Actually white-wing doves. Click to see a larger pic of their pretty faces. We have a group of about 20. They’re SO much smarter than the mourning doves we always saw in Dallas. These guys have been clever enough to figure out how to eat from every bird feeder in our back yard. I don’t think I saw a single mourning dove eat from a feeder in Dallas. Free food, people! if you know how to get it!
And we don’t have to put up with that “mourning” sound the other doves made.
We had a few beautiful balmy days, so I went over to the little lake nearby to check on the 20-30 Canada geese that are spending the winter there. They’re so stately, yet gentle creatures. I coaxed a few of them to take bird seed out of my hand. What a thrill. Of course one of them did mistake my finger for a piece of corn. Ouch!
Goose Race!
I’ve noticed I really enjoy looking at other people’s drawings of monsters. I love old monster movies, too. Here are a couple of balloon monsters. This was an excellent playtime for me. After spending 9 or 10 hours in exacting Photoshop projects at work I need to do something goofy. I just wish my markers wouldn’t bleed through my moleskine pages. Next time I think I’ll get a different kind of mini-journal. Below, my favorite sepia pen on its last legs.
Doesn’t he look friendly? I found this can on my morning walk a few days ago. There was a little bit of wax in the bottom that was probably a candle once upon a time. Maybe someone used the candle on New Year’s Eve. I love how a simple can turned into a grinning black cat. I will either use it as a pencil holder, or maybe create a body for it. It would make a good doll, a la Linda and Opie O’Brien.
Speaking of the O’Briens, I recently bought some Apoxie Sculpt, a product they consistently recommend. It’s a two-part molding clay that hardens without baking in 24 hours. I tried just a small amount to see how it would work. It’s pretty easy to work with, is sandable, paintable, and supposedly quite durable. I shaped this little head and stuck it onto the tip of a flathead screw, then poked in some eyes and a mouth, and inserted some 1″ nails for hair. This morning I applied some acrylic paint. You can see the color of the clay in the eye sockets where my brush missed. I bought gray clay, but you can also get it in several other colors. Now that I know how it works it’s on to more experiments.
I like stencils. One of my goals this year is to work more with them. I saw this class from Mary Ann Moss on Stencilry and I’m itching to get out the spray paint. I’ll be spending the afternoon clearing a space for mess-making in our storage building so I don’t stink up the house with paint fumes.
In the meantime I’m continuing to dab paint onto the cardboard letters-and-numbers stencils I got at Home Depot. Yesterday I found some mesh joint tape left over from a home repair project and wondered how it would work as a stencil. I dabbed white paint onto a piece and thought it worked great. This fiberglass tape is 2″ wide with 1/8″ squares and is slightly sticky so you can press it firmly against a surface. It’s easy to pull the tape away, too, and it can be reused several times (probably more). You can get a 65-foot roll for just over $2.00 at Lowe’s; it’ll probably last forever.
Cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse.
– William S. Burroughs
I don’t like to make New Year’s resolutions, because I seem to break them within a few weeks. This is one of the busiest times at work and after a few ten-hour workdays my schedule becomes “sleep, drive to work, work, drive home, repeat.” The Muse, however, doesn’t want to be denied, so I’m breaking my rule and making a few resolutions, only I think I’ll call them my “Want List”.
Top Ten things I want to do this year:
I just subscribed to the Art Newsletter from artquotes.net. The site says they will send you two inspirational artist quotes three times a week. I found the William S. Burroughs quote there, along with many more.
Prospero Ano Nuevo Everyone!
I love these quotes I clipped from an old magazine. They’re from painter Robert Henri, from his book “The Art of Spirit”.
You can do anything you want to do. What is rare is this actual wanting to a cetain thing; wanting it so much that you are practically blind to all other things, that nothing else will satisfy you….I know I have said a lot when I say ‘You can do anything you want to do.’ But i mean it….Blunder ahead with your personal view….The real work of art is the result of a magnificent struggle
The part that’s particularly inspiring to me is the “Blundering Ahead”. It seems to describe the way my non-photographic art comes about. It reminds me of a word some friends were talking about: Bushwhacked. The word has some negative connotations these days, especially referring to a former President, but it was born of the “mountain men” of the American West, who went forward blindly through the thickest brush, whacking a trail as they went. So if you don’t take kindly to the “blundering ahead”, go ahead and bushwhack your way with your art.
For Illustration Friday theme: hatch
Cropped from a recent journal page. I meant to rework it but didn’t have time.
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