Thursday, June 25, 2009

Faces, big and small

I thought they all looked neat together so I had to take an artsy shot of these faces. The tiny ones were part of a request to simulate the larger face, which is currently in my Etsy shop, on a smaller scale. The big face is 1.75 inches tall, the small faces are 0.5 inch round.
It's funny, I've painted a gazillion faces but somehow I don't always feel I have control over how they turn out.... almost like each has a little personality fighting to show itself.

Maybe I just need a new paintbrush ;-)

Monday, June 22, 2009

The Crows

I didn't set out to feed the crows... I merely intended to feed the typical yard birds: cardinals, blue jays, titmice, chickadees, goldfinches, etc.... and those did all show up in abundance, along with a few surprises like bluebirds and indigo buntings and a lone turkey.
Well, the local crow tribe took notice of all the activity and started coming to dine at my daily seed buffet. I don't mind a bit, in fact I'm quite pleased since I find crows very fascinating and beautiful birds, and they've inspired a lot of my artwork.

They swing by at least once (that I notice) on most days, there are usually 4 or 5, sometimes joined by a 6th. Two of them are babies/juveniles.... with full feather suits grown but still have stray bits of downy fuzz, pinkness at the corners of the beaks, and are a tad ungraceful yet (which of course just increases their charm). They feed themselves but still exhibit the baby-begging behavior at times. Mom/dad seem to be pretty much done with the spoon-feeding.

It has been exceptionally hard to photograph them, they see *every* little movement. I had to wrap my face and sneak to the window like a ninja to catch these shots. Two of them still spotted me videoing and flew about 40 feet away, while the others didn't seem to notice or care.


I'm pretty sure they live in the woods behind our house because they're always around and I can often hear them calling to each other. The babies can be quite noisy!

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

I'm still here!

But, I've been blog-slacking..... what can I say? It's summer, it was my birthday, there were locusts, earthquakes, floods, volcanoes..... ok, maybe not all of the above. Anyway, I'll start posting some of the stuff I've been doing/seeing lately when I get organized *guffaw*.

Here's a little preview:



Hope everyone is having a good time lately!