Seashells

"I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."
                                                                                                                       ~ Sir Isaac Newton

Just a few specimens from my father-in-law's collection

My father-in-law was an avid scuba diver and underwater photographer for over 30 years and traveled to many different locations to dive. When he wasn't diving, he would walk the beaches looking for interesting shells. Over the years he built up quite an impressive seashell collection. I'm finding his collection quite inspirational.

I've been doing a little research about other artists who were inspired by shells. Probably the most well-known painter of shells was Georgia O'Keefe who created a number of beautiful shell paintings along with her more famous flower paintings. Not so well-known, the Dutch artist Adriaen Coorte painted intimate still lifes featuring seashells back in the late 1600's. I find these still lifes intriguing in their simplicity and beauty, unlike Balthasar van der Ast, another Dutch painter from around the same era whose still lifes are overflowing with not only shells, but also flowers, fruit, and insects. Sometime during the early 1900's British artist Glyn Warren Philpot who was best known as a portrait artist, used a limited palette to paint a lovely still life of shells, perhaps as a break from painting faces. I'm certainly finding shells a pleasant subject to draw and paint.

Study of Babylonia species in graphite.

Detail from shell painting. Acrylic on canvas board.

Tulips and Creativity

"There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted."

 - Henri Matisse         

My models

I've been having fun finding quotes for my posts since I started adding them a while back. This particular one really spoke to me. I find that once I've completed a painting or drawing I end up thinking what's so special about that? There's nothing unique about it. I haven't created anything new. It looks like hundreds of other paintings or drawings of that subject. There are people that would argue it is unique because each person is different therefore each drawing must reflect that difference. I can see that to a point, but my yearning is to create something that isn't subtle in its uniqueness. It'd be nice to create things that make people stop for a minute and really look at the piece instead of just thinking, "Oh another ________."

Mood lighting for my models. I like the effect.

I bought this bunch of tulips simply to bring a little cheer into our house. I put them in a vase and placed them on a table where their color compliments our living room decor and I can easily see them. The more I looked at them and admired them the more I wanted to draw them.

Tulip sketch

And so I settle down to draw tulips and this is all I come up with. Special? No. Unique? I think not. It's just a random sketch of a tulip. It is not particularly insightful or creative. It makes me restless and frustrated just looking at it. Why is it so hard for me to think outside the box as it were? These tulips are beautiful and I love their shape and velvety petals. I've been feasting my eyes on them ever since I bought them. So why doesn't my experience with the tulips, my feelings about the tulips come across in the drawing? Probably because, as Mr. Matisse would say, I first have to forget every other tulip that was ever painted.

A Pair of Stilts

"Nature has been mastering itself for some time now, and it is an honor to be able to capture its beauty."

                                                                                                                        - Justin Beckett

 

Snoozing stilt

The black-necked stilt has a permanent spot on my Top 20 Favorite Birds list. So elegant and delicate-looking, yet aggressively territorial at times. I also find their in-flight habit of letting their legs trail out behind them rather endearing. When we're in the field, I usually hear them before I spot them - their piercing high-pitched repetitive call is unmistakable to me.

There's a nice YouTube video of stilts from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology here, with some wonderful footage of large groups of them feeding and erupting into flight. Enjoy!

Check out those legs!

Sketching a pair of stilts

In our area, reports are starting to come in that the swans are migrating back north again. In the last week or two, we have been seeing large flocks of ducks in flight. I am hopeful that this means that we can get back into some serious birding again soon. It's been a long winter!

A New Year's Thought

The pelican piece is getting framed this week and heads to the art center for a Watercolor Society show. The opening is next Friday for the monthly downtown Art Walk.

Typically I'm not one to participate in any special New Year's traditions; no resolutions or formal year in reviews. I'm lucky if I manage to get all of my holiday cards out to family and friends on time (major fail on that front this year.) so why add to the crazy December to-do list? But the other day I was minding my own business and a stray thought wandered into my brain; I completed 4 paintings last year. Four paintings that I feel are good enough to be framed and displayed. This thought stopped me in my tracks for a moment. I don't think I've completed that many "good enough" paintings in one year since I was a kid when every painting was a masterpiece. My average in the last decade has probably been about 1.5 paintings every 2 years. I couldn't help thinking to myself "Wow!".  I feel like that's some sort of personal milestone. It put a little spring in my step.

Sketches of pelicans from the Tracy Aviary.

Despite my resolution not to participate in resolutions, I have to admit to feeling challenged to beat my new painting record this year...

