At the Tail End of Quiet

I understand why we use the beginning of the year to make a fresh start. The holidays are behind us with their noisy chaos and overindulgence. Closets and arteries need cleansing. And even at the end of January, the calendar still has a compelling sense of possibility.

But I don’t want to race ahead. I’ll be very grateful for spring’s renewing energy. I just want to stop a while at the edge of winter and take one last look around.

Magpie feathers are structurally blue in sunlight

What I see are the dusty browns and gray-greens of faded plant material providing camouflage for the birds. That’s Colorado, of course. Fifty thousand shades of tan! Look closer and you notice that song birds and other critters are surviving on grass seed and the fruits that have persisted into winter. So there’s life in this season if you know where to look.

A house finch gleans seeds from an ash tree

When I decided to illustrate the common hop plant, I was thinking about the plump green flowers I’d seen in early September.

Hop flowers and hop leaves on a barbed wire fence

Fresh hop flowers

But by December, the plants had long since dried. Botanical illustrators often reconstruct plants from herbarium specimens, which are specially prepared by trained collectors from living plant material. They are works of art in their own right, arranged to show the flowers and growth pattern of the plant. They bring the plants back to life.

Without a herbarium specimen, it was a bit of a stretch to think I could get the information I needed from a handful of dried hops. I got as far as soaking some curled leaves in water, unfurling them to get a look at their shape, and making a few sketches. The flowers were another problem. Hop flowers open and curl as they dry, so I couldn’t confidently use them to simulate fresh flowers.

What I did learn from the dried hop flowers was just how interesting they are in their own right. There’s something soothing about their monochromatic warmth. The bracts and bracteoles swirl around the strig, reminding me of a paper chandelier or a folk dancer’s skirt adorned with ribbons.

Detail of dried hops. See the full illustration in the gallery.

There are many things pulling me forward as January drifts into February. In a few weeks I’ll be hosting my first ever open studio sale. Artwork needs to be matted, packaged and priced if it’s going to find a new home. I could jump into a swirl of activity.

Or I could ease into my studio while juncos forage for seeds in last year’s monarda. I could think about all the winter birds making a living among the last of the berries, and I could be grateful for a handful of dried hops on my drawing table.

Transforming Winter

When Art Breaks Your Heart

Grateful

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It’s a rare, gray day in Colorado. Snow is falling. While I type, my wrists are warmed by the flax seed pillow at the edge of my keyboard. The oil-filled seeds give off a nutty aroma and radiate gentle heat. I have my muse to thank for this small comfort. If you don’t believe in the idea of an artistic muse, you can call it a creative impulse. Whatever it is, as I work to better connect with what drives me, I rediscover how grateful I am for the luxury of making art.

In fact, I’m thinking about 2016 and all of the things I’m grateful for. Like joining the Colorado Creative Co-op, where I’ve enjoyed sharing my finished plates, making new friends, and selling a few pillows like the one I’m using now. I make the pillows with a flax-filled inner packet and a colorful pillow case trimmed with quilt tape. They got me back into sewing, and what a great way to use my Spoonflower samples.

Because my muse is nothing if not complicated, making simple pillows led to a more elaborate project. As early as July I was hunting for a way to design fabric for holiday ornaments. Doodling in my sketchbook, the doodle took the shape of a mitten, which reminded me of a bird, which made me think of “A Partridge in a Pear Tree.” Can you make sense of this? Because it just looks chaotic to me.

In two days, I had twelve drawings. I gave one or two a “local” touch. This maid is milking bison. She must be one tough chick.

Rather than draw eight maids or twelve lords on a tiny mitten, I snuck the number of the verse into each illustration. Can you find the seven?

It took two weeks to complete the illustrations in ink, watercolor pencil and colored pencil. I wanted a palette of harmonious colors, and worked to keep those colors consistent over the twelve illustrations. My only regret turned out to be using too much yellow and lime green – they ended up looking almost the same when printed.

I pushed hard to finish the paintings because I didn’t know how long it would take to get the fabric from Spoonflower. And I still had to scan each illustration and adjust it in Corel PaintShop Pro, size the mittens to get the most from the yardage (sixteen to a fat quarter), build in a seam allowance, create a matching solid for the mitten backs, and cross my fingers that it would all work on the first try. I was delighted when the fabric showed up. Printed on Spoonflower ultra cotton poplin, it washed like a dream. I’d made some prototypes from muslin and iron-on transfers, so I was ready to go into production.

