people down in population from our previous home and we're noticing the differences. I haven't tried baking any cakes yet to see if 4,800 feet above sea level is enough to affect them but during our first week here we certainly noticed the change in altitude on our daily walks. Even the slightest incline made us feel like we had been couch potatoes all summer. (Hardly the case, or I would've been blogging before this!)

So Paul is now officially a professor and loving it. We're living on campus in a nice little apartment and I'm enjoying this grace period for a few weeks and the opportunity to "nest" before I really start stressing out over finding a job. As I've been unpacking the mountains of boxes (mostly books - whoever says books are becoming a thing of the past needs to come to our home!), I've been doing a lot of reflecting as we enter this new phase of our lives and thinking about those times when I was the most artistically productive and I think I need more balance in my life again; a more active, people-oriented day job to even out the solitary and sedentary aspects of making art. Having spent the last four and a half years working full-time as a graphic designer, I'm also thinking that unless it is a dream job position (like doing graphics/exhibits for a museum) I should steer clear of any creative type jobs so that I can reserve my creative energy for my own art endeavors. We'll see how it goes.

As I said, it was a very busy summer with the move but I've been sketching and taking photos when I can. I'm eager to get back to it on a more regular basis. My studio area in the new apartment is mostly set up now (you know that was my first priority!), although I haven't unearthed all of my art supplies yet. We paid a visit to Ikea in Portland, Oregon over the summer and I finally got an Alex rolling storage cart (in black) - an item that I see in so many artists' studios and have wanted for years. I also got two of their basic desk combination packages (I chose plain white tops with black legs) and created a U-shaped workspace in my studio. It turned out to be a very efficient use of small space as I now have room for computer work, art work, and sewing with just a turn of my chair. The only thing I didn't have room for was something counter-height for cutting mats or other stand-up projects, but I can just go use the kitchen counters for that when needed. I love my new studio space!

I've begun a campus birding list, of course. Here's what we've got so far:

Black-billed magpie
Brewer's blackbird
Mountain chickadee
Black-capped chickadee
American crow
White-breasted nuthatch
European starling
Rock dove (sounds so much better than "pigeon", doesn't it?)
Mallard duck

Considering I've had my head inside boxes ever since we got here, I'd say that's a pretty good start!

I'd like to put up a bird feeder by our apartment but there are very few trees on campus. I'm concerned that the birds I attract would just be sitting ducks for the local hawks without any available cover to give them a sporting chance but I doubt we'd be allowed to plant a tree or shrubs by our apartment. In the winter it regularly gets -10 or -20 F here so shrubs in containers probably wouldn't survive. Would a small pile of dead tree limbs on the ground near the feeder be enough cover? Does anyone know of a better creative (and inexpensive) solution?

This horse seems to have no trouble attracting birds, but a horse doesn't fit into our budget.

Experiments in Printmaking

2011-03-12T15:49:00.000-08:00

Magpie - 4x6 linoleum print - water-based ink on mulberry paper

I've been wanting to try printmaking for a while and this winter our local adult ed school finally offered a beginning linoleum printmaking class so I eagerly signed up. It has been fun to learn another creative activity that is achieved in a completely different way than painting. I have also been surprised by how detailed I could get with my carving. The trick, I learned, is to lightly heat the surface of the linoleum with an iron on the lowest heat setting. Then the linoleum cuts like butter.

Have you ever noticed that when you take a class or workshop, there are certain personalities that are ALWAYS in a class? There's the person who thinks what they have to say is equally as interesting/important as what the instructor has to say and you end up with two teachers, or there's the person who thinks they are better at whatever is being taught than anyone else. My printmaking class was no different. In fact, I could pick out these personalities within the first hour.

The young woman who fit the "thinks they are better" personality went so far as to openly scoff at our instructor and roll her eyes. It was extremely disrespectful. We had our first critique in the third class and everyone was asked to show the best print they had achieved so far (we were all still getting used to how much ink to apply, how deeply to cut our lines, etc., so the print quality of each individual print we made varied wildly.). Our instructor talked about the technique successes and problems with each of our prints and as far as critiques go, it was pretty mild and positive. The young woman who was too good for our class was critiqued second, and got no bad press. Her print came out nicely and her design was strong. However, the three students who followed her got spontaneous oohs and aaahs from the rest of the students for their lovely designs. As each of these prints was presented to the class, I could see this young woman getting more and more fidgety and uncomfortable. I found her rising indignation palpable. She clearly expected that her print would get the best response of anyone's and she didn't seem to take any comfort in the fact that her critique was positive and other people in the class also did not receive responses to their prints from the group. Given her behavior during that critique, I wasn't surprised when she never returned to class.

We were, however, still stuck with the other person who was trying to share the stage with our instructor. Luckily the instruction portion of the class was pretty much over at that point and it was just a matter of us applying the techniques to our pieces and getting individual help. Thankfully our co-instructor then became too busy with her own work to talk much.

The magpie print that I've included here was from our second assignment. We were to create a print with a social commentary. Our instructor had strong leanings and wanted us to voice our opinions as well. However, I am just not a social commentary type of gal. I remember so vividly visiting my grandfather as a child and the fights he and my mother would get into at the dinner table because he was very conservative and she was very liberal. They thrived on this interaction - it was their weird way of bonding - but the rest of us found it very uncomfortable and frankly I was scared by it. How could two people whom I loved so dearly be yelling at each other like this? How could they be saying such nasty things about each other when they were supposed to love one another? How could they be enjoying this? And why were both of them saying that people who thought X or Y were bad when I personally knew people who thought X or Y, but they were good people? It confused me terribly, and I have avoided any type of political or religious discourse ever since. So making a print with a social commentary created a bit of a conundrum for me. I figured I'd start with something I was comfortable with - birds, of course - and then add in some human element (that's supposed to be a cemetery ) and hope that I could somehow bluff my way through the meaning of it. Much to my relief, everyone was too eager to get to the carving and printing part of the exercise to spend time thinking up a profound statement first and so I was off the hook. Once the pressure of having something clever to say was gone, I was rather pleased with how this print came out.

I am really glad I took the class and look forward to experimenting with printmaking more in the future. But now the paintbrushes are calling.

A Productive Hiatus

2011-03-06T08:37:00.000-08:00

Hello to all of you out there in Bloggerland. How have you been? I'm not even sure where to begin after a 5 month break from blogging, so I guess I'll just jump right in. Otherwise this post will be indefinitely delayed by the "Oh where do I start?" hand-wringing.

My hiatus from blogging turned into a bit of a hiatus from art. I had a sense during the fall and winter that it was not the time to paint. I needed to take care of my health, reassess my life, and rejuvenate. I felt guilty about not doing any art - I mean, how could I be a Real Artist if I didn't do any art? And didn't I want to get Somewhere with my art and therefore I absolutely had to practice on a regular basis? I was reasonably successful in quieting that guilt and I trusted that even if it went against all the rules I was doing what was best for me.

Last month I was contacted by our local natural history center with an invitation to show my work in their new gallery space. I finally felt ready to come out from under my artistic rock, so I accepted their invitation and put together a show of my bird paintings. As I was preparing for the show, I gathered all of my pieces together for the first time in a while and as I looked at them, I realized that there wasn't anything in the group that reflected who I am right now as an artist. The newest pieces I had were from the 100 Painting Challenge I had done in 2009. This really got under my skin. With just two weeks to go before the show opening, I picked up a paintbrush for the first time in months and whipped out what I now consider one of my most successful pieces to date.

11x 14 - acrylic on paper

When I finished, I sat back and nearly cried for joy. For decades I have been striving to paint like this. Somehow, at last, the exact image I had started with in my brain managed to find its way out of me and onto the paper. And in record time!

The miracles didn't stop there. Even with a last minute broken frame that had to be replaced, I managed to hang my show in plenty of time (and without forgetting anything!). There was a great article in the newspaper about the show that ran the day of the opening, and drove a lot of people to the center. I somehow managed to get off work right on time (which never happens on a Friday) so that I could be at the opening feeling relaxed. And the new painting hung front and center at the show opening and got rave reviews.

That night a local watercolor artist whom I know and whose work I admire stopped in. We were talking shop and I sheepishly admitted to not having picked up a brush in months and how stunned I was at producing the gull painting immediately after such a long hiatus. She didn't seem surprised in the least. "Sometimes things need to gestate," she said, "Sometimes a break is what you need. I've done the same thing myself." and she and I agreed that from now on, we will refer to any similar artistic break as "a productive hiatus".

Hiatus

2010-10-14T20:06:00.000-07:00

A little bird recently reminded me that it has been a long time since I posted. I have certainly been distracted from blogging lately. A blood test in late July showed that I was anemic and since I've gotten my iron levels back up to normal, I am truly a different person. (I have to wonder how long I had anemia without realizing it!) With all this new energy I seem to be more and more interested in doing what I really want to do rather than what I should or ought to do, and often blogging has fallen into the should/ought category. Not to say I'm giving up blogging completely. And not to say with six months of winter fast approaching that blogging won't suddenly jump back onto my want to do list. But for now, I guess I'm taking a hiatus. I hope you are having as wonderful a fall as I am!

Practice, Practice, Practice

2010-08-08T19:33:00.000-07:00

Portrait of our Miss Madeleine. 5"x5" acrylic on watercolor paper.
Subject to change as I continue to work on the proportions and her eyes.

Acrylic paintings take longer than watercolor, so while I'm working on a larger landscape painting, I'm also doing a number of smaller pieces for daily practice. A 5" x 5" space limits how much I can put in a painting, helping me to keep from becoming overwhelmed with details, too.

I'm continuing to apply the techniques I learned at the workshop and I continue to be pleased with the results. And I still love my rake brush (look closely at the texture of her fur - that's the rake brush at work). I've always admired people who paint realistically but have a painterly feel to their work. I am thrilled that I'm finally beginning to see that quality in my work as well.

Another change I've noticed is that I am not depending on my reference photos as much; not painting as literally. In the photo for this piece, the light was very even and Madeleine had no shadow areas. Once I got her basic shape down, I painted from "feel" not from the photograph and I added shadows around her snout and body that were not in the photograph. I'm really happy with how this added life and volume to her portrait.

But what is off with her eyes and ears??? I can see that something is off but I cannot for the life of me put my finger on exactly what it is. If I cover one half of her face, the visible eye and ear pairs work, but with them all together there is something off. If you can spot the problem, let me know!

