Broad-tailed Hummingbird 
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.
When we got home from our walk, I spotted Madeleine up in the window, totally focused on a couple of starlings in a neighbor's yard. Her concentration and the fading light appealed to me, hence Painting #2.
I'm running a little late this year getting my feeder up. I usually have it ready and waiting for the first arrivals by the last week in April, but with one thing and another, I only put it up two days ago.
Still Life with Sugar
(Sorry about the possessed kitty eye glow. Photoshop has a red eye eliminating function
Birds are hilarious, and if you’re not on board with that, please don’t ask to come with me. It’s bad enough monitoring an army of ticks crawling up my pantleg without having humorless bird-nerds in tow.
Blue-gray gnatcacthers are funny enough in their own right: how can a woodland sprite—so tiny so adorable, so blue—be so perpetually ticked-off? How can little tweetie boid, who cunningly constructs a charming little nest of lichens and spider webs, cuss a blue streak and talk trash all day long?
The finishing touch, however, is the uni-brow. It looks, quite frankly, drawn on. And it also brings to mind some other funny characters I’ve enjoyed over the years.
(Gabrielle thinks birds, as well as The Simpsons and Seinfeld, are funny, and is therefore on my A-list.)
The book is a green, cloth-covered 1947 edition of Roger Tory Peterson’s classic A Field Guide to the Birds. It was my father’s book. He grew up in the Camden neighborhood of Cramer Hill. Ah, the life of a young river rat along the Delaware! In a teen-age duck-hunting adventure, he was mortified when he shot and killed a bittern, and realized some education was in order. From this book he learned his ducks, and when I was only five, he sat me on his lap, opened the guide, and taught the ducks to me.
For years, it was simply a book that I liked. I would have liked almost any book, I suppose, if it was about nature. From it, as well as from a similarly beloved book of Audubon plates my dad received for a 10th birthday gift in 1945, I copied pictures of birds. A summer morning in the early 70s would find yours truly, over a breakfast of King Vitamin or Quisp, the Guide open in front of me on the kitchen table, planning the day’s art.
Except for enjoying the birds coming to our feeder, I hardly dared dream that such things as warblers could be real. When a merry band of spring-plumaged Myrtle Warblers came migrating through our yard, fly-catching at just above eye-level and oblivious to me as I stood very still, it hit me: the birds in the book are real! They live in South Jersey! I can see them in my own yard!
Hooked.
Pressing matters of a mysterious nature keep our friend Gabrielle away from her blog. But never fear! Faithful readers who visit Selling My Soul for all things artistic, natural, and feline must not be disappointed. Therefore, while G. attends to top-secret bid-nezz, I, her good friend Denise from South Jersey, will fill in. Sort of like a guest host on a talk show. But in blog form.
The Market Report, you ask? You don’t visit Selling My Soul to be enlightened, much less distressed, about the current economic crisis, and I certainly don’t have any answers. Well, maybe one:
Your office, or place of business, needs a cat.
My office has a cat: Her name is Market. She was found as a kitten at an Amish market near our office, hence, Market (pronounced in the high-class, Frenchified manner, “Mar-kay”).
To paraphrase Charlotte, of eponymous web fame, this is “Some Cat.” Not to mention “Terrific” and “Radiant.”
Market officially belongs to the family next door, but the fine folks at the South Jersey publishing company where I work have adopted her as their mascot. She greeted me at the door on my first day of employment, and is easily worth many thousands of dollars of compensation. But hey, that’s me.
Her many “aunties,” and even a few “uncles,” attend to her every need. A typical day includes numerous waterings at the restroom sink -- as well as naps in there with the door closed for privacy -- a steady stream of baby-talk, meals and treats, and her choice of sleeping places. Moments of high drama include a gallant rescue from a swooping Red-tailed Hawk, the offer of a lollipop,* and a chaotic de-ticking by a team of five, with yours truly wielding the tweezers.
All of it is a little thang I call “Crazy Middle-aged Cat Lady Improv Theatre.” We have hip young fellers working with us (the “uncles”), and how they recover their cool and go out of an evening to be suave and urbane after the daylong exposure to these shenanigans is beyond me.
But wait, there’s more. So thrilled was I to be working in an office with such sweet, pet-oriented people, not to mention the terrific and radiant pet, I created a painting for our break room. It measures 22x28 inches, and Market looks like a third-world dictator up there, much larger than life. I was a ROCK STAR the day I brought this in: it is the pride of the office, and graciously brought to the attention of visitors. What more can an Illustration major (Moore College of Art & Design, 1994) ask for?
While that art background precludes my offering any coherent counsel regarding the economy, I can say this with confidence: The Market is looking good.
*Yes, after being reprimanded for taking up too much time in the can by one of the cat ladies, another cat lady unwrapped and offered to Markay a lollipop. I kid you not. Said offer was rebuffed, and the lolly, lemon as I recall, was discarded.
It has been a long two years of doing the commuter marriage thing, but at last it is over and my husband has completed his doctoral coursework and is coming home! So please forgive me for taking next week off from blogging while we get reacquainted with each other and to living under the same roof again.
I am starting to see this year's Canada geese chaperoning their squadrons of fuzzy yellow goslings about. Here's a little pen & ink drawing of just such a scene that I have not completed yet.
Wow, what a surprise! Laure over at Painted Thoughts has bestowed a Kreativ Blooger Award on me! This was really an unexpected honor, especially since I've only been blogging publicly for a little while now. Thanks so much, Laure!
My art training is mostly grounded in realism and scientific illustration, but every so often I get the urge to do something abstract or stylized. Unfortunately I tend to do this spur of the moment and not plan it out. It is play really (at least this is my rationale when it becomes clear that it isn't going to work out the way I'd envisioned).
