Rust

Female Cardinal

Sorry for the prolonged absence! Here is a recent effort. It's not the best of its type I have done lately, but the other was given as a gift to someone I care about.

Cold Weather Birding

I don’t go birding in inclement weather anymore. What I do now is use these cold, rainy days to recall those times when I had no fear (or good sense?) – and warmer, dryer outer-wear. The rewards can be great. On days just like today, forty-five degrees with side-ways rain, I have seen birds I have seldom seen on more temperate days, including common loons, horned grebes and white-winged scoters.

Ice Shelf and Grebe

The last time I saw a horned grebe, I was at Hoover Reservoir, and there was an ice-shelf that extended out about one hundred yards from the shore. The biting wind dragged beautiful, shallow, curving drifts of snow and granular ice across the surface of the shelf. Beyond the shelf of ice, the lake shook itself to keep from freezing. Even with ten-power binoculars, the grebe was at the very tip of my ability to identify it.

Negative Space

     After preparing a drawing, I like to paint the negative space - the background. In this picture of a female cardinal, I liked what I had, so I quit without filling the entire frame. At other times, I have felt obligated to fill the entire space, and subsequently, have ruined some pictures.

Female Cardinal, Watercolor on paper, March 1, 2011

     I decided to quit while I was ahead, because watercolor is not a game of perfect.

Art Trading Cards, ACEOs and Oddments

     Many artists make trading cards, for fun, for profit, or for trading. They can be used as business cards. I give mine away. ACEO stands for art cards, editions and originals. I suppose that's more serious, professional artist stuff than just "art trading cards." Duane Keiser, on his amazing blog, A Painting a Day
( http://duanekeiser.blogspot.com/), calls his very small studies "oddments."
     Here are four of mine. (If you enlarge these, you will be disappointed. I was.)

Pencil on paper, 3-1/2" x 2-1/2"

      This barn is on Cambria Mill Road, near where I live. It has not been red for a very long time, if ever.

Pencil on paper, 3-1/2" x 2-1/2"

 

      These are pebbles in a small dish.

Pencil on paper, 3-1/2" x 2-1/2"

      Prettier than the male? These colors are slightly, but only slightly, more vivid "in hand" than they appear here.

Pencil on paper, 3-1/2" x 2-1/2"

     These are trees in winter mist.

Influences

 

"Canada Geese" February 27, 2011 Watercolor on paper

A friend of mine recently posted a Mark Rothko painting on his website. I was reminded the noted Canadian wildlife artist, Robert Bateman, observed that Rothko’s paintings are abstract landscapes, which, I believe, Rothko himself had said. Bateman said one of his own paintings, a picture of a goose flying over a marsh, was essentially a Rothko with a goose added. Well, I’ve tried to emulate that to a certain degree. I am, of course, not Robert Bateman or Mark Rothko!