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.

Many Changes

"Every grain of experience is food for the greedy growing soul of the artist."
                                                                                                               ~ Anthony Burgess

One Liberty Place in Center City, Philadelphia

I've been having trouble sleeping lately because my brain won't shut off. I go through my bedtime routine, and when I close my eyes my body wants to sleep, but my mind is merrily chattering away. So many ideas, questions, new things to think about.

I had hinted at some new developments a few posts ago. Well, I'm in the midst of them now. If you didn't recognize the photo of the city building in that post, it was the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. I'm taking classes having my mind blown there. I've gone from someone who always claimed, "I don't paint people" to painting live models, from an artist who has never touched oil paints to one who loves oil paints, from a devotee of natural history subjects to someone who sees a potential painting in everything; animate or inanimate. No wonder I can't sleep!

The early stages of my first painting of a person. It's actually looking reasonably human-like!

I'm also working on building a new portfolio website to replace my woefully outdated one. It's a one step forward and three steps back process, but when I finally get something to work the way I want, the sense of accomplishment is enormous (as is the sense of frustration moments later when something else fails miserably). My portfolio is exclusively natural history-related, however I find myself wondering how that will evolve with all these new influences.

My tireless brain has also been thinking about whether "Inner Artist" really fits me anymore. A lot has changed since I started this blog back in 2006. I regularly teach art classes and workshops now, I sell note cards of my work locally (and am considering the Zazzle or Etsy route in the future) and I'm immersed in artistic development more than ever.  So I'm on the fence about whether to continue with "Inner Artist" or update my blog to reflect the artist I am now.

Lest you think I've suddenly gone completely off nature, I will end this post with a bird photo. Every morning I am delighted by this catbird who serenades me at my father-in-law's place, where we're staying for the summer. I hope to post some photos of ruby-throated hummingbirds for you soon, as we put up a feeder and had hummers within two days.

The next American Idol

My Favorite Woodpecker

"Without birds, trees would be very lonely and men too!"
                                                        ~ Mehmet Murat ildan

I won't say that woodpeckers are my favorite birds since there are so many fascinating types of birds; pelicans with their built-in fishing nets, hawks with vision eight times better than ours, hummingbirds that hold their nests together with spider webs, but woodpeckers are up there on my list. However, I can unequivocally say that, from the first time I saw them featured on a nature show, the acorn woodpecker has been my favorite type of woodpecker.

My first sighting of an acorn woodpecker was outside of Portland, Oregon a few years ago. The single dejected specimen sitting motionless high up in a tree was a far cry from the lively and comical birds I expected. Maybe it had been a particularly gloomy winter in Portland that year. After fifteen minutes of observing this bird and seeing nothing more exciting than it turning its head once, I walked away hoping that my second sighting would be more in line with what I had heard about acorn woodpeckers.

 

It's taken a few years, but recently I was in California and finally had the good fortune to spot more acorn woodpeckers - this time a group of them checking out a power pole near our hotel. They were everything I'd hoped for: gregarious, vocal, colorful. They didn't seem to mind all the traffic speeding beneath them, either. The fifteen minutes that I spent observing this group before they flew off to a grove of palm trees more than made up for my first sighting.

One of the fascinating things about acorn woodpeckers is that they hoard acorns by drilling individual holes in trees or telephone poles (or wood siding) to store each of their hundreds of acorns in. I didn't get to observe this behavior, but this 3 minute video from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has some nice footage. I'm hoping that if I'm lucky enough to see acorn woodpeckers a third time, I'll get to see their acorn storage system in action.

And Now For Something Completely Different

 "Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the "Titanic" who waved off the dessert cart."
                                                                                                                               - Erma Bombeck

It would be a far stretch to say this has anything to do with Art or Nature, but I had to share a recent find that I spotted out of the corner of my eye in an antique store. I believe it's a handkerchief (or perhaps a napkin/serviette, but the material is very thin) from the '50s or '60s. I get such a kick out of this. What a hoot! Particularly because the box of candy and butter are marked "DANGER" but the cake, pie, goose liver pate, chocolate bar and milkshake are not.

If you've seen one of these before or know more about this vintage piece, do tell!