Over the next few weeks I sewed sixty-four mitten “sandwiches” of fabric and quilt batting. I experimented with different kinds of trim, finally settling on a collar of colorful grosgrain ribbon. My muse egged me on, whispering that she wanted more sparkle. Ah! beaded dangles! So in addition to sewing all those mittens, I spent another week or so hand-beading. After that, the decision to spritz them with fabric glitter didn’t seem as over-the-top as it might have at the beginning. I wasn’t really in charge.

Ordinarily, this kind of silliness would suck up all of my studio time. Instead, time expanded around the creativity. I designed more fabric, sewed more pillows, and illustrated. This year’s art calendar features ten new finished plates, something I haven’t managed since my days in botanical illustration classes. I finished most of them between July and November.

It’s a gift I’m truly thankful for, and if inventing a muse helps me understand how I work, then why not. Apparently I need both crazy production projects and the counter-point of meditative colored pencil work. Did I mention I learned a new way to bake bread while all of this was going on?

Basic Black

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They say the little black dress never goes out of style. It’s simple and can anchor an entire wardrobe. Maybe that’s why I love working in graphite. When I’m overwhelmed with juggling color, it feels good to go back to the basics. Composition, value, and shape. Graphite is the little black dress of my art wardrobe.

Some of my favorite drawings are smudgy graphite sketches. Smudgy is good because it adds instant mid tones. I like to work on toned paper, too, but lately I’ve been heading out with nothing more exciting than a 2B pencil, an eraser, and my Canson sketch pad – the perfect “go anywhere” medium. I’ll confess to a little color excitement here. I made this bag from fabric I designed last year. It’s the perfect companion for sketching trips to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

We often get an audience when we’re working in front of the natural history dioramas. This trip, I showed one summer camper how easy it is to pick out shapes with a kneaded eraser and smudge them back in again when I don’t like the results. “It’s like magic!” she said. I agree – a happy kind of magic where drawing is more like painting.

After scribbling in some tone and smudging it with my finger (which is not exactly archival, but hey, it’s just sketching), I lay in a few shapes and pull out highlights, then work in the details. It’s relaxing to sit very still and look carefully, rechecking proportions and reshaping something to be more accurate.

So bloom on, tawdry flowers of summer. I know you’re calling to me too, but for now I’ll wear basic black. And shades of grey.

Five Pages at the Zoo

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Saturday was incredibly warm, and a perfect day for the zoo. Though we love the animals and the hilly terrain of our local zoo, “Stout Month” at a favorite Denver brewery drew us north — to a city-scape of shirtless joggers, flip-flopped teens, and sun-soaked animals.

As soon as we passed the entrance gate at the Denver Zoo, we noticed two quiet dik-diks warming in the sun. Over the next two hours, I stopped for a minute or two every few feet, wedging myself into a little space in front of crowded enclosures. It was a nice “museum pace” that worked for me and didn’t bore my husband.

I found myself using each opportunity to try something different. When animals were backlit by the afternoon light, it was easy to read the shadows as abstract shapes and quickly put them in place to build form.

I tried to look more than draw, concentrating on understanding proportions and shape relationships. As a result, I made lots of blind contour scribbles. This was a great exercise, but I was messing up my journal.

I was tempted to rip out these five pages. I also wanted to keep my memories of a lovely day at the zoo. Back at home, I decorated the pages with watercolor pencil, and I think that’ll do the trick for me. This fits better with the neat-freak vibe of the rest of my journal, and the words reflect what I was thinking about while I sketched.

It won’t be long before warm weather returns, and we’ll visit our own Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. After all, it’s a short trip from the zoo to another favorite watering hole – the excellent Bristol Brewing tap room.

Winter Inspiration

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Winter can be full of surprises. This year I decided to walk a single stretch of Cottonwood Creek several times a week. I took my camera along, birding and observing. We’ve had more snow than usual, but the birds don’t care. They ignore me as I trudge along in my boots under the bare branches.

My favorite discovery has been a pair of downy woodpeckers that I saw spiraling up the narrow trunks of stunted trees. I’ve gone back many times to find the female, listening for her brief chirp or light tap-tap as she hunts insects under the bark. She has so much personality, I wanted to capture it. Working from photos, I first composed and painted the pair together, then decided to draw them separately. I read that downy woodpeckers are more solitary in winter. Here’s my study in oil. This was a big help in preparing the more finished graphite painting above.

The creek hosts a nice range of bird species. Right now, it runs under a mantel of ice, emerging in matted vegetation at the edges. I caught this cat keeping a close eye on some mallards near the foot bridge.

