Of Whales and Birds

I'll start with my contribution to the EIM. I had a whale of a good time finding information about cetaceans, the big mammals of the sea.

First up, the biblical account of Jonah and the Whale, a detail from the illustration by Everett Henry titled, "The Voyage of the Pequod," for the story, "Moby Dick," also known as just, "The Whale," by Herman Melville, the tail end of a whale and an image of a breaching whale.
Did you see the story of the whale they call "Granny" in the news this week?
Life can be funny that way, don't you think?
Ah, whale tales all! You can call me Ishmael.

Moving right along....
Next I tackled the TwobyTwo. The first two drawings are kind of self-explanatory.

This one requires a bit of back-story. I was in Sedona one day a while back and stopped by Garlands, a gallery for exceptional Native American jewelry, ceramics and weavings. I saw a beautiful Tree of Life (Bird Pictorial) wall hanging depicting hummingbirds and metallic yarns were used to make those lovely birds shimmer. I knew then that it would haunt me forever that I didn't buy the unusual piece (Navajo like to use only wool from the sheep they raise themselves. Metallic threads are unheard of), but the tag had more zeroes than I had.
Sigh.
So here I've attempted to draw a hummingbird that doesn't look like the Twitter thing:

I dream of hummingbirds, which I guess is a good thing.

Before I let you go, I'll share the Diva challenge piece for the week.

That's it for now. Thanks so much for stopping by. Have a brilliant day!

I'm Melting!

It's our rainy season and it hasn't been so much hot as it has been humid. Never did like that much when I lived on the East Coast; I forget how that feels. I look forward to the return of warmer, but drier, weather.

The weather factored into my thinking for the EIM this week. The word is, "sheep." While I've been doing plenty of my version of counting sheep (I count backwards from 100), I couldn't possibly do something so straight forward. I've been doing a lot of internet searches for the upcoming TwobyTwo and I went with a wooly (sheep = wool) blanket pattern called, "storm:"

I drew this with markers from this antique blanket for sale. The central design is called a "whirling log," a sacred symbol for all things good and is no longer used by the Navajo. I think you'll understand why that is so.

Rain also seeped into my Diva piece, a chance to try out a new pattern, Knightstar by Daniel Lamothe.

I can almost hear the corks popping for the celebration at the IAST, Adele's third anniversary:

Every day is a celebration; bring on the Champagne!
Be sure to see what all the other creatives are dishing up and if the spirit moves you, try out the TwobyTwo--two-inch art (you have plenty of time)!
Have a brilliant day!

Channeling Jules Verne

The EIM for the week is "underground."
This me, underground. See? I really do exist.

This is Team LoudandStinky geocaching in a lava tube, Flagstaff back in 2005. Photo by Sr. G.

We've been talking about doing it again, at least "Stinky" wants to. So we'll go soon and report back. It's always chilly in there--40 degrees year-round, so it'll be a welcome diversion from our heat. It's just funny that it's been a topic of discussion and here we want to go "underground" for the EIM.

I was thinking of sharing a photograph from Antelope Canyon, but my old hard drive just crashed and with it...about 25,000 photographs. UGH. This is from the Travel Channel:

The canyon always finds its way onto bucket lists, most recently on AOL. