We're having one of our few hot-Seattle-summer weeks where everything must be heavily watered, so I thought sharing Sting singing of heat and rain was more than appropriate!
(But Sting! It's all hot and deserty! Please, please, please take off your leather jacket. I'm over-heating just looking at you).
The heat is finally making the plants take off - the Jerusalem artichokes along the fence to the left, hops on the left of the gate, Magnolia vine on the right...
The bush beans are growing. This year I'm growing a couple of purple varieties. :-)
And here is one of the strawberry-eating evil hens.... Stalking the strawberry bed yet again...
I've just started taking a part-time online course on Color & Composition from TAD (The Art Department) (offshoot of Massive Black and ComceptArt). The homework thus far has consisted of more 'grown-up' design work than I've had to do for some time. Is stretching my brain!
This week's assignment was to design a poster for TAD....
After today's critiques I'm going to develop #4/the key further (add all the text and tonal info). Not a whole lot of time to take this to finish really, so simple is good!
This week I got to run into Seattle with POBL friend and awesome artist Rebecca Bush for some 'culture'-
We started off at the Roq la Rue gallery - mostly to see the mini show of Eric Fortune (which was unsurprisingly breath-taking. The guy can paint like nobody's business! Click his name above to see these pieces close up.)
Featured at this show was Glenn Barr - although I must say I was more impressed with his painting-on-wood-with-funky-frames than the actual paintings......
Rebecca is also a docent for the Seattle Art Museums and took me to see the Asian Museum, in the very lovely Volunteer Park... (if you look closely, you can see the Space Needle through the hole in the giant Asian donut sculpture. :-))
A smattering from inside:
Super cool Indian relief sculpture... (East Indian angels? Pig gods and Ganesh!)
Dragon riding anyone? (See the fabulous dragon claws in the close-up)
But my favorite Asian art is always the sculpted horses. Their round heavy bodies and stylized faces... Love 'em!
...almost as much as the gallery-hopping-cupcakes that we treat ourselves with! :-) This time, the flavor of choice was Passionfruit-guava. Heaven!
Loreena McKennitt has been on my mind of late. This is possibly my very favorite piece of hers....
This depiction of connection to the earth makes me nearly teary...
In my own earth-fowl-connection, things remain very exciting... Possibly too exciting.
The chicks are now out of their hutch full time, but the integration with the older evil hens is a bit fraught with peril and much squawking. When they are all in the coop together the big girls terrorize the babies (see them all huddling in the corner in the circle on the photo on the right? They spend a great deal of time trying to hide).(Jack the Wonderdog is very solicitous and concerned for the welfare).
So, when the babies' screeching wakes me up early in the morning, I go let the big girls out to range and lock them out of the coop so that the babies can have their day in relative peace.
The one disadvantage to the older hens being out all day is that they find some super-sekrit place to lay their eggs out in the yard. After looking for their hiding spot for a couple of days I decided to ask Jack where the eggs were. Amazing-Wonderdog that he is, he took me right to them (which happened to be tucked behind the bamboo teepee next to the rain barrel. Would never have found them on my own!)
Hopefully integration will happen soon and there will be a happy little flock, else there might be some stewing chickens for dinner....
And here are some of the blooming things in the back yard in July...
Lots of volunteer poppies this year. Plus Bee Balm, and blooming catamint...
Beautiful blue borage stars.... Lots of raspberries in the patch....
One of the fancy, 'double' poppies (which almost look like peonies :-)...
And here are the babies - who are now gangly teenaged pullets (who will not stand still for the camera... I let them out of their hutch by day to scratch about the coop -
- while I let the evil big hens out to free-range in the yard and gardens. To their credit, they are *both* laying again, so I can't be entirely disgusted with them. :-)
Recently I was given a few revisions and a new piece to do on my last big project. One of the new items was a full figure of a repeat character. My model is 2 years older than she was when we started, so I decided to try to implement what I've been learning and build a figure to match my previous ones from scratch rather than from photo reference...
This is what I ended up with to submit....
(and in daily page news, I has noses and eyeballs!)
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