Raven Painting Demonstration

2010-07-22T20:34:00.000-07:00

Have I kept you waiting long enough?

As I had mentioned in a previous post, the Seerey-Lesters were incredibly generous with their time and knowledge at the painting workshop I attended a few weeks ago now. They encouraged us to take pictures as John demonstrated the concepts, so that we could reference these photos later and refresh our memories. And they very kindly gave me permission to share these photos on my blog.

John is working on a masonite panel with a coat of mid-value gray. He uses this technique so that darks and lights are immediately apparent. In this first picture, he is painting in the main dark and light areas of a raven, after using vine charcoal to sketch the basic shape of the bird onto the panel. The model was a taxidermy specimen.

The following sequence of photos show how he develops the scene. He uses very thin washes of acrylic, building up the details and textures with each wash. Almost all of this painting was done using a rake brush (like a flat brush, but with the tips of the hairs clipped in an almost sawtooth pattern to provide a great brush for textures and very thin lines.) They are amazingly versatile brushes, but rather hard to find. I ended up having to buy my Loew-Cornell rake brushes online for the workshop, but now I'm hooked on them.

Once John was happy with the values, he began to add thin washes of color.

Here is John Seerey-Lester's finished painting with the model. John completed this in about 4 hours, while talking us through what he was doing and answering questions along the way. Some lucky person attending the workshop bought this painting. How cool is that to have a painting hanging in your house that you actually watched the artist paint!?

In Memoriam

2010-07-14T21:23:00.000-07:00

I am very sad to report that one of my muses died yesterday. We're not sure of what or how. Yesterday morning she was fine and then our landlords found her dead under the coop yesterday afternoon. She was such a beautiful chicken. I hope that she is now in a vast eternal cornfield with lots of grasshoppers and no foxes.

**************************

I know that I had given you a workshop teaser last week, and then haven't posted since. Well, as these things seem to go, I was so excited to get home and start trying out all of the new painting information I learned at the workshop and then I promptly got sick. At first I thought it was just an annoying summer cold coming on, but no, it was my body telling me that I'd overdone it for long enough and I needed to take it easy whether I liked it or not. It is rather hard to argue when you feel like you've been hit by a freight train, so once I could crawl home from the work week, I basically slept the weekend away. By Sunday evening, I finally felt like I had enough energy to start a painting. My chosen subject matter will probably not surprise you.

I've been pleasantly surprised at how much information my brain was able to retain from the workshop and I could instantly see a difference in my painting. The lighting for this photo is not the best, but hopefully you get the idea. I am looking forward to continuing to practice more techniques from the workshop and trying to hone my painting skills!

A Few More Chickens and a Workshop

2010-07-06T20:38:00.000-07:00

I'm still enamored with "our" chickens. This page was sketched during their feeding time this evening.

I am seriously tired. Like please-let-me-sleep-an-entire-week-away tired. My in-laws came for a visit at the end of June. The motherboard/server at work that stores all of our customers' files, graphics, past ads, photos, logos, you name it, died and we had to start every project we'd been working on from scratch. (Yes, there was a backup but it took two days just to access that. Deadlines wouldn't wait.) A lot of overtime hours were racked up that week! Our IT guy took it in stride saying "Well, I didn't know if I could still pull 36 hour days at my age, but I guess I still can.". (and yes, our IT guy is waaaaay more tired than I am, so I shouldn't be complaining.) And then I just got back from a week-long painting workshop.

A painting workshop? I know, I know: poor me. But let me tell you; spending a week doing exactly what you want with like-minded people and fantastic instructors IS exhausting! My brain is so full. But it was an amazing experience. The workshop was held in Bend, Oregon through Art in the Mountains and our instructors were John and Suzie Seerey-Lester. I couldn't believe that I was able to take advantage of this opportunity - so often I can't afford to go to an art workshop because I'd need to fly just to get there, then rent a car, etc., etc., or I find out about the workshop after I've used up all my vacation time at work. This one was just a (long) day's drive away AND it was specifically focused on wildlife painting AND with artists whose work I was familiar with and who had good teaching reputations. I feel so lucky that everything came together for me to be able to do this.

I'll be blogging more about the workshop over the next few weeks as the experience sinks in. I learned so much and am now very anxious to put it all into practice. Here are a few pictures from the workshop to tide you over:

John Seerey-Lester starts a raven painting for a class demonstration.

Another day, another painting. The Seerey-Lesters put their all into the workshop,
teaching all day and then giving us extra instruction time in the evenings. Clearly they love to paint and love to teach. John also tells some great ghost stories.

Portrait of a Rhode Island Red

2010-06-21T20:48:00.001-07:00

Never thought I'd be learning the names of different breeds of chickens! This one from "our" flock is a Rhode Island Red. She's very curious (nosey?), being the most likely of the hens to peer in our windows, turning her head to look in with one eye and then the other. I think she intimidates our cat a little.

A quick pencil sketch led to this pen and colored pencil study.

A Few More Photos

2010-06-14T19:56:00.000-07:00

We have of course been very domestic lately, mostly because of the move, but also the soggy weather. But once the rain let up (1.9" of rain in June to date - unheard of in these parts) we slipped outside when we could. Here are a few photos from our forays:

I actually managed to get this photo of a western tanager at work during
my lunch break. The back patio area is surprisingly a terrific bird habitat.

A mountain bluebird in all its glory. How can seeing this not make your day?
When I zoomed in to see what was in its beak, it looked suspiciously arachnid.

These nestlings were nearly ready to fly. A few days later and we
probably wouldn't have seen them.

And I can't leave you without a picture of the Divine Miss M,
having an afternoon bath in the sun.

I know I haven't posted any art lately. Soon, I hope!

A Quick Update

2010-06-03T19:46:00.001-07:00

We've officially settled into our new apartment! We're enjoying discovering all the little perks and quirks of our new home while still digging out from under the mountains of packing boxes. Madeleine is adjusting to her new habitat well. Here she is, posing next to the funky shower curtain we opted for. The bathroom walls are made of what seems like shower stall material, and are a pale lavender (see the lower left-hand corner of the photo). Since we can't repaint the room, we've embraced the odd color instead.

One of the many delights of our new abode arrived last weekend - our new landlords started a flock of chickens! This just happens to be something Paul and I have talked about doing ourselves someday, so we are enjoying this test run. Madeleine watches the hens through the window very intently, but I can't tell if she sees them as prey or just a curiosity. I'm sure there will be lots of sketches of the hens as soon as I can find my sketchbooks.

And the spring rains have arrived at last. It has rained every day for the last two weeks. It made moving a muddy mess, but we need the rain. Today I noticed mushrooms popping up in lawns all around town. These intriguing ones are from our new yard, and look like something you might see in a medical textbook on diseases of the, er, personal nature. I'll try to identify them as soon as I unearth the box that my mushroom field guide is packed in.

I can't exactly say when I'll be back to blogging on a regular basis again. My ancient computer isn't even set up yet; Paul and I have been sharing his. But I wanted to post a little about our new life and let everyone know that although this whole having-to-move process over the last few months has been extremely stressful, we are really thrilled with our new situation. Thanks for all of your support and well-wishes!

Spring Sabbatical

2010-05-09T12:37:00.000-07:00

A little bird reminded me today that I've been absent from the Blogosphere for a while now. We've been busy apartment-hunting, packing up our lives, getting our apartment ready for house showings, and trying to get outside and catch Spring as much as possible. It's been a colder than usual Spring, but the first brave wildflowers are blooming and the birds are slowly coming back.

The hooded mergansers are pairing up.

The osprey are back.

And my jacob's-ladder is blooming.

We were starting to panic, but we finally found an apartment...and it is walking distance from three bakeries, a Dairy Queen, a cafe with gelato, and a locally-made ice cream stand. Life can't get much better than that! We'll be downsizing a little in the main living areas, but I will have space for my own art studio with natural northern light so I'm not complaining about the tighter quarters. When you've been married for 21 years, you've seen it all anyway. We'll be moved in by June.

If I have time, I do want to share some before and after shots of the place as it is a diamond in the rough. Its low ceilings and small rooms could make for either a depressing and cluttered claustrophobic space (as with the previous tenants), or a simple and cozy retreat (my goal). If you love interior design challenges as much as I do, you should check out Apartment Therapy I stumbled onto the site while looking for design inspiration for small spaces and they just happened to be having a "Cool Small Space" contest. And they have a fabulous sister site called Re Nest that focuses on green design and DIY projects with recycled materials.

Given my to-do list for the next two months, I may be absent from the Blogosphere more often than not. But stay tuned - when the dust finally settles in July, I should have some exciting art, stories, and photos to share!

Third Time's The Charm

2010-04-15T19:29:00.001-07:00

Can't help but sing!

You may remember waaaay back in November, that my beloved, academia-bound husband was supposed to have taken his oral exam as part of his PhD process, but on the day of his exam one of the professors on his committee came down with the flu. The exam was rescheduled for February, but in January another professor on his committee realized he had a conflict for that date and they rescheduled yet again for April. I am ecstatic to report that this time, finally, the exam went without a hitch and Paul passed and is now officially ABD (all but dissertation). Whew, we can breathe again!

Flicker WIP and My New Best Friend

2010-04-12T20:19:00.001-07:00

Still plugging away on the flicker drawing. I decided that instead of eliminating the grass at the bottom of the piece, I would embrace it and embellish it instead. I have mixed feelings about the results. I'm also not sure I like how the bottom is so abrupt and cut off compared to the airy feeling of the rest of the edges. But I am simply playing here and I may start all over again once it is completed and I figure out what works and what doesn't work. I'm also thinking that a thin wash of color, whether watercolor or colored pencils, might be nice, too.

Over the last six months, I had been getting more and more discouraged with my drawings and sketches. They seemed rougher and less confident than they did a year ago. It struck fear in my heart, worrying that somehow I had already reached my artistic prime without knowing it and now it was all downhill from here. My ever-wise husband, after hearing me moan over my fate one too many times, suggested I borrow his reading glasses and try sketching with them on. I admit to being skeptical but in the name of marital harmony, I did as he suggested. A few successful sketches later I sheepishly returned them to him and then ran out to the store to get a pair of my own. Meet my new best friend:

A Break from Painting

2010-04-11T14:27:00.000-07:00

After painting over 75 pieces in the last 11 months, I need a little break from the brushes! My Micron pens were calling out to me, so I dusted them off and found my Bristol paper and got to it. He's a work in progress (still needs many more black circles on his plumage yet) but critiques of this guy are most welcome.

Work In Progress - Northern Flicker (red shafted) - Pen & Ink

Unlike most woodpeckers, flickers tend to forage for food on the ground a fair amount. One of their favorite snacks is ants. My subject here was settling down to munch on a tasty ant hill when I snapped the reference shot. I was trying to incorporate some of the grass into the scene but I don't feel that's a terribly successful part of the piece. The grass doesn't read as flat and thin to me, but more rounded. I will probably just darken the bottom of the piece enough to hide the grass. I want to further develop the gradation behind the bird as well.

You'd think that all of those little dots in the stippling would drive me crazy but aside from a crick in my neck and shoulders (which my wonderful husband voluntarily massages out for me) I find the process very soothing. In fact, my inner critic doesn't make much of an appearance with this type of work at all.

And soothing is exactly what I need right now. This apartment-hunting process is getting to Paul and I. I am trying to believe that a perfect apartment really is out there just waiting for us to find it, but this is a discouraging process that makes me think a little less of humanity. It blows my mind what people consider acceptable living conditions and how much they charge for the, um, er, honor. How can you call someplace a two bedroom apartment if one of the bedrooms has no source of heat? Why would you show an apartment that has trash in the front yard and broken windows? And what is it with landlords who set up a time for you to come and look at a prospective apartment and then don't show!? - This is what has happened with an apartment we really liked. We wanted to get in for a second look and then talk about signing a lease and the guy has blown us off twice! He apologized profusely the first time, but we haven't heard back from him the second time. If he does eventually call back, do we give him a third chance, given that we really like the apartment (private yard area, big windows and lots of storage, great neighborhood, and a sound barrier between the floors!) or is this a preview of what kind of landlord he's going to be? *Sigh*

On a happier note, both the osprey and the tree swallows are now back in town. I feel badly for them though - we've had snow squalls and wind gusts up to 50 mph. At one point last Thursday it was nearly white-out conditions. Welcome Spring!

Expecting Tree Swallows

2010-04-04T20:19:00.000-07:00

Any day now the tree swallows should be back. My painting for today was inspired by my anticipation of that event. The return of the tree swallows, even more than the return of the osprey, convinces me that Spring really is just around the corner. The background of this painting feels more like summer though; hot, dry fields under a strong sun. I'm not quite ready for that yet!

I had the weekend to myself this week and planned it out so that all of the "have to" stuff got done yesterday, allowing me to spend the entire day today painting. I started out making a huge color mixing chart with my acrylics, painting delicious colors and playing with color wheels. Then I tried to paint an image that has been on my mind for weeks - a very monochromatic scene of snow and ice with dried cattails and Canada geese. A lovely scene in my head but a disappointment on paper. So I decided that before the frustration made me quit painting forever, it might be prudent to just take a break from painting and after a therapeutic piece of chocolate (Trader Joe's Pound Plus dark chocolate, if you're interested), I switched gears and worked on a baby quilt I'm making for a friend. She had her baby in October, so I'm a little behind schedule, but it will be lovely when it is done. And nights here stay cool/cold through May anyway.

After the break, I felt like I might be able to convince myself to give painting another go and I was surfing through my reference photos trying to figure out what to paint next and this image jumped out at me. The texture of the wooden nest box interested me, and I thought perhaps the blue of the swallows might make an interesting accent color against the yellow-brown earth colors in the background. That part didn't work out as well as I had hoped - the birds just weren't big enough for the blue to make an impact - but overall I am pleased with the painting, thank goodness! Our nearest Trader Joe's is 500 miles away, so if I keep painting disasters, I'm going to run out of chocolate!

Royal Tern

2010-03-28T20:37:00.000-07:00

Detail from test painting

Last month Paul bought me some new acrylics made by M. Graham. I've been itching to try them and I finally found a few minutes this weekend to give them a go. I'm no connoisseur of paints, but I definitely liked their consistency (very smooth - I suppose what people describe as buttery) and the color seems nice and vibrant. The sand has Naples yellow in it - a new color to my palette and one I like very much. I think I will have to get a few additional colors as I wanted the water to be a turquoise but my only blue is Ultramarine and that's just too dark for it.

We went for another walk along the river this afternoon. The osprey should be back any day now, but we didn't see signs of them today. We did however hear a spotted towhee, which is always a good thing. Tree swallows should be the next birds to return. This time of year is so exciting as every week brings new arrivals.

Landscapes

2010-03-22T20:19:00.000-07:00

Landscape paintings are not something I have a lot of experience with nor a burning desire to paint, but my last two paintings just happened to have both been landscapes. One of the coast and then this one of mountains. Maybe my latest subject choices are subconscious symbolic representations of my own search for a new personal landscape/home. I just love the color scheme of this one. The muted blues and browns are so soothing.

Our apartment search continues. I think I am beginning to have a problem with my craigslist habit. I have it bookmarked both at work and at home and I find myself checking it constantly just in case the perfect new apartment has just popped up in the listings. We've toured quite a few apartments in the last week or so. This being a college town, there are a lot of apartment listings that sound good on screen but end up being pretty shabby in the light of day. But we've also seen a few promising places along the way. Having lived in a basement apartment for the last 6 years, I find myself willing to overlook some cosmetic issues if a prospective apartment has big windows with lots of light. For example, one of the places that is tops on our list so far features a bedroom painted an orange that harkens back to the 70's, but I can work with that because of the fantastic windows with mountain views. At least there's no shag carpet.

More Signs of Spring

2010-03-15T20:39:00.000-07:00

A robin joined the throngs of sun-starved people along the river this past Sunday.

Surviving
Where the winds of disappointment
dash my dream house to the ground
and anger, octopus-like, wraps its tentacles around my soul
I just stop myself. I stop in my tracks
and look for one thing that can
heal me.
- Maya Angelo

I found this inspirational poem by Maya Angelo on a blog* that I find very inspirational anyway, so it was a double-whammy of inspiration, which is A Good Thing because I've lost count of how many whammies we've had of the uninspirational kind lately. Our apartment saga took a major turn for the worse this past week and it is looking very probable that we will have to move. We spent the weekend looking at available apartments, except for a lovely one hour walk along the river on Sunday. However, that one hour walk did us a world of good. Firstly, every person in town that owned a cute dog was out walking, too. Secondly, the birds were amazing. Not a lot of diversity yet, but the few species present made up for it in sheer exuberance. The red-shafted flickers were dueling through their calls, as the song sparrows were dueling with their songs and we spotted a female common merganser floating down the river, her beautiful dark green head glistening in the sunlight.

I know that I have hardly posted any art lately. I've just been so distracted by things that it has affected the success of my paintings and I am loathe to post this particular set of paintings publicly. However I AM STILL PAINTING, regardless of the outcome of the pieces. Come hell or high water, I WILL complete the challenge - even if my art table is a packing box and I have to sit on the floor!

*If you or someone you know is dealing with post traumatic stress disorder, I highly recommend Parasites of the Mind: a Healing Blog http://healmyptsd.com/ptsd-blog It is so important for PTSD sufferers (and their loved ones) to know that they are not alone and that there is a way to heal!

Spring Cleaning

2010-03-09T12:31:00.000-08:00

Female Hairy Woodpecker enjoying the sun

It was in the 50's and sunny this past weekend. Today it snowed. That's March in the northern Rockies for you. You may have noticed that I've switched out my Blog Header. It was high time for a change. The jury is still out as to whether I'm going to stick with this one or try another idea. It's been a long, dark, weird winter this year and I am ready for some serious revamping and rejuvenating this spring. I've got the restlessness of spring-fever for sure!

Signs of Spring

2010-02-23T19:57:00.000-08:00

Since Spring is officially still about a month away (and around these parts, early spring is probably more like two months away) I think I'm jumping the gun a little with my post title. However, the local chickadees and house finches have been tuning up their songs and it is no longer pitch black when I leave work, so I have reason to be hopeful.

This is a quick watercolor sketch of a mourning cloak butterfly. I haven't seen one this year yet, but they hibernate over the winter, sometimes emerging on warm winter days to take a sunbath before resuming their hibernation.

Today is the one year mark of when I began blogging about art and nature in earnest. It is too bad that I haven't been able to blog in earnest lately. About a month ago, our landlords decided to sell the house we rent an apartment in, so now my evenings are often taken up by dreaded cleaning and other preparatory house showing activities rather than being able to paint and blog to my heart's content. I hope that - despite the market - the house sells quickly, and to some nice people who will let us stay in our cozy little apartment!

A Personal Portrait

2010-02-08T21:36:00.000-08:00

I love birds and I love painting birds, but this evening I painted a portrait of our cat Madeleine and it was a totally different experience. Transcendent, perhaps. When you are THAT familiar with your subject, it makes all the difference in the world. I was smiling affectionately the entire time, joy in my heart as I painted the scene that greets me every morning as I get out of the shower. There's a rug in our bathroom that is the exact same color as her eyes - I swear I didn't choose it for that reason - and she sits on it, waiting patiently (and sometimes not so patiently) for me to get out of the shower and feed her. It is one of those daily routines that is just so dear to my heart.

I splurged and got myself a pad of Arches cold pressed watercolor paper. This painting has been floating around in my mind for a while now, and I knew I wanted to paint it on cold pressed paper. As I have said before, I really like the hot pressed for fine detail, but I can't lay down a wash on it to save my skin. But cold pressed is a dream to paint loosely on and I wanted this to be a pretty loose painting.

As a follow up to my last post bemoaning the lack of waxwings this winter, I have to mention that today a good friend and I went for a walk and spotted a few waxwings in a clump of mountain ash trees near work. Barely a handful, but waxwings none the less. It made me very happy.

Waxwing Painting

2010-02-04T05:46:00.000-08:00

Had you given up on me? I'm still here, plugging along. Life decided to throw us a few curve balls in January, but all one can do is keep picking oneself up and dusting oneself off again. I've only been able to grab a few minutes here and there to paint. The process may be slower that way, but it still gets done.

