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!

Tropical Smoothie

"You need both a bit of mind and a bit of mindlessness to make a painting. It's a play between control and surrender."

- Paul deMarrais

Watercolor WIP - 14.5" x 18.5" on 140 lb. paper.

During a winter storm this weekend, I attended a wonderful watercolor workshop given by Linda Aman. The workshop topic was on painting large format flowers and as the snow blew around outside, inside the art center it was looking like a tropical paradise with everyone's colorful flower paintings. During the critique sessions, I honestly started to get thirsty and crave the type of drinks that have crushed ice and little paper umbrellas in them.

I wasn't familiar with her before the workshop but I can now confirm that Linda Aman is a wonderful teacher. She regularly gives workshops in Washington, Oregon and Idaho, and then occasionally in Hawaii. Her passion for painting and teaching really came through loud and clear. We had a lot of information to absorb and a lot of new techniques to try to master in just two days but she still made it fun. Although I'm not thrilled with my painting, I enjoyed using colors I don't usually work with and really enjoyed working so large. And anyway, the point was to learn, not to create a beautiful finished piece. I'm looking forward to giving the new techniques I learned a try on some large format avian subjects.

Sketches of a Cat at Play

 "A drawing is simply a line going for a walk."

                                                          - Paul Klee

 

Sketching Day

"Drawing is the discipline by which I constantly discover the world."

                - Frederick Franck, The Zen of Seeing

Not included in this sketch was the great horned owl's intended lunch - a skunk.

It was kind of a chilly day with snow in the air. I managed to get in a brisk walk ("brisk" both in the temperature and pace sense) along the river this morning but afterwards I sought out some warmer indoor activities.

There's a small natural history museum on our university campus so I packed up my pencils and sketchbook and headed there. It's been a while since I sketched and I've missed it. I know some artists hate drawing and sketching but I love it. I just don't do it enough.

Bird feet fascinate me.

This sketch doesn't do justice to the grebe's "ears" - a beautiful gold-blond spray of feathers just behind the eyes.

Art and Fear

"The difficulties artmakers face are not remote and heroic, but universal and familiar."

- David Bayles & Ted Orland, Art & Fear

Take the plunge!

Tomorrow I turn in my pelican piece for our local art center's February show. This will be the first time I've shown my work in our new community. Paul and I have been mentioning the show to everyone we know and suddenly I'm getting cold feet. Ugh, here we go again. Enter Fear.

When people ask me what I do I say I am an artist or a painter. And that is indeed what I do. But sometimes I'm not sure my work is of the caliber that people imagine should go along with the title. I have this nightmarish thought that all these people that Paul and I know will come to the show and be let down by my work. They'll say "Oh very nice" to my face in that same tone of voice an adult uses with a small child, and then they'll whisper "She said she was an artist" to each other, shaking their heads sadly at my delusion as they walk away from my piece. 


On my strong days, I can accept that not everyone will like what I do. I can accept that I should make art first and foremost because I am driven to do it. And I also can see how very far I've come with my work over the decades, and I am proud of that. I just have yet to master putting my work on public display and not caring what people think.

I certainly know that these feelings and conflicts are not unique to me. Anyone whose work is seen or heard by the public deals with this in one form or another. I suppose that I shouldn't let it bother me that I have doubts. (Perhaps, in some strange way, these doubts should be proof to me that I am an artist!) I share them here in the hopes that someone else reading this will feel reassured that they are not alone in this process either.

And come Friday, I will stand next to my work and try to greet all the visitors with confidence. Who knows, I may be too busy worrying about my crooked teeth or whether my outfit makes me look fat to care about their reactions to my painting (but that could be a whole separate post...).

Do you have any favorite quotes dealing with art and fear? Do you have any stories about art and fear from your life? Please share them with us in the comments. I'd love to hear about them!

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...

The Owl and the Pussycat

Saw-whet #1

I have a birding friend who has the best luck finding owls. It seems like every time I go out birding with her, we see an owl. She claims I'm good luck for her, but I think she is the one with the gift.

We got together around Christmas for an afternoon of birding in between our respective family obligations. Within 15 minutes of heading into the woods, she spotted a saw-whet owl in a cedar, and a second one not even a 5 minute walk further down the trail. Talk about luck!

Saw-whet #2

The weekend after we got together, my friend led a team in her local Christmas Bird Count. I asked her if she spotted any more saw-whet owls and unfortunately she did not. But she did find 13 screech owls! Like I said, I think she has a gift.

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Gallery Cat #1

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you know I love cats. I particularly love cats in businesses, such as used book stores and galleries. A lot of people bring their dogs to work, but cats are not as common. This exchange between a pedestrian and a gallery cat caught my eye recently and I wanted to share it with you.

Gallery Cat #2

And here's another gallery cat, just watching the world go by.

I'll return to some art posts soon. I have to get my butt in gear and finish the watercolor of the white pelican for a show in February and I'm working on an abstract piece! 

Quick Little Illustration

Great horned owl on a snowy night. 3.5" x 4.75" in watercolor.

