Late WInter Wonderland

Dog in an epic landscape

Driving to Chickory this week I thought I was going to wreck I was so distracted by the flickering light created by the long tree shadows stretching across the road. The shadows were spaced so evenly that it blasted the corner of my eye with a steady hypnotic pattern. The flickering was bright red because it picked up the blood in my eyelid and reminded my of a shock the monkey style horror video. I understand why this kind of thing triggers epileptic seizures! I like winter because you can see how the land lays but the light is cold and desaturated. Im ready to move into spring now, though I have loved this weird snowy winter.

Damn, Kitty. Sorry.

I took Trout over to Big Sky yesterday as a special treat for just her, without Koby. And she was horrible. There was a pair of Canadian Geese in the pond. Trout ran full bore and launched herself into the pond and followed them wherever they swam in the pond, paddling her heart out. I thought she would surely tire and sink. She ignored my calls to stop and the honking those geese put out was extremely loud and distressing. Later, she found some poor hapless cat to terrorize. When the kitty went up a tree that was growing out of a rock, Trout spend at least 20 minutes trying to climb up and get her, sometimes landing awkwardly and flopping into the rock so hard I could hear her "ooof" of impact. I left her and traveled along a ridge line to the Tennesee side and did not see her again until almost an hour when I was back at the pond on the way home.

Late afternoon sun warms a path of grasses

There were little patches of snow and ice on the north sides of the mountain

I love all the dried seed heads I encounter on my walk

I worked on my "folk art" and managed to get a decent rooster painting

I took the truck out for a little ride after my walk to visit some friends horses

Today I will work on a largish painting for V featuring "his dog" Kobayashi Maru. I plan to use this photograph as my guide. I have a very clear vision of how it should look in my mind's eye. The hard part of course, is getting my hands to execute it. I hope everyone has a lovely weekend!

Crafting St. Valentine's

I made this one for V last year 

I feel really really sorry for kids today. The valentines I see in the stores are all tied to some TV show or movie character. Dora the explorer valentines? Are you kidding me? Gone are those charming old-fashioned valentines with dopey puns and silly rhymes. I loved the ones that had the flocked (furry) red hearts and the ones with the moving parts. When I was in elementary school, we spent a week making valentines during our art time. We would also decorate plain paper bags with our names on them and they would be affixed to the back of our seats. Then on Valentines day, there would be a party with cupcakes and red heart tarts. All the kids would deliver their valentines to the decorated bags. Back then, there was no ministry of political correctness so it was not guaranteed that you would receive a valentine from each of your classmates. So there was some suspense and anxiety involved, just like real life.

My mom would help me craft valentines. Sometimes we would just doctor up store bought ones with glitter. Some years we made cookies and piped on the names with icing and packaged them in tissue for delivery. My mom never made me give a valentine to everyone, but she did use the opportunity to discuss levels of expression. For instance, I was very disturbed by the notion of giving a lovey dovey valentine to a boy I didnt particularly like. She would look through the cards and find one with a monkey or a walrus or something relatively benign and reassure me that it expressed nothing more than friendship. And I remember even going to the trouble of cutting red hearts off a card just to be sure.

The Love Bug Ornament

I still enjoy crafting Valentine's day gifts. Its a bright and cheerful, if commercially imposed, holiday in the middle of freezing gray days. And it's right about the time people peter out on their new year's diets and go ahead and enjoy some chocolates.  I've been celebrating the holiday by making these LoveBugs for a few years, a logical addition to my Christmas ornament designs. And I make valentine garlands too.
I haven't put them together yet, I am still creating all of the elements.

Today I got out some of my materials and made a valentine or two before I leave town for a week. I was inspired by Susan at 29 Black Street who is way ahead on making hers. I have painted many valentine themed illustrations over the years but I tend to not use them to make my own valentines. Instead I try to craft the whole thing by cutting and layering paper. Here are my favorite tools for the job:

Lots of paper; you need heavier stock to build the card on and lots of other papers for cutting designs. You need solids and patterns. Heart shaped doilies, glitter ( I like "Art Glitter" brand the best ), great scissors like the "cutter bee" shown; a white pen and a fine point glue pen. I also use those tiny pieces of pre-fab sticky foam squares to lift certain parts of the card. I used a paper punch to make that frilly edge at the bottom of the card. Here's the finished card:

I'll be blogging from the road this week. Im going to see about my Mom. I believe the valentine I made for her today is the last one I will ever give her. I hope to have some good pictures from my travels and look forward to visiting your blogs while I am traveling.

Anybody have some cool corny valentine rhymes they want to share with me? 

visual haiku

buenos noches from
a lonely parking lot
apologies Dwight.