Waxwings, both cedar and bohemian, form huge winter flocks in our valley and are a frequent sight around town this time of year. They've been on my mind lately because I haven't seen a one this year. Rumor has it that the weather to our north, in Canada, is more inviting to them and so they are not gracing us with their usual winter visit, making this mostly bird-less winter even more so. I miss them. I miss their high pitched calls, their undulating flocks, and the way they can completely cover a bare tree with colorful, noisy life. They especially love the mountain ash trees, gorging on the berries and sometimes getting drunk on the fermented ones. When they are spooked, hundreds of birds take off at once in a great whoosh and circle around the sky a few times until they decide it is safe and return to the trees, twittering and rustling. Seeing them just lifts my heart in the middle of a long, dreary winter. But not this year.

All is not lost, however. We are now entering February and the ducks will start coming back. I am hoping that we might be able to squeeze a quick trip down to our wildlife refuge this weekend to see if the pintails have returned, or at the very least the goldeneye - we get both Barrow's and common goldeneye. So you'll have to stay tuned.

More Ruddy Turnstones

2010-01-20T19:47:00.000-08:00

Apparently I have not yet got the ruddy turnstones out of my system! This one was a very quick watercolor study, the challenge being to paint as loose as possible while still keeping important features such as the eye and beak from becoming abstract. To all you birders out there, does this convey essence of turnstone? Could you hazard a pretty good guess as to what bird was being painted (if you hadn't seen my spoiler title)?

I want to say thanks to everyone who left comments on my post about my painting inner dialog. It is reassuring to know that I'm not the only one who has such a harsh inner critic, but at the same time it is a shame so many of us have to deal with one.

Meanwhile, we've been enjoying above-freezing temperatures lately that will hopefully melt away all the ice so that we can safely go bird-watching again. It is very hard to spot birds up in the trees when your eyes are glued to the ground in front of you! I hope things are warming up for you in your favorite outdoor spots.

Ugly Painting, Cute Cat

2010-01-11T17:44:00.000-08:00

Madeleine keeps me company while I work. The painting was going well at this point.

The watercolor study in my last post was in preparation for an acrylic painting I did this past weekend. Everything was going quite well with the painting. I was especially excited because it was looking painterly rather than just representational. But then I got a little too enthusiastic and went too far. In my reference photos, there was a beautiful reflection in the wet sand that I really wanted to include but I pushed the wet sand value too dark. It is amazing how quickly a painting can go from success to disaster. But I am embracing the fact that for quite a while, I felt that the painting was successful. I don't often feel that way while painting. Usually when I am painting, my inner conversation goes something like this:

- This painting is coming along nicely. Ooo, I think a dab of paint right there would be just right!

- OMG, now look what you've done! That looks nothing like the reference. What the h*** were you thinking???

- I know I know, I screwed up. But hang on, I think I can fix it. Wait - if I just do this and then add that... There! See, it's fine now.

- Geez, you've GOT to be more careful. You were lucky you could fix it that time. Next time you might not be able to... Aaahhh! Ahhh! What are you doing now??? That looks terrible! You might as well just quit now. That's only going to end up in the trash anyway, so why waste more time on it?

- Could you please just shut up? I can't paint with you yelling.

- Well, why bother painting anyway? You'll never be a real artist. People will laugh at your stuff. Do you honestly think you have any talent? HA! I've seen 12 year olds who can paint better than you.

- Please shut up. Go away. You aren't helping. So I messed up this painting, but I can paint well.

- You are only as good as your last painting and this IS your last painting, Sister. You're getting worse at this, not better. You used to paint better 15 years ago. What the h*** happened?

- Okay, fine. That's enough. I've got to take a break. I can't paint with you yelling at me like this.

- Quitter. You'll never amount to anything if you just give up like that.

*Sigh*. Anyway, as I said, this conversation did NOT play out in my head this time, despite the big disaster. I take that as a very good sign. This is something I have noticed over the past seven months with the 100 Paintings Challenge - those kind of inner conversations happen less often when I paint on a regular basis. Note to self: keeping painting on a regular basis. And practice painting wet sand!

Watercolor Study #?

2010-01-09T19:33:00.000-08:00

I need to sit down and count up all my paintings from the Challenge again. When I stopped posting every single thing I painted, I lost count of what I'm actually up to. I vaguely knew when I'd reached 50, the halfway point, but since then I keep painting without counting. So here's #? of a ruddy turnstone, a beautiful shorebird that is much easier to identify than the groups of sandpipers that are so hard to tell apart that birders collectively call them "peeps". Ruddy turnstones are found along the East, West and Gulf coasts in winter. However, I took this picture in Florida one June. Apparently the flock of turnstones that my subject was a part of had decided not to bother with the long migration to the Arctic for the summer and opted to stay in Florida year-round. Given everything that birds have to cope with during their migrations, I can't say I blame them.

2010-01-03T14:30:00.000-08:00

White-tailed Trogon - Acrylic 12" x 16"

Nothing like starting the new year with an old friend! I can't remember the last time I broke out the acrylic paints and did a complete painting. Probably when I did the sea gull painting that's featured in the header of my blog, which would have been about two years ago.

This painting was inspired by a great book by John Agnew - "Painting the Secret World of Nature" and the trogon I photographed at the Seattle Zoo. Mr. Agnew does a lot of murals and diorama paintings for museums and zoos. (Give you three guesses what I'd like to do someday...) The book has demonstrations about painting backgrounds and atmosphere to suggest the environment, without painting every little intricate detail - perfect for a recovering hyper-detail painter like me. However, I'm still struggling with adding scientifically accurate elements such as epiphytes and types of leaves found in the rainforest where the white-tailed trogon lives. Sure I can google-image the stuff but I find it so hard to then realistically incorporate those things into a painting. For example, what size would the leaves be in comparison to the bird? (Any artists out there - please leave your thoughts on and experiences with this in the comments section!) Maybe I should just stick to subjects in environments that I have an in-depth familiarity with. *Sigh* But it still felt really good to paint with an old friend.

Hope everyone had a wonderful New Years Eve (I was asleep by 10 pm).

Happy 2010!

2009-12-31T16:45:00.001-08:00

Unidentified Toucan No More!

2009-12-26T16:34:00.000-08:00

The mystery is solved! This photogenic bird that posed so nicely for me at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle back in September is a green aracari (Pteroglossus viridis); a type of toucan. You may remember I did a painting of it as well, but I couldn't identify what kind of toucan it was. Today I was surfing the internet, dreaming of someday being able to have the time and money to visit the Canopy Lodge in Panama for a birding vacation and noticed a photo from a visitor that looked a lot like my mystery bird. It was identified as a collared aracari. So I hopped back to the Seattle Zoo's website and typed "aracari" into the search feature instead of "toucan" and sure enough, I got a hit for "green aracari". I then google-imaged (I can hear the grammar mavens out there shuddering) "green aracari" and bingo - tons of photos of my bird!

The green aracari is found in northern South America and is the smallest of the toucans. It is also the only toucan species in which the male and female look different (called sexual dimorphism). Males have a black head whereas females, which is apparently what my bird is, have what is described as a rusty chestnut head (looks dark maroon to me...) and a slightly smaller bill.

So daydreaming and surfing the Web today turned out to be a productive activity for once. Plus fantasizing about seeing a green aracari in the tropics took my mind off the latest cold snap we're headed into. Brrr.

A Christmas Story

2009-12-25T18:23:00.000-08:00

One year, maybe 15 years ago or so, Paul and I spent Christmas with my mother and then stepfather. My mother polled each of us to find out what everyone wanted for Christmas dinner. Each of us - including my mother - admitted to wanting something other than turkey (the traditional British Christmas dinner if you aren't going to spring for a goose) because we all really just don't like turkey. So armed with our suggestions, preferences, and dislikes, dear Mama headed down to the High Street to do her Christmas shopping. So, when we all sat down to Christmas dinner, our bellies rumbling in anticipation, what were we presented with? Turkey. Why? Because, in my mother's words, it is tradition. And tradition is apparently more important than what the cook and the dinner guests want.

Well, fast-forward to 2009 and I say "Bah humbug!" to my mother's Christmas tradition. Tonight Paul and I made bings for dinner. From what I've understood in my research on the subject, bing is a Chinese word that can apply to a number of different types of flat bread. If you've ever had moo shu pork, the pancake is a type of bing. Tonight we made a kind of stuffed bing that we are in the habit of devouring at a local restaurant here in town but we wanted to try our hand at making it at home. I searched online for a recipe and found one from chef Ming Tsai that sounded like our restaurant version.

We are devout foodies, but I never meant this to become a food blog. Nevertheless, I took pictures of the process. I was in charge of making and shaping the bing dough and Paul oversaw the meat filling and the cooking portion of the project.

I cannot stress how delicious these were, and what enjoyment we got out of making a restaurant favorite from scratch in our very own kitchen. It beat the tar out of a turkey dinner. However, we are having pumpkin pie for dessert so I guess we aren't completely breaking from tradition. But in my book, pumpkin pie is a good tradition.

Waterlily Painting

2009-12-14T19:39:00.000-08:00

Value sketch

The leaf of this waterlily was a problem child, as far as this painting goes. It is flat. Very flat. Maybe a slight upturn along the edge in a few places, but not a lot of different textures, values, or interest to be had on the leaf. It wasn't even considerate enough to sit a tiny bit above the water so as to cast a shadow or reflection. It made a lovely photo at the time, and if you are Monet, it probably would have made for a lovely painting, but as a painting reference I found this specimen decidedly dull.

Dull waterlily painting

So after much grousing and grumbling, I decided to throw caution to the wind and invent a reflection and some more shadows on the damn thing. I don't like doing this. I am comfortably co-dependent with my reference photos and straying from their photographic reality gives me gray hairs. In fact, in the sketching stage of this painting I had an argument with myself; half of me wanted it to look exactly like the lily in the photo, down to the last petal and the other half said "So I missed one or two petals - no one will know." (...except now all of you do. Keep it to yourselves, please). And since the number of petals ended up not being exactly the number my specimen had, a little made-up reflection in the painting could hardly hurt at this stage. Right?

Watercolor of waterlily. Now with more lilypad bling.

Put 'Em on Ice

2009-12-12T14:52:00.000-08:00

For the first time in a week, it was bearable to be outside for any length of time yesterday. In the morning when I left for work, I felt there might be reason to hope since it was 10 F out (the same temperature as the high from the day before.) and sure enough, by my lunch break it was approaching 20 F. I headed outside to see the sun and breath some fresh air and to maybe catch sight of some of the bald eagles that have come into town for the winter.