Autumn in My Sketchbook

Watercolor of fall leaves.

Happy November! We reached 70 F this week so it didn't feel particularly like fall here, but the season is still making itself known in other subtle and not so subtle ways (like snow last week!). Here are a few things I've done lately with an autumnal theme.

Graphite sketch of a horse chestnut.

Last summer when we found out we were going to be moving again, I made a promise to myself that I would hit the ground running as an artist in my new community. I guess I succeeded in that regard because I now have 2 commissions to work on. This is wonderful news of course, but it may mean that my blog posts will be a little more sporadic than they have been lately.

Painting and Petroglyphs

The scenery around Dubois was arid but beautiful.

Being surrounded by so many talented plein air painters can be a little intimidating when one is just a newbie, but by Thursday I was itching to get out in the field and give it a go. After another delicious lunch at the conference center, we headed south-east of Dubois to the Torrey Lake area and set up our easels below some interesting boulders and rocks. Painting was a bit challenging, however. The sun was strong and the wind had picked up, so any bit of moisture in my paints (not to mention my skin!) evaporated in record time. I realized that painting in acrylics was going to be nearly impossible so I switched to watercolors and just did some sketches of the area. Not for the first time I wished I worked in oils, but even the experienced oil painters were cursing the conditions.

Watercolor sketch of the boulders above Torrey Lake. I used a lot of dry brush technique on this one without really meaning to!

 In the rocks above our easels, other artists had left their mark hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago. Petroglyphs were scattered on the rocks and boulders around the area we set up in. According to the book "Plains Indian Rock Art" by James D. Keyser and Michael A. Klassen, this ancient rock art is considered part of the "Dinwoody" tradition, found almost exclusively in the Wind River area of Wyoming. I was in awe and wished I knew what the pictures meant.

There was a bird-like figure to the left of this petroglyph. I can't even guess what this one depicts, though.

I spotted these petroglyphs under a rock overhang, sheltering them from the elements.

After sketching for a while, I drove further around Torrey Lake and spotted some immature common mergansers out on the water. Mergansers are diving ducks and have very thin bills with serrated "teeth". They eat fish and other aquatic life. 

An immature common merganser having a nice day at the lake.

It seems like there's always some sort of Murphy's Law of Wildlife Observation at work; if I see some great wildlife, there won't be any place to pull over or safely observe it from. This time however, the birds were kind enough to be near a lake access area so that I could watch them for a while. 

Some pencil sketches of an immature common merganser sunning itself on a rock.

As the afternoon wore on, the angle of the sun just lit up the fall colors around the lake. I took lots of reference photos for future paintings. The trip out to the lake was not particularly successful for plein air painting, but I enjoyed sketching the area and the birds, and the petroglyphs were definitely icing on the cake.

The Fall color was spectacular.

Short-eared Owl in Watercolor

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.

Spring Flowers in Autumn

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.

The Visitor

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?

Waterlily Painting

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.

Hibernation - Can I join in?

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

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

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

Painting 14 - Yellow-Headed Blackbird

(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.

Painting 1 - Tree Swallow

After hearing me whine about being frustrated with my art and where I am with it, Laure from over at Painted Thoughts has challenged me to paint 100 paintings in a year. The idea is to paint these paintings with no judgment, no worrying about whether they are good or bad, just paint one after another. This process of immersion will teach me so much about painting and about myself.

So I am going to take this challenge and do my very best to paint 100 paintings in the next year. That's basically one painting every three days. The clock starts NOW!

I used my lunch break today to start a rough sketch of my first subject; this dapper tree swallow. I think that doing the prep for the painting during my lunch break will save time at home at night and also let me start thinking about the painting and let my brain stew on it for the rest of the work day so that I am eager to paint when I get home.

As is typical of me, I didn't plan ahead very well and I discovered when I set up to paint this evening that I had run out of watercolor paper, so I had to paint on Bristol. Bristol is my preferred choice for pen and ink, but when painting on it, it can only handle so much water before starting to slough off, so I had to be really careful about the amount of water I put down as I painted this.

One thing I noticed immediately as I began painting was that I was rushing. I never used to rush when I did art, but a few years ago I had a job that often ate up 10 or 12 hours of my day, sometimes 6 days a week. When I did have time off I was so exhausted. So I wasn't able to do much art and when I did, I would paint at a feverish pace as I didn't know when the next time I could do art would be. This apparently has turned in to a habit, and one I need to break!

See - already I am learning.