Flicker WIP and My New Best Friend

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

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!