So here I am walking along the riverfront trail, enjoying being outside for a change and some movement across the river catches my attention. Inexplicably, there's a guy walking around on the river, really close to the edge of the ice. This ought to be interesting, I thought to myself, so I stopped to watch.

Then this guy picks up a good sized river rock and chucks it waaaaaay up in the air and watches it smack back down onto the ice. He then walks out to the rock, picks it up and does it again, and again, and each time the rock falls a little further out onto the river, he walks a little further out on the ice. I decide that I've had enough when I see him throwing the rock onto the ice that is slightly submerged under the water. Call me crazy, but I think when water is flowing over the ice it should be a good indicator that you shouldn't step there, regardless of what the rock says.

Through the wonders of Photoshop, I have highlighted the thrown rock for you to see.

So I'm walking back towards work and start to notice that there are other river rocks scattered here and there on top of the ice in the river. This means that other people (or maybe just this one obsessed guy?) have been performing this same act all up and down the area! Why have I never seen anyone doing this before? I mean, my office is right on the river with a wall of windows facing it and I'm always peeking out the window looking for eagles in the winter; you'd think that I'd have noticed this before.

And why are they doing this? To fish? Sure, the river has trout in it, but there are so many open areas you could just as easily dangle your hook directly into the river rather than going to the bother of drilling a hole in the ice.

I will let you know if I ever find an answer.

International Birding I

2009-12-09T11:20:00.000-08:00

blue tit (Parus caeruleus)

My husband and I have made many sacrifices while he has been in school working on his PhD. However, once in a while there's a perk to the process that is just so priceless, I start to wonder if maybe he shouldn't become a life-long student. For example, Paul presented a paper in Paris and I got to go along. Poor me.

But while I was enjoying this amazing opportunity, I was still thinking like the nature nerd that I am. One day during our trip (one of the few sunny ones) while Paul was busy working, I ran over to Notre Dame. I was in the gardens at the back of the cathedral, admiring the magnificent architecture, when I heard and then spotted a little songbird in the trees. So picture the scene - everyone else is oohing and aahing at the Cathedral, pointing their cameras at the spires and the flying buttresses, meanwhile I'm running around peering frantically into the trees. The other tourists must've thought I was nuts. We all have our own priorities, I guess.

You Crazy Tourist!

What I was missing

Oregon Oddities

2009-11-27T08:40:00.000-08:00

Hope all my US readers had a great Thanksgiving! We're now in the November blahs here in the Northern Rockies; it's dark, it's cold, and so Oregon in the summer is not far from my thoughts.

While Paul and I, and our friends Denise & Jim were traipsing about the lovely coast of Oregon, we did spot the occasional odd thing here and there. I've already shared the Head at Hug Poin t with you. A few days earlier we had traveled south to Newport, OR and Yaquina Bay Lighthouse State Park. We tried to get there when tide was at its lowest because the park has some great tidepooling and we got an hour or so in, and then we explored some of the other parts of the park once the water got too high to safely tidepool. There's a sheltered cove that seal lions and harbor seals often hang out in so we walked down to that area and noticed that the railing and posts of the fence along the sidewalk had become a caterpillar highway! They seemed to be traveling with great intent, but in all different directions.

This is just a small group of the hundreds of caterpillars we saw

Denise identified them as being in the Tussock moth family, but we've yet to figure out exactly what kind they were.

We then continued on down to the cove and watched two seals on a rock watching a great blue heron on another rock watching the fish. Unfortunately we discovered that although we had left the main batch of caterpillars behind, there were still some roaming the railings in this area and we accidentally squished a few as well as picked up a few hitchhikers on our clothes. It was tricky trying to remove them from us without touching those hairs that looked like they'd be very itchy.

For a minute, the seal found us an interesting diversion. Then he/she went back to watching the heron.

On another day we headed into the temperate rainforests that make up the Northwest Pacific Coast in search of the ubiquitous banana slug. There was plenty of fog, plenty of vegetation, but no slugs. We eventually found one on the Washington coast, but it wasn't like the olive green giants that I remember seeing in Olympic National Park. However, it was the first slug we'd seen the whole week, so it became much celebrated and photographed.

Later, Denise told me that after we headed home, they saw some real field guide quality banana slugs on a hike they took near where we had been staying. They also finally heard a varied thrush on that hike; a bird we'd been trying to get all week.

And when you are hungry after all the hiking and beachcombing and gingerly picking caterpillars off of you, where do you go to eat? Why at the Inflatable Crab, of course!

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

2009-11-21T07:25:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-09T20:20:00.000-08:00

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?

2009-11-01T18:46:00.000-08:00

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

2009-10-25T19:01:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-19T20:46:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-12T07:31:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-10-07T21:07:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-03T19:27:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-01T21:24:00.001-07:00

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

2009-09-29T20:45:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-17T08:15:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-13T12:44:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-07T20:01:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-30T12:08:00.000-07:00

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.

Daily Sketch - False Lily of the Valley

2009-08-28T20:12:00.000-07:00

Maianthemum species - false lily of the valley

I don't often get to enjoy the luxury of having time to sit and sketch a plant in depth. Even on our vacation to Oregon in July, there was so much to see and do that we were always on the go. One afternoon, however, I did have some free time and so I wandered around outside the house we were sharing on the coast with Denise and Jim. I found all sorts of wonderful plants growing right around the house, including this one. It is a native, but was being used in the landscaping - a smart choice for low maintenance gardening. Why fight the climate you are in, after all. Grow a plant that's genetically adapted to the area! This one made a lovely shade groundcover. The leaves are thick and deep green, it has delicate white flowers in spring and then these mottled berries in summer. What's not to like?

Painting 25 - Goose Family Robinson

2009-08-26T20:50:00.000-07:00

Does anyone remember Swiss Family Robinson? I so wanted that tree house! It must've been incredible to be the set designer of the movie. I have a fantasy that someday I'll have an art studio tree house... Meanwhile I plod along in my subterranean studio space instead.

Arrgh! Since I'm thinking of childhood movies, I could throw a childhood temper tantrum right now. I'm all stressed out at work, then I come home and the painting doesn't go well. STILL having problems with the masking fluid affecting the paper. This is the sort of thing that makes me wonder why the heck I am struggling with watercolor instead of using acrylic or colored pencil which is so much easier to control and correct. It's too late at night to eat a hot fudge sundae, so I have to figure out some other way to calm down. Breathe...Breathe... must find my Happy Place...

Painting 24 - Does It Pop Yet?

2009-08-24T20:33:00.001-07:00

Nothing strikes fear into the hearts of graphic designers like the phrases "Jazz it up" or "Make it pop" (except maybe a client insisting on text being in comic sans...). Yet as I struggle with this painting, "pop" is exactly how I would describe what I'm trying to accomplish. I should be moving on to Painting 25 but for some reason I can't let this one alone. I guess the vision I have in my head seems so attainable this time. The background is getting better; I can't see my brush strokes anymore. I think possibly the color is getting richer as it gets darker. The egret may even be starting to glow a little. I'd like to add some leaves fading into the background. The big question is how much more abuse can the paper take? I am tempted to start over. The painting is only 6" x 4", so it wouldn't be a huge undertaking to start with fresh white paper again. Then maybe I could attain that elusive "pop" I'm looking for.

However, this will all have to wait to be resolved until tomorrow. I've been up since 4:30 am (not by choice) and I am tired. Meanwhile, Madeleine is letting us know in no uncertain terms that she is going to starve to death in a matter of seconds if she is not fed RIGHT NOW, even though she ate about 4 hours ago. So anyone who is still with me at this point, I bid you bonne nuit.

Painting 24 - Great Egret

2009-08-22T14:32:00.001-07:00

I am not an astrology follower; I tend to think of it as a diversion, a fun thing to check out after the fact and see if by chance it was correct. And my skeptical, scientific mind can come up with all sorts of explanations for any seeming correlation to my life. But I have to admit that there is one astrologer who has been eerily correct over the years: Rob Brezny of Free Will Astrology. Our indy newspaper here in town carries his column and I've always looked forward to seeing if he's been spying on me lately. This last month he certainly has! Each of the last four weeks he has been right in tandem with my life.

My horoscope for this week talked about how hard I've worked and how I have gotten a "taste of victory" over my "old bugaboos" but Mr. Brezny pointedly asks am I going to stop there because it is comfortable or am I going to push myself to complete success. Whether he is really able to see my future or not, he does bring up a very good point. Lately I have indeed felt that I have at last reached a comfortable level of achievement over my personal ghosts and demons. Hurrah! -But this does have a down side. This week in particular, I have not been pushing myself as hard as I had been. When pain and fear are nipping at your heels, taking chunks out of your calves and threatening to pull you down into the feeding frenzy, you run and you run hard, but when they are not the force driving you forward it is much easier to get lazy, much easier to ease up on the effort.

This is no less valid a point in my artistic life, either. A few days ago I had my goal of 25 paintings in 3 months in sight, easily achievable, and yet here I am a few days after my goal date and I'm only just finishing Painting 24 and haven't even started Painting 25. What the heck happened??? I could come up with all sorts of excuses: too tired, too much sugar, still recovering from the MIL, freelance work, etc., but the bottom line is I didn't do it and I could've. There was nothing really stopping me except me. Live and learn.

Painting 24 was a bit difficult. I've included one version of it below that I just wasn't satisfied with. (Truth be told, I'm not satisfied with the final one either). I see so many watercolor artists produce these beautiful rich dark backgrounds with smooth textures. I wanted that for this painting, and then to have the bird and groups of mangrove leaves absolutely light up in the places where the sun was the strongest. I feel like it ended up rather drab. I also found myself getting overwhelmed by each individual leaf and losing track of where I was supposed to be painting each one. I've come a long way, bu I've still got a long way to go...

1st attempt

I want to thank everybody who left me birthday comments or e-mails this week. It was a great day and it is going to be a great year - as long as I don't get lazy!

Painting 23 - Bison

2009-08-18T06:44:00.000-07:00

My in-laws were in town over the weekend, so between the pre-visit mass cleaning and the post-visit recovery, I haven't been able to put paint to paper in a while. I've missed it. Really missed it. When I picked up the paintbrush last night and made that first brush stroke and saw the colors spreading on the paper, it just felt so good. I thought I'd challenge myself with another mammal painting and another dreaded shadow. This shadow didn't end up with the mass and volume that the onion shadow had, so definitely an improvement there.