As part of my concerted effort to get involved with our new community as quickly as possible, I joined our local art center this summer. Then last month I joined the watercolor society chapter. I was pleased to see it's a fairly active group with about a dozen people at the meeting. Everyone was quite friendly and seemed thrilled to have a new member joining them. At the end of the meeting we were each given a 3.5" x 4.75" piece of watercolor paper and asked to paint a little scene to share at the next meeting - like an ATC (artist trading card) kind of thing.

Since I am still a recovering procrastinator and occasionally fall back into my old ways, I left my little painting until the night before the next meeting. In a panic, I flipped through reference photo after reference photo. I wanted to choose just the right thing as this would be the group's first look at my work. No pressure or anything. I settled on a great horned owl image, and I envisioned a very rich night sky with beautiful stars twinkling in the background. As you can see, only the edges of the paper ended up with the deep rich night sky color I was looking for, but at least the rest of the sky had interesting textures. I'm struggling to master masking fluid, so although the owl mask came out well, (Thank goodness!) what I had meant to be fine points of light in the night sky ended up looking more like snow than stars so I changed my plan a little. Clearly they are just flurries though. Ah well, that's what I get for rushing at the last minute.

Anyway, the recipient of this little painting seemed pleased enough, and I ended up with a lovely sunflower painting from a fellow birder in the group. Everyone seemed to enjoy the project so I hope that we will be doing it again. It would be fun to have a collection of little paintings done by each of my new friends. But I hope to be a little more organized next time.

Pelican WIP Continues

American white pelican WIP. I haven't ruined it yet.

I crossed my fingers and toes and continued on with the pelican watercolor. So far so good. I tackled the eye, which to me is always the scariest part of a painting because if you mess up the eye, it tends to ruin the entire piece. There's still a bit more work I need to do to the eye, but it is getting there. 

One thing I discovered during this painting is that American white pelicans have pale blue eyes. I'd never noticed that before.

Old Blue Eyes?

Another interesting fact about the American white pelican is that unlike the brown pelican, it does not dive from the air into the water to catch its food but instead gracefully dips its bill into the water while swimming. When a group of them are feeding, it looks rather like a ballet.

I think I'm on the home stretch with this painting, so hopefully I'll have time to finish it up and post the final piece soon. I think this is the biggest watercolor painting I've worked on to date - nearly 13" x 11". I've really been enjoying the process!

Nail-Biter

Yup, it's a pelican. And a white pelican at that. Like me, it is happy in both the ocean and the mountains. 

I hate this stage in a painting. I can see the potential in the piece; I like where the painting is going, it looks fresh and not over-worked, but my very next brush-stroke could go either way. It's a real nail-biter. 

New WIP

WIP very early on.

In between working on two commissions, I'm trying to squeeze in a little time to continue painting some of my own stuff. I've started a new piece; this one's a watercolor on 300 lb. paper. Can you guess what the subject is from this rather messy beginning?

Pastry As Art

A Parisian patisserie display. And yes, they taste as good as they look. But I wonder how they keep tourists from drooling all over their nice clean window...

You may know me as an artist and a nature lover, but I am also crazy about desserts. I love to bake them, I love to eat them, I love to drool over them in pastry shops all over the world. I consider food in general and desserts specifically as art.

There is a point however where my love of eating dessert could lead to some unhealthy excesses, so I decided to feed my eyes rather than my stomach and give painting desserts a try. I figured at the very least it would be a fun diversion from that curlew painting I've been wrestling with. My studio smelled of sugar for days afterwards.

My first ever cake painting. 8" x 8" acrylic on gessoboard. What do you think?

At the Blue Bottle Cafe in the San Fransisco Museum of Modern Art, they take dessert as art to a whole different level. Check this out. The desserts are modeled after some of the art pieces in the museum, including Mondrian and Wayne Thiebaud. I guess that's being able to paint your cake and eat it, too.

Tracy Aviary

Front entrance to the Tracy Aviary

I've never been to Salt Lake City, Utah before except while being stuck at the airport between flights. On our last layover there, I was wandering the airport killing time and saw a tourist information sign all about SLC. Well, whaddya know - it turns out they've got an aviary! I tucked that little bit of information into a corner of my brain and continued on with our trip.

A little less than a year later, we had the chance to visit Salt Lake City and the Tracy Aviary was tops on my list of places I wanted to check out while we were there. As it turns out, I'm glad we did. It is an excellent aviary with a nice assortment of indoor and outdoor exhibits and a good variety of birds.

Many of the birds that stop over at the Great Salt Lake during migration fly all the way to Central and even South America. The Aviary has a number of exhibits that display the indigenous birds these migratory birds might see during their sojourn in the south, including Andean condors, Chilean flamingos, and toucans. One exhibit that really caught my attention was the common backyard birds of Argentina. Imagine getting guira cuckoos and southern lapwings in your yard!

Southern lapwings soaking up the northern sun. They are members of the Plover family.

Of course the Aviary had plenty of exhibits devoted to species of birds found in Utah, including hawks and owls, shorebirds, and waterfowl. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get a lot of good blog-worthy photos because my camera couldn't focus past the mesh or fencing around many of the exhibits. This is one of the frustrating things I find at zoos and aviaries. Nevertheless, if I were to visit Salt Lake City again I would certainly return to the Tracy Aviary.

A golden eagle giving me the eye.

The incredibly beautiful iridescence on the white-faced ibis more than makes up for the lack of a white-face on this non-breeding individual.

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.