Spring Creek Forest Preserve

After our punishingly hot summer, the weather over the past two weeks has taken a sharp turn toward very pleasant. Not wanting to miss the opportunity, we trekked over to Garland and hiked Spring Creek Forest Preserve this past weekend.
The trail mostly followed along a high-banked creek with many short off-shoots where one could reach the edge of the bank and catch a glimpse of the water. In only a couple places could we actually climb down to the water. The white rocky banks reminded me of the beautiful hill country we recently left behind in Austin. We're hopeful that the nice weather will continue for a while...

Onto the subject of reference from life and nature's little treasures once again... The management at our apartment complex recently decided to repaint everything, including the covered parking. The thorough cleaning required before painting also meant the removal of all of the bird's nests that had been built in the tight spaces between the support columns and the roof. And there were A LOT of them. I found this one on the ground and couldn't resist bringing it home with me:
I have yet to decide if I will actually keep it or just study it for a while before throwing it away. You can't see it in the photo, but under closer scrutiny you can see small bits of man-made objects wound throughout the nest - a length of red string and a fair amount of what looks to be a fine plastic net, possibly for fishing? I think there's a story here...

Trick or Treat?

It's almost officially fall now. Although it's not quite time for Halloween, I think it's almost appropriate for me to go ahead and post my autumnal painting today. I did see a very diverse selection of pumpkins and gourds on display at the grocery store this morning, so if they say it's okay then it must be okay:
Halloween might possibly be my husband's favorite holiday. Every year he looks forward to checking out the local haunted house offerings and I'm sure this year will be no different. One thing I will always remember about our years spent in LA was the enthusiasm with which some of the locals celebrated Halloween. 'Yard Haunts' were not uncommon and were often incredibly elaborate, frequently rivaling and surpassing some of the more commercial enterprises. The most impressive one I remember was "Hallowed Haunting Grounds" which sadly had its "final manifestation" in 2005 after an amazing 33 year-long run. A list of LA 'yard haunts' can be found here.

I wonder what Halloween goodies our new city will have to offer.....

A Visit to Wisconsin

Summer in Texas lasts a very long time and finding that by September we've had quite enough of it, we departed for a short trip over the holiday weekend to southern Wisconsin in the hopes to escape the heat. I'd been to Wisconsin once when I was very young and hold almost no memory of it, so with little idea of what to expect, I was pleasantly surprised by the beautiful rolling hills and generally bucolic landscape. Not to mention the perfect weather!Our vacation turned into something of an architectural tour of southern Wisconsin as we visited Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin, the Pabst Mansion, and The House on the Rock, the last of which I suppose is more of an incredibly bizarre experiment in sensory overload than a representation of any particularly well-regarded architecture, although still fascinating in its own unsettling way. Check out the photo gallery on their website to get a better idea of what the place is about - it is so strange and random that I really don't know how to describe it.

As we've been rather hike-starved for months now due to the heat and we lucked out with the beautiful weather in Wisconsin, we made sure to spend a significant amount of time outside. We visited Pewitt's Nest near North Freedom, WI which is a short, but stunning slot canyon in the Baraboo Hills.And for a more rigorous hike we visited Devil's Lake State Park and hiked up the very steep Balanced Rock Trail and back down the equally steep CCC trail.












We had never seen rocks quite so purple on hikes we had done anywhere else. Perhaps this is what "purple mountains majesty" refers to? Although I think our "mountain" would probably be more accurately described as a very grand hill.

We have only to wait a few more weeks before the Texas heat dissipates and we can get outside and explore our new city. I'm looking forward to it and I think our little adventure in the north will tide me over until then.

Reference from Life

While I work from my imagination a great deal, when I need reference for something very specific I often work from photos. However, the chance to work from life is always welcome and so I'm often on the lookout for nature's little treasures - acorns, pine cones, feathers, etc. My husband fished this exquisite dragonfly out of the swimming pool the other day in the hopes that it was still alive and just needed a helping hand out of the water. We were too late though and this little guy had passed on:
I wanted to preserve the dragonfly properly, but when I read that the standard method involves using acetone which is "volatile and explosive" I had second thoughts and went with the 'stick him in a shadowbox and cross my fingers that he doesn't rot' method. I took a bunch of pictures of him as back-up in the likelihood that my method doesn't hold out for very long.

He did lose a little bit of his luster after just one day and his iridescent eyes faded to opaque, but I think he is still a little jewel. Dragonflies often work as a nice extra detail in paintings, so it'll be nice to have some first-hand reference.

Halloween in August

With the adjustments to the sketches for my book dummy now complete, I thought I'd take a short break before starting the painting phase to work on a promotional piece. Continuing on the theme of cats, I added the last details to this sketch this morning:
This piece is actually a re-make of a painting I did back in art school. If I remember correctly, I believe the assignment was to illustrate a cover for Cricket magazine either on the theme of Halloween or possibly for the month of October. I had been fairly pleased with the original composition, but have had it in mind for some time that it would be nice to revisit this image and put more time into the final art than I was able to as a student. I remember back in school I had originally drawn the little mouse to the far right much more plainly and it had been the excellent suggestion by one of my classmates to dress the mouse up for Halloween and have it trick-or-treating. I think that simple suggestion really helped to make the painting.

Picture Book Dummy

I've been illustrating for a while now, but I've long wanted to both illustrate and write my very own picture book. I had jotted down a simple story a couple years ago, poking at it now and then whenever I had some spare time. Pulling it back out this summer, it seemed ready for the next stages - layout and sketches. This drawing will be the spread for pages 4-5:All the sketches for the book are nearly complete with only minor adjustments yet to be made. Oh - and I still have the cover left to design. I always leave the cover for last when illustrating a book so as to maximize the amount of time I have to ruminate on it. Once the sketches are complete, I'll need to paint two or three finished illustrations before it will be ready to submit to publishers. I'm contemplating dabbling in media different from my usual for this project - possibly digital or perhaps try out some the textured gel that's been sitting in my closet waiting to be cracked open....
For all my previous books I faxed or e-mailed sketches to the publishers, so this will be my first time actually assembling a physical book dummy. It should be quite a learning experience and I'm looking forward to it!

Four Seasons by the Stream

I love doing seasonal paintings drawing on the characteristics of a particular season and/or holiday. I think it's a great way to maintain a lot of creative freedom while still setting some parameters within which to work. This painting falls neatly into the category of seasonal and I'd say is something of a mega-seasonal painting with all four seasons flowing one into the next:
This piece was another private commission. I had anticipated the blending between the seasons to be very difficult, but as it turned out, so long as I worked with very light washes for the sky in the background and the water in the foreground, the blending went pretty smoothly.

My husband and I decided the little squirrel swimming in the foreground had the right idea as to how to spend the summer months and we spent some time over this past holiday weekend cooling off in the pool. Even though we're only half-way through the summer I am so looking forward to the fall - although I don't think we'll be collecting acorns like the mice in the painting.... Ice-skating in the winter, however, is a possibility...

Wishing a slightly belated Happy 4th of July to my fellow American readers!