Happy Birthday to me! For the first time in our entire relationship, Paul won't be able to be home for my birthday this year. So instead of sulking, I'm going to go hike up a local mountain that I haven't hiked yet and have ice cream with friends to celebrate instead.

Will the Real Painting 21 Please Stand Up (and Painting 22)

2009-08-12T07:26:00.000-07:00

After I posted on Monday night, my artistic conscience just couldn't let me keep the color charts as a part of the 100 Paintings Challenge. Plus I really wanted to play with those new paints and brushes more! So I stayed up and did this quick watercolor sketch of a couple of onions I had hanging around. Loved the onions themselves, not so crazy about the shadows - gotta work on that.

All day at work yesterday I was so anxious to get home and paint more. Yoda would not have been pleased with my lack of attention to the tasks at hand. The clock went soooo slooooowly. Finally I was released and I hurried home to my paints. Kelly's post about the hummingbird at Red and the Peanut inspired me to try a subject I've been meaning to paint for a while now. I know there's a trick to painting iridescent colors, but...

Don't let the cute little pose he's got fool you - these critters are ill-tempered!
That's what too much sugar will do to you.

Painting 21 - Er, Sort Of. And Some Inspiration

2009-08-10T19:06:00.000-07:00

A treat to myself arrived today. Of course it arrived right as I had to leave for work, so no time to do anything but open the box and admire my goodies. But knowing it was there, waiting for me when I got home gave me a buzz to get me through the work day (but sadly didn't make the clock go any faster).

When I started on the 100 Painting Challenge back in May, I did not intend to complete the whole thing in watercolor. I looked at the Challenge as a way to kick-start my painting again, not necessarily to master a particular medium. I started out with watercolor because it was easier to use in my little studio space. Acrylics and canvases take up so much room. Plus if watercolors dry out, you can wet them again. Acrylics are much harder to save from day to day. (One time I did manage to keep them moist for a while but they eventually grew mold) But here I am having completed 20 paintings and I am finding that watercolor is really growing on me. I find myself curious about watercolor and its potential. I even bought a watercolor instruction book this weekend. I am pleasantly surprised by this turn of events. And what was my gift to myself that arrived today? A new set of watercolors, paper, and watercolor brushes! And not the student grade watercolors I've been using to "save money". I've got Big Girl watercolors now.

So Painting 21 is actually me testing out the new paints. I don't know if this counts as a painting really, but...

Ooo, look at me getting all fancy with the color testing.

The palette I chose to purchase consists of a warm and a cool version of the 3 primary colors taken from an exercise in Nita Leland's book "Exploring Color". As you can see in the photo, I tried mixing them into a color wheel and then checked their transparency (Cadmium Red Light is definitely NOT transparent!). It's a shame the photo washed out a little, but I love the richness of the colors already! I can't wait to use these new paints in a formal painting.

I also wanted to share a post from Christine Kane's motivational blog. I've bookmarked her blog for myself and I check on every few days. I originally found it through a link on Leslie Rinchen-Wongmo's blog, and today I noticed a post about inspiration and how to do things even when you don't feel like it. You'll have to weed through her workshop self-promotions, but I thought the essence of the post worth sharing.

As for the big box that my art supplies came in, once I unpacked it, it was put to good use...

Mmm, it still has that new box smell!

Painting 20 - Daylily

2009-08-08T21:24:00.001-07:00

Whew - twenty paintings under my belt! No wonder I needed a two hour nap today. Now I have to complete 5 more paintings by August 20th to keep on track for my 100 paintings in a year challenge.

I've been admiring and studying the watercolor floral paintings of Laure Ferlita at Painted Thoughts and Jacqueline Gnott at Contemporary Realism and have wanted to give it a go myself. So this morning I took my camera and walked to our local natural food store to photograph some of the beautiful flowers they have growing in their water-wise landscaping. This lily particularly caught my eye. I think this type is a Stella D'Oro daylily. Unfortunately the photo I took included a dead bloom in front of the right hand side of the flower. When I started the drawing, I chose not to include the dead bloom. It would've just looked like a blob and not added anything to the painting. But then I had to invent what the right hand side of the flower looked like! The stamens were the most challenging part of the painting, though - they got quite confusing to paint and in the end the angle that they went back into tube of the flower is not accurate. However, I am very pleased with how this came out overall.

As I mentioned with Painting 19, I am feeling very comfortable with the watercolors now. I think that since I'm no longer fighting with the paint, this will free me up a bit to concentrate on improving my backgrounds and compositions.

Daily Sketch - Li'l Wabbit

2009-08-08T07:39:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted one of my daily sketches in quite a while, so I thought I'd share one again. This l'il wabbit - or bunneh for LOLCats fans - lived in our yard in Pennsylvania. He (I'm assuming it was a boy rabbit, as we never had baby bunnies about) was a well-behaved neighbor who resisted feasting on my garden plants, which I very much appreciated. He would just sit, serenely nibbling on a blade of grass.

After the painting of the deer, I realized I needed to work on my understanding of mammal eye placement. I ran across a picture of this guy when I was cleaning out my studio area a few weeks ago and thought it would be an excellent reference shot for a sketch; possibly even for a nice pen & ink of him, so stay tuned...

Oregon Tidepooling

2009-08-05T06:06:00.000-07:00

I've been so busy since we returned from our Oregon vacation in July that all of my photos have remained on my photo card, languishing without my attention. It seems so long ago now that we were on the coast. I miss it, and I miss laughing my a** off with Paul, Denise and Jim, and poking around in the tidepools with them. Here are a few of the interesting things we saw...

A giant green anemone at low tide remains open in the little bit of water that is left in its pool. In the lower right hand corner of the photo you can see a shiny dark green thing - that's the edge of another giant green anemone that has retracted in on itself for low tide.

A bit of kelp makes a beautiful pattern against the beach pebbles.

Gooseneck barnacles and mussels on an exposed rock at low tide.

This crab had shuffled off this mortal coil (did I mention I'm a Monty Python fan?) by the time we saw it. A gull was trying to get the last bits of tasty meat out of the nooks and crannies of its shell when we happened upon it. The coloring and patterns on its shell were just fantastic.

These pink sea anemones, called aggregating anemones were much smaller than the more common giant green ones we saw. These were clustered in a sandy-bottomed tidepool at Hug Point.

There's a really cool website with great pictures all about the critters you can find in the Oregon tidepools at http://www.oregontidepooling.com/
Their focus is on southern Oregon tidepools but many of the things we saw in the north are included on their website.

Hope you enjoyed the trip down Memory Lane with me.

Painting 19 - Flamingo

2009-08-02T17:04:00.001-07:00

I really like this one. It is not at all what I started out to do but I love how it ended up. This was going to be an exercise in careful planning. I was going to have a background, the bird was going to be highly detailed. For once I had every step of the painting planned out ahead of time. But when I put down my first wash of color on the flamingo's neck and saw how it interacted with the paper, I suddenly knew I needed to paint loose with no background and that I needed to not fuss with the painting but just let it be as it was. After 18 paintings, I think I am finally beginning to understand the unique properties of watercolor and how not to fight that but use it to the painting's advantage. This is a very exciting step for me.

I believe my reference photos for this were taken many years ago at either the zoo in Seattle or the zoo in Philadelphia. I don't remember which. But I do remember spending a lot of time watching them preening and fluffing and doing their flamingo thing. Such great, beautiful, awkward birds! Their feathers are not naturally pink - the color comes from carotenoids contained in the algae and little crustaceans that they eat. When the birds live in captivity, such as in a zoo, they need a special diet to keep their coloring or their feathers will become white.

Painting 18 - Mule Deer

2009-07-27T19:48:00.000-07:00

I had hoped to have this completed last night - three paintings in one weekend would have been great - but this turned out a bit more complex than I had anticipated. I find mammals a challenge - particularly their faces; something about the shape of the snout and the way their eyes are set. In the end, I'm fairly pleased with this one, though.

Mule deer are found throughout western North America. If you've never seen a mule deer before, their ears are much bigger than a white-tailed deer's. In this painting, the ear on the right is accurate, but I should have made the one on the left bigger!

Paintings 16 & 17

2009-07-26T08:27:00.001-07:00

With a vacation and some freelance design projects lately, I've been falling a little behind with my painting schedule this month, so I rocked out two paintings yesterday. They both gave me a workout on laying down watercolor washes!

This scenic is from my imagination, but based on Glacier National Park and a trillium I've used in a previous painting. There are parts of the park where the trees are so thick that it is very dark in the understory, but wherever there's a break in the trees above your head, you can see the mountains towering over everything. Oftentimes the mountains are much closer than I show in this painting. They are omnipresent. Glacier is one of my very favorite places anywhere in the world (especially in the off-season when you basically have the park to yourself!).

The feather study was based on a specimen I had stowed in a box of bits and pieces of nature that I keep on hand for inspiration. The fuzzy bits (called the afterfeather apparently) were tricky to create with shadows on a colored background. I wish I could've gotten the feather a bit crisper, but I was doing a fair amount of pulling off color, since I didn't use any masking this time. I don't know what bird the feather is from. I found it in our yard a few years ago. It is a fairly small feather, so I'm thinking maybe it is a chickadee feather. If anyone recognizes it, please let me know what it is!

I also totally cleaned out my studio area yesterday and reorganized everything. Now I have space to paint! It is amazing what a difference that makes. I put up two small decorative "floating" shelves and put some little things I find inspirational on them (including a photograph of Georgia O'Keefe!) to increase the calm and beauty quotient in the space I paint in. I just have to make a concerted effort to keep it this way now!

Painting 15 - Shell

2009-07-21T20:52:00.001-07:00

Or perhaps a better title would have been "What Was I Thinking???". Wow. This one was a challenge! The only way I got through it was to keep promising myself I could quit painting, quit art even, if I just did one more brush stroke. I guess maybe marathon runners make similar promises to get to the finish line, I don't know. I certainly didn't get any runner's high from this project.
I have a jar full of beautiful sea shells in our bathroom; shells I have collected from years of beachcombing. This one is one of my favorites and I mistakenly thought it was a fairly simple shape to paint. However, as soon as I set it up to be my model I discovered that the angle of the shell, the rings, ridges and knobs all combined to create quite a perspective mess for the eye and brain to work out. I tried all the tricks I knew - closing one eye and holding out the edge of my pencil to check angles, drawing an axis line to help keep all those dang rings at the top stacked properly, etc., but alas the angle is still off and those top rings sort of bend back towards us rather than away. I think I could draw this thing 100 times and not get it right. But at least my admiration for the creatures that form these shells increased along with my frustration.