Upcoming Adventures

"It's easy to get bogged down in the circumstantial and mundane, but if we connect to our passion, that in itself will be regenerative."
                                                                                                                      ~ Nina Simons

The arrowleaf balsamroot is blooming in the foothills, at last

How is it the end of April already? I've been burning the candle at both ends, that's for sure. After attending my second mind-blowingly inspiring Susan K. Black artist workshop last Fall, I made a pledge to myself that I would stop making excuses, stop worrying what people think, and focus on developing my art into a full-fledged career this year. I haven't been particularly productive in terms of creating art (or blogging!), but I've been busy with a number of other art-related activities.

I've been teaching art classes and workshops in area art centers this Spring. One of my favorite classes that I've developed is a beginning drawing class. It is so wonderful to see people who swore they could never draw producing really lovely drawings in a matter of weeks. I love to teach, and apparently the participants actually like my teaching, because I already have requests for more classes in the Fall.

I'm working on a total overhaul of my website. I bet you didn't even know I had a website. That's because it's so old and clunky that I've been embarrassed to even admit I have one. Time to fix that!

A few months ago, I dropped off my business card at a local coffee shop that I really like. They feature local artists during the monthly downtown art walk. Last month they contacted me when their scheduled art show fell through and I was able to pull together a substitute show for them at the last minute. I made some sales during that show and now they want to carry some of my work in their shop.

As if all that wasn't enough, I've been planning and coordinating a series of adventures that will start over the next few months. Here are a few hints as to what I'll be doing:

 Adventure 1:

Hint: The building on the left is home to the oldest one of these in the US.
The sculpture in the middle and the building on the right are new additions to this.
I'll be most involved in the building on the right.

 Adventure 2:

Hint: That wall looks awfully blank...

And if these clues haven't been enough to inspire you to stay tuned, I'll post a cute photo of our cat in a shameless bid to keep you coming back because there's plenty more cute where that came from.

She needs her 16 hours of sleep a day.
How do I get in on that racket???

Random Things

"Life is painful. It has thorns, like the stem of a rose. Culture and art are the roses that bloom on the stem. The flower is yourself, your humanity. Art is the liberation of the humanity inside yourself."
                                                                                                                                  - Daisaku Ikeda

Finished or not finished? That is the question!

A friend recently complained that my blog posts have become rather sporadic. She's got a point, for sure. I've been painting a lot, but I don't seem to end up with anything interesting to share.

Work on the flamingo painting continues sporadically as well. I can't decide if it's done or not. I hope to enter it into a show in May, so getting it finished sometime in the near future would be a good thing. I don't want to end up overworking it. Somebody please make me put the paintbrush down!

Speaking of paintbrushes, you may remember my bout with tendonitis last year. I'm doing fine now, but if I hold my paintbrush or pencil too tightly for too long, I get little warning signs in my wrist. I noticed that the thicker the handle of the paintbrush, the less I have this problem, so I wrapped the handles of my smaller brushes and my pencils with sports tape to build up the grip area and it seems to help. I got the idea from the artist Andrew Denman. He has a series of videos on YouTube documenting his impressive work on a special commission. I noticed in one of the videos that his paintbrush handles were wrapped. I thought it was a great idea. Even if you don't already have wrist issues, it's probably a good move to wrap your paintbrush handles if you paint a lot to prevent repetitive motion problems in the future.

The birds are starting to return to our area from their winter vacation, so hopefully I'll have more frequent and interesting posts soon. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

New WIP - Eastern Kingbird

"The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky,
from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web."
                                                                                                                ~ Pablo Picasso

5"x7" work in progress of an Eastern kingbird.

Started a new little painting this weekend. I'm a big fan of limited palettes, and the blues, grays and whites of this scene really appeal to me, especially after all the bright colors in the flamingo painting I'm (still) working on. 

Detail showing sun on feet and barbed wire.

This piece is also turning out to be a great exercise in values and temperature. Of course I don't use any pure white (even though the camera makes it look like I did). Titanium white mixed with a little yellow ochre and/or cadmium yellow light gives a nice sunlit effect for my brightest, warmest whites. Ultramarine blue, burnt umber and Payne's gray make a great dark, without resorting to pure black (I don't even own a tube of black paint). Then the mid-tones are all sorts of purpley-grays and brownish-grays - mostly warm in temperature because of all the reflected light. You can see some of the purplish tones in the detail shot of the bird's underbelly.

My next task will be to get the values right on the clouds and the sky. I've never painted a piece where the sky was so dominant. In my mind, I see the sky as going on forever. I hope I can somehow capture that feeling in paint, without competing with the bird. I wanted to wait to hone the sky until I had the bird's values pretty well set.

