Grateful
Sending you good wishes, a bit of November beauty, and gratitude on this Thanksgiving holiday! I’m grateful to you for taking time in your life for art and for your kind “likes” and comments on my posts. It’s a strange thing to send my sketchbook pages out into the world each week and not really know where they go. I’m grateful to those of you who I’ve met in person or online who thank me for being on the receiving end. I’m also grateful for the wonderful artists who take my classes— I love… Read More
Spark Your Creativity!
If you are an artist, or an aspiring one, you already know the value of practice—there’s no substitute for making marks on paper. But sometimes, you need more than that to jumpstart your creativity or to take your artwork to the next level. I’m excited to announce several new classes and workshops designed to offer techniques, ideas, support, and inspiration. I hope you’ll consider joining me! Fun Farmer’s Market: Creative Layouts & Lettering Online at Winslow Art CenterThursdays July 10, 24, August 7, August 21; 3:00-5:00 PM Pacific /6:00-8:00 PM EasternAdd some… Read More
Lasting Construction
The Eastern Towhee is a bird of forest edges and shrubby fields where they scratch around on the ground for seeds, fruits, grains, and insects. I see them occasionally foraging under our shrubs and I hear them frequently in spring and summer calling from the brushy field bordering our property. What I’ll never see is their nest in the wild, which is always well concealed on the ground. Hence, I put the towhee on my short list of nests to pull from the shelves when I visited the NYS Museum ornithology collection… Read More
Perched
While the weather is frightfully cold and icy, I’m content to perch at my desk to paint. And speaking of perched, I’m having a great time teaching Birds and Words online at Winslow Art Center. Participants have been hard at work practicing lettering, layouts, and different ways to put birds together with words, quotes, and poems. This week we worked on perching birds on letters—a fun way to shine the spotlight on our avian neighbors and record what birds are hanging out and surviving the cold this February. Tips & Techniques– Watercolor… Read More
Goldenrod Dancers
Slow drawing is just my speed this weekend. I was laid low this week by a terrible cold, and I’ve barely had energy to do anything but rest on the couch. I was glad I felt up to sitting at my desk yesterday and today to be absorbed in the curled and complex leaves of goldenrod that was stunted by the goldenrod bunch gall midge. I loved just turning off everything else—the cough, the sore throat, the impending snow, the projects that didn’t get done this week—and just drawing. This may get… Read More
Becoming part of the silence
I love this quote by Irish writer Robert Lynd. “In order to see birds, it is necessary to become part of the silence.” He seems to have understood something profoundly true. Though we may see birds every day—by happenstance or on purpose– really knowing birds requires being quiet enough to enter their world. Unseen. Unobtrusive. Observant. I can honestly admit that I hardly do it enough. But when it happens, whether for just a moment or an hour, it’s a special thing. Tips & Techniques- If you are doing a piece like… Read More
On the Perch
“You’re on the perch,” my former boss would often say to me when I was at my computer. I was working for the Audubon Society then, and the phrase was part greeting, part acknowledgment of the task at hand. Though my work has changed, I’m still facing a computer most days and, thankfully, on the perch at my art desk most evenings. This week, I am experimenting with two of my favorite things: birds and words. There are endless possibilities—the fun is figuring out which combination of birds, hand-drawn letters, layout, and… Read More
Hidden in Plain Sight
Most birds protect and conceal their eggs in carefully constructed nests, in tree cavities or underground burrows, or high on rocky ledges and sea cliffs. Not so with terns. These seabirds nest together in colonies and lay their eggs right on the ground on small islands and stony beaches. Terns make just a small scrape on the ground and the females add beach debris or dead vegetation, shell fragments, or stones to provide some camouflage. The beauty and success of this strategy lies with the eggs and chicks themselves, whose markings blend… Read More
International Guillemot Appreciation Day
IGAD! It’s a big day for guillemots. If these small seabirds only knew that there are people around the world championing them today! Would they puff out their chests with pride, flash their white wing patches, or wave their bright red feet in the air? Or, perhaps, unassuming as they are, they would go about their usual seabird business, diving for fish, cruising the waves, tending their young. This auspicious day was begun some 32 years ago by a group of seabird researchers in Maine. Noting the lack of attention paid the… Read More
Answering the Call
When poppies bloom, you can’t wait. You can’t say: I’ll paint them next week, or even tomorrow. By next week, they may be gone. Tomorrow it may be raining. You have to set aside the vacuum, the groceries, the weeds that need pulling. You must go out and paint. Tips and Techniques– If you are unsure of which colors to choose for a particular subject, do some color tests. This can be invaluable for deciding which pigments will work best before you are committed to your painting. I tested a lot of… Read More
Drawn In 