My Muse is Out for a Drink

2009-07-19T18:47:00.001-07:00

Ugh, I hate weekends like this - where you've got a ton of free time to do anything you want but nothing inspires, nothing motivates, nothing seems interesting or worthwhile. You listlessly stare at your paint tubes, occasionally picking up a paintbrush and then putting it back down again with a big sigh. You go through your stacks and piles and boxes of reference photos and nothing jumps out and says "Paint me!". On top of that, you get stung by a #%!* yellow jacket when you venture outside for inspiration.

So I present you with this to ponder, instead of a painting:

We are a proud town of dumpster-divers, found object artists, and the best way to get rid of something - anything - is to put it out by the curb; it will disappear in seconds. Guaranteed.

However, this item remained stubbornly affixed to the curb. But why? This is a piece of Fine Furniture. And to sweeten the deal, the owner thoughtfully spray-painted the word "FREE" across the front, figuring this would expedite the process. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a Bargain with a capital B! I'm sure the owner was just scratching his head, day after day, wondering why his sofa was still there, wondering how anyone could resist this treasure he had so generously donated to the cause.

It brought me endless amusement.

Painting 14 - Yellow-Headed Blackbird

2009-07-16T20:25:00.001-07:00

(The preliminary sketch - sorry about that evil eye. Eew!)

Today I felt like doing something a little different, a little looser, a little more spontaneous for my painting. This past weekend, Paul and I slipped down to Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Refuge for another dose of nature. The yellow-headed blackbirds were still in control of the cattails. Many of this spring's chicks had fledged, sporting a hint of next year's brilliant plumage. They joined the bright yellow males on the reeds. Yellow-headed blackbirds are one of my favorites (is there a bird that isn't a favorite!?) and their images in my mind were just begging to be painted.

Oregon - The Head at Hug Point

2009-07-15T08:15:00.000-07:00

The Oregon coast is rugged and beautiful, with scenic treasures around every turn. All along Highway 101 are scattered lots of view points, state parks, and other opportunities to get out and explore. One little gem we discovered just south of Cannon Beach was a little park called "Hug Point", with beach access. The four of us had had our fill of seafood that evening and needed to stretch our legs, so we popped off the road for a quick stroll along the beach. It was low tide, exposing large stretches of the sand and also access to two other coves that would have been cut off at high tide. The cliffs were riddled with caves as well. We were like a bunch of kids discovering a new land. We excitedly went exploring, checking out the caves and looking for shells, or tidepools or whatever we might come across. What we discovered in the cliffs was not what we expected!

Denise spotted it first and called the rest of us over. If you look at the upper left of this photo, you'll see what we saw peering down at us from the cliff. Kinda cool, kinda creepy. I decided to zoom in on the face with my camera, since often the viewing distance is what causes the illusion. However, it seemed like this illusion held up pretty well even in close view. It was as if someone had placed a doll's head up in that niche and it had become weathered and coated with sand. And that eye - creepy!

We have since been scouring the internet, trying to see if anyone else had noticed the head or if there was a legend about it or anything, but we haven't found any references to it yet. Could it be that we are the only ones who have ever seen The Head at Hug Point...

Painting 13 - Magpie

2009-07-12T19:41:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed a lack of posts this past week. Paul and I met up with our dear friends Denise and her hubby for some R&R on the Oregon coast. Doing a few posts ahead of time and then scheduling them to publish while I was away was on my to-do list, but I only managed to get one ready. Pre-trip insanity reigned supreme. The kind that makes you wonder why you bother going away in the first place because it is so stressful trying to get everything taken care of for while you are away. And this thought runs through your head at 1 am as you lay wide awake knowing you have to get up in 4 hours to start a 10 hour drive so you really, really need to get some shut-eye or you'll fall asleep at the wheel and truly ruin your vacation, but you also know you just aren't going to be able to relax enough to get any sleep. But of course it was worth it in the end, and the post-trip insanity was thankfully at a minimum (although I haven't been back to work, so maybe I shouldn't say anything yet...) I will post about some of our seaside adventures once I sort through the photos.

Anyway, I am very proud that I've been home for less than 24 hours and I've already managed to complete another painting in between loads of laundry, grocery shopping, and gently prying the cat off of me while reassuring her that we did not abandon her and that we love her and remain her devoted servants.

I did this one on a brand new block of Arches hot pressed watercolor paper that my wonderful husband picked up for me. I've been working on Canson cold pressed for most of the paintings I've done so far in the 100 Painting challenge, and the difference between the two surfaces is amazing. I much prefer the smooth surface of the hot pressed. I feel like I can control the paint, and it dries so fast that I can do layers of color in half the time. I don't tend to work very wet anyway, so a rough surface doesn't really contribute to my painting technique. Arches is much more expensive than Canson, but is probably worth it.

I really wanted to avoid using pure black on the magpie and instead just have it read as black against that background. The black is made up of a mixture of the orange background color (grumbacher red and cadmium yellow pale hue, with just a touch of paynes grey) and ultramarine blue. I'm very pleased with the results.

Lazy Birding

2009-07-06T07:29:00.000-07:00

I am not a heat and humidity person. When I step outside and it is as if I never toweled off from showering, I wither and get grumpy. I'm just not into my clothes sticking to me. Sure my skin looks terrific and my hair curls beautifully (with a little help from some anti-frizz product) but I don't want to do anything but sit around in the AC feeling sorry for myself. So why in the world would I willingly go to Florida in the summer??? Simple - it's for the birds.

Florida has a lot of big birds that really don't seem to care much about flight distance. Pelicans, great blue herons, great egrets and vultures - they are all much more interested in any possible food source you may have than worrying about skedaddling. This means that I can get pretty close to them to sketch and take reference photos. Of course when they realize I'm not going to feed them, they give me a dirty look and wander off, but by that point I've gotten what I wanted out of the deal. And the birds such as sandhill cranes, pileated woodpeckers and anhingas that do tend to avoid close proximity to humans are still big enough to be easily observed from a comfortable distance. So for lazy birding, I'll put up with the heat and humidity. Plus there's some amazing BBQ and seafood to be eaten, in air conditioned comfort of course.

Florida Scrub Jay

Anhinga

Roseate Spoonbill

Black and Turkey Vultures

Green Heron

Snowy Egret

Painting 12 - Meadowlark

2009-07-02T20:33:00.000-07:00

I got to a point with this painting and wasn't sure exactly how to proceed. So slap on a shadow and call it finished! The lighting on this was tricky - there was a strong shadow across the back of the bird, and strong light in front, but it also had a lot of dark and light markings all over, so it was tricky getting it to "read" correctly. Also because of the lighting, the eye was pretty much just a black circle in my reference photo. In hindsight, I think this is the type of situation where an artist needs to use a little creative license and not paint literally. Another lesson learned!

Beginnings of Painting 12

2009-07-01T20:38:00.001-07:00

I've begun to lay in the basic shading and coloring and a little bit of pattern on a western meadowlark painting based on a bird that I saw this past weekend. Western meadowlarks are one of my all time favorite birds. They have the most wonderful call that I once heard someone describe as "liquid sunrise" and that description has stuck with me. Paul and I used to camp regularly at Badlands National Park in South Dakota and the meadowlarks would wake me every morning with their beautiful song. The sun would rise over the prairie, casting its fresh golden light over everything and the wildflowers and grasses would blow gently in the breeze. I have wonderful memories of that place.

I'm not exactly sure where this painting is going. I didn't plan a real route for this one. It may end up to be more of a study than a full painting type, or who knows what will happen. We'll just have to see where this takes me.

Great Birding Great Falls

2009-06-29T19:08:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, Paul and I decided to have a little mini-getaway and explore the birding possibilities in and around Great Falls, MT. Great Falls sits east of the Rocky Mountain Front and mainly consists of prairie/grassland habitat but with the Missouri River flowing right through town, it adds a major riparian zone to the area. We got a total of 58 species of birds, which we consider very lucky as there was a stiff wind blowing pretty much the whole weekend, and, despite the wind, the mosquitoes forced us to bird from within the safety of the car Saturday evening. We also saw two types of snake and a handful of mammals during the trip.

Our first stop in Great Falls was the river trail between the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center and Giant Springs State Park. On one side of the trail is the mighty Missouri river and the other is sandstone cliffs. A colony of cliff swallows had taken up residence among the cliffs and we stopped to watch the activity and get some photographs (these are taken by my husband). The swallows performed an amazing ballet going back and forth from nest to food source. Two or three at a time would drop down out of the nests, swoop up and off to nab some insect and then return to the nest to deliver their prize. It was a non-stop aerial performance that I found mesmerizing to watch. It amazed me the number of people who walked right past this spot without even realizing they were there!

(Cliff Swallow)

We also saw or heard yellow warbler, gray catbird, bullocks oriole, cedar waxwing, white pelicans, belted kingfisher, and eastern kingbird. All this birding made me hungry (but then again, I'm always hungry) so we headed to dinner before our next birding stop.

After dinner, we drove north of Great Falls to the Benton Lake National Wildlife Refuge to do some evening birding. The mosquitoes were thick on the car windows, like kids plastered against a candy store window - us being the candy in this case. I didn't dare roll down the windows to take any pictures, so I had to shoot everything through the dusty windshield. The most plentiful birds of the Refuge seemed to be marbled godwit and yellow-headed blackbird - they were everywhere! The evening sun lit up the yellow-headed blackbird's gorgeous plumage beautifully.

(Marbled Godwit)

We also had great looks at Wilson's phalarope, American coot, eared, Western, horned and pied-billed grebes. We spotted many ducks, including ruddy, shovelers (with babies!), blue-winged teal, and mallards. As if that wasn't enough, seeing white-faced ibis and sora rail around the lake, and then a chestnut-collared longspur in the grassland area, made our evening. We were exhausted by this point, so we headed back to our motel for a little shut-eye before our next birding destination.

Early Sunday morning we arose and headed southwest of Great Falls to the town of Ulm and the First Peoples Buffalo Jump State Park. The morning sun cast such a beautiful golden light on the grasses waving in the wind and in the distance we could just make out the peaks of the Rocky Mountain Front. The state park is described on the Montana State Parks website in this way: "A visitor center and interpretive trails tell the story of this prehistoric bison kill site, one of the largest in the United States. For over six hundred years, Indians stampeded buffalo over the mile-long cliff. Now, the top of the jump gives you panoramic views of the Rocky Mountain Front, the Missouri River valley, and the buttes and grasslands that characterized this High Plains setting."