I might be cheerfully babbling on about color and value, but my old companion Self-doubt has been keeping me company a lot lately. I was on such a roll before the holidays, and then what with travel and family and festivities, I ended up not painting for about a month. Ever since I got back into the studio in mid-January, I've been struggling. It's as if I took years off, rather than just 30 days.

Then we had Chinese take-out the other night and this appeared in my fortune cookie:

 Does this mean there's hope for me yet?

A Living Gem

"What is magic? In the deepest sense, magic is an experience. It's the experience of finding oneself alive within a world that is itself alive. It is the experience of contact and communication between oneself and something that is profoundly different from oneself: a swallow, a frog, a spider weaving its web..."
                                                                                                                        - David Abram

A tiny masterpiece of color and aerodynamics that eats mosquitoes! Can it get any better than that?

I can't say it much better than the David Abram quote above, but I often think about how much richer people's lives might be if they noticed things like the sun hitting the iridescent feathers on a violet-green swallow. There's magic all around us, if only we'd look.

My model was a photogenic violet-green swallow we chanced upon one day at Lake Como in the Bitterroot National Forest, when we still lived in Montana. (Yes, I miss Montana.)

Study of a violet-green swallow (6" x 6" acrylic on canvas board).

I finished this portrait of that swallow back in November, but didn't post it then as I wanted it to be a surprise Christmas present for dear friends.

What magic have you experienced lately?

Old Drawings and Etchings

"Humans who spend time in the wilderness, alone, without man-made mechanical noise around them, often discover that their brain begins to recover its ability to discern things."
                                                                                                                       - Robert Anderson

From original illustrations by Mrs. J.C. Melliss for her husband's book
on the natural history of the island of St. Helena, 1875. Courtesy of the British Library.

The British Library recently announced that they have added over a million images to their Flickr Photostream from their collection of 17th, 18th, and 19th century books. Many of these images are of natural history subjects and are exquisitely drawn. I don't have the patience that these artists had, nor their technical and fine observational skills, but I could spends countless hours looking at their work. If you are an old drawings and etchings enthusiast, you might enjoy checking this new resource out.

From original illustrations by Mrs. J.C. Melliss for her husband's book
on the natural history of the island of St. Helena, 1875. Courtesy of the British Library.

The other thing about this work that intrigues me is what went into their creation. These artists went on expeditions for months or even years to paint and research. Often the final work was done back home from collected specimens, as well as meticulous notes and field sketches, but many of them were painted in situ under challenging circumstances that we modern artists probably can't fully imagine.

Illustration from 1855 of New Zealand moths.
No artist listed. Courtesy of the British Library.

All of the images are downloadable from the British Library's site and free for anyone to use, so think of the creative possibilities!

Work on the Flamingo Continues

"As my artist's statement explains, my work is utterly incomprehensible and therefore full of deep significance."
                                                                                                               - Calvin and Hobbes

I couldn't resist the above quote. Too bad I didn't find it until after my post about artist statements.

Meanwhile, work on the flamingo painting continues. The piece seemed flat and lifeless, so I applied paint using a palette knife and then multiple layers of drips and glazes to give the background some depth. I also started to add more texture to the flamingo's neck feathers so the bird wouldn't appear pasted on.

Flamingo with background texture.
(To the left you can see some objects for a still life set-up I've also been working on.)

Close up of background texture

I think I'm liking it better now, but I'm still on the fence. We're in for a snowy weekend, giving me plenty of time to ponder it more.

Musings On Artist Statements

"Too much self-analysis lets the air out of your creative balloon."
                                                                                - Edward Betts

My initial quick watercolor sketch to get my ideas down.

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. About life. About art. About my life and my art in particular. I'm working on completely revamping my website, because what's the point of having a website if you're embarrassed to show it to people. Part of that revamping is considering whether I need the dreaded Artist Statement or not. In its essence, an Artist Statement is designed to give people insight into you as the artist and/or to your work. They are often required by galleries, museums and with grant applications, but many artists use them as a general marketing tool as well. I've read some wonderful articles and advice on the subject, but still haven't settled on what to write for myself, if anything. Here are some thoughts I jotted down when I was brainstorming ideas:

"I don’t paint things for any reason other than they inspire me to paint them; sometimes it’s the way the light strikes an object, sometimes it’s just a favorite type of bird. There’s no deeper meaning or hidden symbolism in my work. I simply enjoy the challenge of seeing if I can paint something. There’s an amazing feeling in finding the right colors or the right technique to paint a likeness. Even if the rest of a piece is a disaster, getting some aspect of a painting right is immensely satisfying to me."