Song sparrows, goldfinches, juncos, house finches, and chickadees all flit among the shadowed branches. This area also contains a number of dead trees that are perfect habitat for flickers.

As the weather warms and the trees leaf out, it will be harder to spot the birds. But I’ll keep looking. I wouldn’t want to miss spring migration and mating season, and all the lovely surprises that are sure to inspire new paintings.

Cottonwood Creek, looking west.

Another Rabbit Hole

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I thought this post would describe emerging from a creative rabbit hole with new skills and ideas. And it does – sort of.

My winter obsession started with a spark from a Spoonflower fabric design contest. The contest was “ditsy sheep.” It turned out that “ditsy” did not mean “silly.” My sheep had to get smaller and much more scattered.

Which was great, because it forced me to explore Corel Paintshop Pro (ancient version X1!). I also picked up the wonderful Field Guide to Fabric Design by Kimberly Kight for tutorials and practical design advice (Stash Books, 2011). By the time Spoonflower sent me swatches of my fabric, I could ditsy like a novice. I sketched cottontails in coral, mint, black and white (another contest), and was back down the rabbit hole, ignoring the warning signs of addiction.

Elsewhere in the studio I began a series of colored pencil pieces on mylar. Here’s the Star of Bethlehem (Ornithogalum, probably thyrsoides) and some carnations in progress. One of my last posts mentioned a love affair with acrylic paint. The image behind the Ornithogalum is an acrylic painting.

Two new studio pieces

I keep planning to spend more time on the botanical series, but I’ve let two dozen pink carnations wither in the vase while playing with fabric. I’ve been texting friends and family with pictures of my latest designs. I scribble motifs on napkins and see colorways when I close my eyes at night. The mailman delivered a new set of swatches yesterday. Every day I tell myself “one more pattern. I can stop any time I want.”

Then I discovered Paintshop’s kaleidoscope option.

So I really have gone down a creative rabbit hole and acquired new skills and ideas. I just can’t get out. I feel a little more Go Ask Alice than Alice in Wonderland. Over the weekend I worked on the beagle contest. Feel free to ignore my texts.

Marking the Seasons

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My husband and I were shopping the post-holiday sales when we discovered a “seasonal” store. The picked-over assortment of toys, puzzles and calendars has probably vanished with the melting snow, but that day there were still hundreds of options in dozens of styles.

Calendars may be going the way of the photo album and the land line, transmuting into a set of data points on smart phones. I’m not complaining. My digital calendar not only reminds me of each appointment, it gives me a route and an (almost) accurate travel time.

But there’s something magical about flipping the page on a new week or month and enjoying the next image. Every year I make an art calendar for friends and family. And though I suspect she’d rather look at twelve months of grandchildren, my mother hangs hers in January and asks in November if I’m “doing another calendar.” “Yes,” I say. “Just as soon as I figure out what to put in it!”

I choose images that evoke the seasons. The snow and bare branches of winter give way to the soft pinks and greens of spring. Summer brights fade into the neutral shades of fall. I hope the images are lovely to look at, since each one will be hanging for a month in someone’s office or kitchen.

Baboons aside, here are some of my favorites from this year’s calendar.

The dried Empress Tree leaf (Paulownia tomentosa) was completely absorbing to draw. Its deep curls reminded me of draped fabric. The fast-growing Paulownia is native to China. The leaves are large – this one was about a foot long.

Elephant’s head (Pedicularis groenlandica) is a favorite wildflower of a good friend. We’ve seen it often along hiking trails. I cobbled together a contour drawing and value study from my old hiking photos and took advantage of the richness of colored pencil on mylar. I didn’t have a reliable color reference, so I pushed the pinks. Why not!

Colored pencil on mylar

This sample illustration from Noodles and the Magic Sock was fun to paint with water color and colored pencil on illustration board. In this image, Noodles (Felis nawtii) is using the sock as a lasso and a circus hoop to control magic animals.

My last post included a sneak peek of this acrylic painting of Martha, our Washington Hawthorn (Crataegus phaenopyrum). Martha had a bumper crop of apple-flavored berries. After stripping most of the tree, the squirrels tried to shinny out to the very tips of the branches. The birds are still laughing.

The new year promises some exciting challenges. I’m taking a figure drawing class with plenty of self study in human and animal anatomy, and am continuing to explore acrylics and painting. But now it’s time to get back to my Star of Bethlehem portrait (Ornithogalum sp.), also colored pencil on mylar and perhaps Miss December 2016.