Rhymes with Ice

There's now a humongous fire on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Started by lightning three weeks ago, it is, to my minds eye, out of control. Tons of heavy equipment, 500 firefighters and support personnel (helicopter pilots, and others) and a million dollars a day to fight what was a nine-acre (now 13,000 and counting) fire.
It's in old spruce/fir forest headed to open grassland and just claiming earth in it's path. Zero contained, it's expected to burn for Two. More. Months.

This photograph is from that internet thingie here.

Why do I go on? Because we were just there.

We planned our summer get-away back in February and we were already late in getting a reservation then, grabbing the last available camping spot (it's a big celebration for our National Parks System--the centennial, so rezzies filled in quickly). While driving to the rim last week, we saw smoke from a hundred miles away and wondered if we'd have our little vacation.
We went anyway.
After all, Gil earned his lifetime park pass months ago and we had yet to claim it.
I asked the first park ranger we saw for details on the fire and her response was, "What fire?" She couldn't see the fire for the trees. From where we stood, the tall Ponderosa forest hid all signs of smoke.
As it turned out, we had four glorious days of blue skies and cool, crisp air (80s, no humidity), a respite from the desert heat we have returned to. From where we camped, the fire was about 10 miles to the northeast is all. I spent three nights trying to capture the sky from our campsite, particularly a single branch of a mighty pine.

I gazed at that one branch pondering last week's Diva challenge from Suzanne Fluhr (CZT and world traveler) to embrace Peace. If I had been home, I would have used the olive trees for inspiration. I have yet to get around to drawing this, now that we're back to "reality."
But I'm liking the photograph for inspiration as well as meditation, like a giant "Om." It's not the greatest picture I've ever taken as the wind was blowing 30 mph (helping that fire over there) and the branch was never still.
Perhaps I can still tackle this image to draw as this week it's about "movement!"

In the meantime, I'll play with the EIM. My current offerings for "spiral:"

I drew a "fake" Spirograph (remember those? I used to love em!) in Photoshop and dug up a fractal image and a strangely similar nautilus shell and a spiral nebula.

I'll get back around to the various artistic endeavors. While we as humanity try to digest the recent events across the planet, I try not to infuse my work with tragedy or politics. The title is a reference to France, even though it doesn't.
For whatever reason, the fire has gripped me tightly. Words, and pictures, which usually spill from me, somehow fail me.

Fire!

This is a subject I've played with before, based on a prompt at "Every Inchie Monday." You can see how far off-base I got the last time here.
This time, however, I got kind of political/outspoken--like THAT never happens!--and for the TwobyTwo challenge, "wildfire" was the word of the day, today. I may have scared some people off by my commentary, but I hope that's not the case.
I chose the particular prompt because it hits very close to home.

These are my official responses to the 2x2:

Forest Fire
Zentangle Inspired Art (ZIA) on Canson pastel paper
Sampson, Meringue and CO2

On Account of Fire
Collage of Ephemera
Accounting ledger, Magazines, Dictionary and Pastel paper

I've seen some of the work that has come in for this challenge and it thrills me to see the artwork in my inbox. Please take the time to check out the art created for the Two by Two by Tuesday challenge and perhaps? consider participating, too!
I'll be getting to all the other drawings and all that I've been working on....I have to scan a bunch of "stuff" first! Have a brilliant day!

Two Weeks of Inchies

Somehow, the easier the subject matter, the tougher it gets to wrap my head around it. The Inchie word last week was "vegetable." How hard could that be? Making a living won out, so I passed on it until today. Doing a little de-cluttering of my to-do list.
For the vegetable, I chose to take a photograph of the last harvest from my garden. While other Arizona gardeners are gearing up for a fine season of cool vegetables, I have to put mine to rest. Shade and gophers are my enemies. Thus, these hot, hot, hot! peppers!

This week's inchie is "violet." I saw that another artist chose a perfect little violet  from her house and this is mine. It's a houseplant I acquired with my house and it likes to be outside, surviving through the heat of an Arizona summer. Every part of it is purple. I found a seed company calling it "Purple Heart," while the botanical name is Tradescantia pallida. What a mouthful for a tiny little flower:

OK, those weren't so hard, right?! Well, then there's the twinchies. I went a little farther afield with these. Last week was "pumpkin." Follow me here...there's pumpkin and then there's...

Oh, boy! That's a stretch, huh?! 

This week it's "fire." Right this minute I think a cozy blanket, coffee, a good book and some logs burning in a fireplace would make a great combination (We're having a bit of a chill here in AZ today and I'll be dipped if I turn on the heat!). But that's not what my teenie art brain had in mind at all. I've had onomatopoeia on my mind (that'll be my next post...but I'm getting ahead of myself), so this roughly translated into:

I think gets me all caught up on these things. Until next week....

Check out all the inchie ladies; they are a diverse crew with talents that spread the galaxy. Beads, thread, paper, paint, oh, my!