But just before the main entrance into the park, we spied a most wonderful sight perched on a fencepost - a short-eared owl! And we were on a rural road with no one else on it, giving us the chance to stop the car and watch. This was just too cool. Through the binoculars, its soft feathered feet reminded me of a rabbit's foot, except with deadly talons. And its eyes were so intense!

(Short-eared Owl)

Eventually our luck ran out and a car coming the other way spooked it and it flew off.

We then continued on up to the top of the buffalo jump and hiked through a huge prairie dog town. The prairie dogs set up the alarm as we walked, and kept an eye on us as we made our way across their territory. There was a lone long-billed curlew wandering amongst the prairie dogs, too. We scanned the town with our binoculars for signs of burrowing owls and kept scanning the ground with our eyes for rattlesnakes but we saw neither. The most dangerous thing we found was prickly pear cactus. We did see some abandoned burrows with a few prairie dog bones scattered around them. Not sure who had come calling for lunch in these cases.

We then headed down to the visitors center and discovered two families of Say's phoebe camped out next to the center. Both sets of parents were hard at work catching bugs for their fledglings. The photo from my last post was a picture Paul took of one of the fledglings waiting for mom or dad to feed it. We also saw grasshopper sparrows around the visitors center as well.

(Adult Say's Phoebe)

By this point the sun was well up into the sky and the day was promising to be quite a warm one, so we decided to pack it in and head home. The long car trip was spent recounting our adventures and our favorite sightings. I can't think of a way I'd rather spend a weekend, but it makes it that much harder to go back to work on Monday!

Great Falls Tease

2009-06-28T14:39:00.000-07:00

(Say's Phoebe fledgling)

We had an amazing birding trip around the Great Falls, MT area this weekend. Stay tuned...

Painting 11 - Spoonbill

2009-06-25T21:07:00.001-07:00

Whew! I just wanted to do a simple little painting tonight and this ended up being a real test of patience. I don't know why, but the paper was shredding very easily, and in some of the most inconvenient spots like this poor guy's (or girl's) forehead and bill. Places I hadn't applied very much water or paint to, so it seemed a bit odd. Must've just been a defect in the paper. So no, I did not plan for the spoonbill to look as though it had started growing mold on its face. But play along with me here and imagine that it has just dunked its head down into that greenish water which stained the feathers and bill...

Painting 10 - Skimmer

2009-06-21T21:18:00.001-07:00

Still working on backgrounds and getting a feel for how wet on wet watercolor behaves. This is a painting that has been percolating in my mind for months. I will eventually do it in acrylic as a "painterly" piece, but I thought it would be interesting to see how to handle the ocean in watercolor and experiment with the composition as well.

I masked off the skimmer before I did the background. I am finding working with masking fluid a little frustrating - it is hard to get a perfectly sharp/smooth outline, but I'm sure I'll get the hang of it eventually. I played with a number of watercolor techniques including salt, drops of alcohol, and lightly spraying the painted paper with water and then tilting the paper to control the direction of the paint drips. Once I used a hairdryer to dry the piece, and scraped off the masking fluid, I went back in and painted the skimmer with a fairly dry brush.

The next go-round on this painting, I'd like to have a more clearly defined fore-, mid- and background. Right now it looks a little flat to me. But overall I'm pleased and I definitely see the potential for a big painting of this idea.

Kitties Need Their Greens

2009-06-16T21:30:00.000-07:00

One of Madeleine's favorite activities is The Watering of the Spider Plants, which takes place in our household every week or so, depending on when I remember to do this. Sometimes the spider plants have to turn a yellowish-green to remind me that I have been neglecting them. Spider plants have dignity though, and unlike peace lilies, do not droop dramatically at the slightest decrease in their moisture level.

Madeleine can hear the rustling of the spider plant leaves from the other side of the apartment and she comes running (or at least as fast as she has ever been known to move) as I transfer the plants from the window sill to the kitchen sink. You'd think I was offering her a succulent baby rabbit the way she acts.

I do not allow her to macerate the plants at will, much to her frustration. But when she does get a hunk she sounds like she's eating celery or something; not a sound I'd expect to come from a cat. I have learned over the years that cats can crave strange things. Our old black & white cat used to eat cantaloupe and Madeleine likes Saltine crackers, too. Go figure.

Painting 9 In Progress

2009-06-15T20:54:00.001-07:00

If you've been following my 100 Paintings in a Year Challenge, you may be scratching your head and thinking "Painting #9!? Uh, I think you missed a few." Well... I did do Paintings 7 and 8, but I chose not to post them. (I can hear some of you scolding me for that, but hey, it's my blog. If you want this done differently, get your own blog!) I did learn a lot from those "missing" paintings, which is the most important thing, but they are not for show and tell.

I'm not even sure I should be posting this painting yet. I think I need to work on masking fluid technique. I was going for that sparkling sun in the ripples look, but I fear I went a little overboard with the masking. Perhaps some shadows following the masking will bring out that ripple effect I'm looking for. I also need to go back in and bump up the color on the river rock, since that washed out a bit with the glaze.

Anyone with water/river rock painting experience is welcome to share tips!

Skimmers

2009-06-09T08:50:00.000-07:00

There are so many reasons to love birds: they are beautiful, graceful, they can fly. I could sit for hours watching Sir David Attenborough go on about birds on the nature shows. But specifically I get off on all of their way cool adaptations. And one of my favorites for this is the black skimmer. Check this out - I mean first they've got the clown coloring. (That works for puffins, too.) Then see that ridiculous longer lower bill? They use that to catch fish. This is why they are called skimmers; they fly along the surf, just inches about the water, and let that big beak skim under the water until they feel a fish with it and then snap! Away they fly to have a delicious seafood picnic on the beach.

Is that not a very cool thing?

And Now for Something Completely Different - Painting 6

2009-06-07T20:13:00.001-07:00

Well, not that different - there's still a bird in there! Since Painting #5 I've been thinking a lot about backgrounds and looking at how other people handle them. Two artists inspired me to try a totally different kind of background than I'm used to - Ellen Morrow and Toni at A Spattering

I actually thought ahead this time, even going so far as to do a quick thumbnail of my idea (!). Then I masked off the basic shape of the owl, laid in thick wet washes of color, q-tipped out the moon, and then sprinkled salt onto the washes and impatiently waited for it to dry. Once the background was finally dry, I tried my best to get the salt off without ruining the paper (it was really embedded) and removed the mask from the owl form. I kept the owl fairly loose, hinting at its shape and details rather than using my usual tight painting style. As usual, I've hemmed and hawed as to whether the painting is finished or not, so perhaps letting it sit for a few days will help me decide for sure. Meanwhile, here it is.

Painting 5 Completed

2009-06-02T20:29:00.001-07:00

Here he is, in all his duckie glory. I've gotten a little behind in the number of paintings I've completed now, but I think he was worth the wait.

My husband took the photo that I based this painting on back in the winter when the creek was half-frozen. (This guy was in the water standing guard while his hen rested on a rock.) Purely by accident, the water around the edge of the painting looks something like submerged pieces of ice as well. I enjoy that coincidence.

We haven't been able to do any birding the last few days because it has been so incredibly windy here. I know, I know; we're wimps, but seriously when the birds do venture out, they are just little gray blurs as they get blown from one spot to another. Otherwise they are all hunkered down in the most interior branches of the trees and shrubs, hanging on for dear life. But it gives me a good excuse to stay inside and paint more.

Painting 5 in Progress

2009-05-31T21:20:00.000-07:00

I spent the weekend helping my husband move his graduate paraphernalia back home, so I haven't had a chance to complete Painting #5 yet. I'm having fun with this one though. Mallard drakes just seem to be so full of character. As a child, I poured over the illustrations in Make Way For Ducklings and although I want this painting to be realistic, I can't help thinking about illustrating childrens books as I work on it.

First Printing!

2009-05-29T17:54:00.001-07:00

It's here! I got the first print of my great horned owl piece from the printer today. This is the illustration that made the cover of Montana's Cultural Treasures booklet a few months ago and I've gotten enough inquiries about prints to seriously consider this step. Nerve-wracking but exciting.

Great Birding Morning

2009-05-25T19:00:00.000-07:00

Broad-tailed Hummingbird

We took a walk along the river one morning recently, following one of our favorite river trails with riparian habitat on one side, full of chokecherry, willow and cottonwood, and forest on the other side, with douglas fir and larch rising up to rocky cliffs. It is usually a very birdy area, and this morning was no exception. You couldn't throw a stick without hitting a yellow warbler (we didn't try, though) and there was one particularly vocal and acrobatic black-headed grosbeak. But the thrill of the whole walk was the hummingbirds. We were seeing them zooming around, going about their hummer business, too fast and far away to identify.

At one point however, we got lucky. We had stopped to check out another bird and spotted this broad-tailed hummingbird up on a twig. He sat and watched us watch him for quite a while. Occasionally he would take off, buzz around and then come right back to the same twig. I was able to get a few photos of him, these two being the best of the bunch. It is hard to imagine that these two photos are of the same bird. It is a good illustration of the control that they have over their brilliant iridescent feathers.

Then as we were heading back, something vibrantly reddish-orange flashed at us from across an open grassy area like a beacon. Another hummer! This one was a rufous hummingbird and he was catching the sunlight directly on his gorget and we just happened to be at the perfect angle to see it. It was almost blinding for something so small. If he hadn't been flashing - probably trying to impress a female hummingbird hidden somewhere in the brush - we would have never spotted him. With a display like that, he's got to be lucky with the ladies.

A few years ago a hummingbird chose to nest right in front of my cousins' cabin and they got to watch the progression of the next generation from their window. I was able to get some photos of the nestlings a week before they fledged. This pen & ink illustration was the result.

We haven't seen any more hummers at our feeder at home since the one Paul spotted last week, but that's not to say they aren't visiting. We live in a basement apartment and I didn't want to hang the feeder at the level of our windows or it might tempt the neighborhood cats. Instead, I have it hanging high up on top of a trellis. Unfortunately it is out of sight from our windows but more importantly it is out of reach of all but the most athletic kitties.