Although this all rings true to me, I feel like I ought to be saying something a bit more profound. But how?

First strokes of paint on the canvas. Love where this is going.

Take a look at this new piece I'm working on, for example. Why am I painting it? Because a particular photograph of a flamingo that I took at the Philadelphia Zoo decades ago keeps inspiring me to paint it. I've already done this bird in pen & ink, and watercolor, and now I want to paint it in acrylic. This time I want to play with mood and lighting; see if I can add a bit of mystery to my work. Does the subject have any significant meaning to me? No. Am I incorporating any symbolism into the piece? No. It's just me fooling around with a reference photo that appeals to me.

Next layer - body still fresh and full of movement. Hmm, head is losing that wonderful spontaneity and light.

While my motivation for creating art is pretty basic and straightforward, I certainly don't want to go the other way and make up things that are not there and have my Statement end up sounding pretentious, like so many of them do. I'm also making a conscious decision to avoid the whole overused "I've been making art ever since I was a little kid" statement this time because, let's face it, most people made lots of art as little kids whether they ended up being artists as adults or not. The phrase seems almost de rigueur, but it doesn't add anything unique or insightful to the Statement and I'm not proud of the fact that I've used that phrase in the past in other art-related writing.

Oh dear, the head is starting to look way too smooth.

I know that nearly all artists who write an Artist Statement find it a frustrating and bewildering process. If you've tackled or tried to tackle this task, what was your experience?

When you've read an artist's Artist Statement, either on their website or at a exhibit or gallery, have you found it helpful? Did it actually give you more insight into the artist or their work, as it is meant to do? Let me know what you think in the comments section.

Interesting articles on the subject:
Art Biz Blog
The Abundant Artist 

One art critic's viewpoint:
Huffington Post

Another artist who writes about this subject rather more skillfully than I:
The Art of Making

and just for fun:
The Instant Artist Statement Generator

Clark's Nutcracker Drawing

"Drawing is a frame of mind, a loving embrace if you will." 
                                                                      - Susan Avishai

I haven't posted many drawings lately. Too busy painting! But I do love to sketch and draw. One day in September, a very accommodating Clark's nutcracker posed for me and I took a series of reference photos which I then sketched and drew from. (It was too high up in the tree to be able to draw from life. Plus it moved around too fast.) 

 

Clark's nutcracker working the camera. Yeah Baby!

 

Nutcrackers are in the jay family and have the personality to match. They love to feast on pine cone seeds and are primarily found in pine forests and high elevations in and around western North America.

Penguins Finished

"Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow..."
                                                                                                           - Kurt Vonnegut

The point at which we left off on the last post.

When last I left you, the penguins were taking shape and the boulders were starting to look more like the boulders in South Africa, but the clock was still ticking away. The worst thing was the more and more I looked at the piece, the more that the lone penguin with his (her?) back turned was bothering me. Hmm.

The joy of acrylics - you can paint over what you don't like!

I decided to eliminate the lone penguin. Luckily it made a very interesting shadow in the rock instead. I continued to develop the boulders and remaining penguins. 

Spot the lone penguin now.

After nearly three days straight in the studio, I was feeling like I might just finish this painting in time to enter it in the show. I put it aside and went frame shopping. Our one and only local arts & crafts store just happened to have a bunch of wooden frames on clearance and I found the perfect one. But you'll have to wait until the painting is done to see it.

Done, right? Wrong!

At this point I was convinced the painting was complete. I loved the rock textures I had created and I felt the penguins looked good enough to pass inspection by an ornithologist. I framed the painting and entered it in the show on time and sat back and waited for the judges to do their thing. Turns out I didn't even merit an honorable mention.

After the show, I shared the painting with a couple of artist friends of mine with much more success under their belts than I. I knew I could trust them for an honest critique. What could I have done to improve the painting? Every single one of them said, "Darken the area behind to penguins."

I took the painting back into the studio and as I was clearing off my desk to get back to work on it, I found my original colored pencil value study. It had the area behind the penguins darkened.

The final FINAL painting.

I don't know if I had stayed true to my original value study if I would've won any prizes at the show, but certainly I would've entered a much stronger piece.

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.