Beeswax Collage

This is one of my latest pieces, a beeswax collage on canvas board. The images are from Anna Corba. I recently taught a class using this technique and it was a great success! And the studio smelled so wonderful, too! I'll be offering a class in beeswax collage again after the holidays so if you're interested and you live anywhere near Westlake Village in California, please leave me a comment with your email address and I will let you know what the class schedule is.

Pretty Crow

Neat! Look what my Iphone can do! It's amazing what you can do with a camera without really knowing how to use it (well). Anyway, I suppose most people wouldn't call a crow pretty but I think they're kind of magnificent. They're so smart and brave and to watch them fly, especially when they're close to you, it's like having little airplanes flying around you. Oh, this I know because I feed them in the morning and then send them back to their own little world.

It started with just a sweet couple and of course they had to go tell all their friends. Now I have some 20 crows waiting for me every morning. They wait, they eat, they go. The whole thing lasts maybe 10 minutes. The noise lasts about one minute! And there are begging stragglers who see that the squirrels seem to get the best food of all , and that it's protected by me. Otherwise the crows would be happy to eat everything.

Yes, my mornings are like living in a zoo, (I didn't mention the ducks, did I). But I love all my visitors. It's nice to be important to someone.

New Book, New Bookmark!

Here's my new bookmark for my new book: What The Dickens by Gregory Maguire of "Wicked" fame. I've read less than one chapter and can see I'm going to love it. And these few pages inspired me to begin my bookmark. If you know me, you may know that I make a new bookmark for every book that I read and I make it before I read it. So it's interesting to see how and if my artwork has anything at all to do with the story when I've finished.

Maguire's subtitle is "The Story of a Rogue Toothfairy". And the first few pages have to do with some kids at home who have run out of food due to some kind of world disaster. So on my bookmark I've included a little doll who's fallen, a ticket food for 1 drink, a narwhale (whose long horn is sometimes considered a tooth) and a piece of the word 'museum' incomplete and falling off the page. There's also a tiny dove of peace with an olive branch in his mouth but poor thing has been smeared, totally by accident but , hmmm, lets see how THAT plays out!!!

Wild Wings

Art is everywhere. Even in a sad situation. No, I didn't draw this.... this is the imprint of one of the many sparrows that mistakenly fly into my window. This happens alllllllll the time and don't worry, they nearly always live! I have left the window dirty so they will see that they can't fly through it but there is always one that will still try.

Anyway, look at the beautiful dust print! I will use this in my art somehow so that his misfortune won't go to waste. (this one was fine and flew off alright.)

A journal page

Another journal page. The photos are not the greatest. "She didn't even know what to wish for."
There are so many directions and possibilities in life. Stuff you truly want but might be totally impractical. Wild dreams. Sensible choices. Achievable in theory but not quite attainable. The first step is to decide what you want. But is that really such an easy question?

Friday Friends

Time again for photos of my garden friends. These are my preying mantis. If there can be such a thing as a sweet bug, this is it. This one is guarding my roses, thank you. I love this shot, the fading tunnel effect which my camera knows how to do, not me.
I'm so fascinated with these guys. There are litterally hundreds born each spring but only a handful make it to adulthood. They start out so teeny tiny and here it is September and this one is about 5 inches long and still growing. Occasionally they leave me butterfly wings for my artwork. Nice.
Look at my sweet, honey-dog Tucker. I just love him. He's 6 now. I think sometimes we stop taking photos of our dogs after puppy hood. I definitely have tons of puppy pictures but I don't want to forget my loving dog in his adulthood. Definitely my bestest friend.

More portrait practice

Here's another effort at face painting. She is basically Prismacolor pencil, acrylic paints, acrylic inks, collage, and stamping. OH and modeling paste which is stamped into. I'd love to know what you think!

Sister Day

By god, I think I've started a new tradition! Sister Day. The date: anytime your husband is out of town. The atmosphere: totally casual, comfy clothes, super easy food, but lots of it. No kids, (or at least send them upstairs and forbid them to come down.) This is the holiday I've created for just my sisters and me!Of course, being me, I had to infuse art into the situation somehow so I put them all to work. I brought out my hefty supply of rubber stamps and we made these wonderful banners.
My sisters are all very creative in all different ways so I don't think it was a big stretch for them to send a little creative energy to the paper, and, indeed, they created some great artwork! My sister, Cari is a musician and singer of her own band The Black Rose Band. My sister Teresa is a very talented writer and equestrian chic, and also likes to make stuff with polymer clay. And my sister Tomoko makes jewelry, draws, is a superb cook, and all around creative soul. I have one more sister who couldn't make it to Sister Day.
There is nothing quite as fun and relaxing as just talking with my girls without worrying about anything else. Eating without guilt for one day, going on garden tours in my backyard. We even stayed up and watched a great sister flick, Practical Magic (Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman).
All around a fun day, fun art, and a great retreat from our stressed out lives. I'm sure we will make Sister Day an annual thing, or maybe monthly!! ha. Who knows!

Ah,, nice.

Well, it's been hot, hot, hot here in CA this week, near 102F. But we're overdue for the heat since we had some very mild weather the previous two weeks (90's). But right now it's 7:15pm, the sun is just beginning to go down and the weather is just beautiful! It's about 75. I absolutely love it when it's just warm and comfy and cozy like this, can hardly stay in the house at all.

So I'm on my patio , getting ready to watch the next Suziblu video for my workshop and I'm being visited by all kinds of sweet critters. The photo above is my sweet CooCooMa who is really like a puppy, runs up to me to give me kisses and beg. A russet hummingbird just whizzed by and the California towhee is hop, ho, hoppng by unafraid.

The ducks aren't here now, they're morning visitors, but you can see that even they get along with my crows. The crows come for 15 minutes in the morning and that's it. There's one who will follow me when I walk my dog. I must think of a good name for that smart guy.
And these sparrows and doves, titmice, nuthatches, and goldfinches are all regulars. To me there's just nothing better than being trusted by a wild thing. I love my cats and dogs of course, they're family, but it's so nice to spend some time with my outside friends.

These beautiful lovebirds showed up one day 3 weeks ago. They are always together and though I seeked advise and attempted to get them to go in a cage (long story, not that interesting) but they seemed to be pretty wild. They have learned from the other birds to be afraid of all the appropriate stuff and I thought they'd be ok in the wild afterall. They came everyday to my feeders for food and I bought special lovebird food for them, too.
But this week there was only one. And two days ago I stopped hearing him, too. I'd like to think that they just found better food than I had to offer, but I have to acknowledge that this is a popular strike zone by the local hawks, and I did see one just the other day. Sad, they were fun to watch every day.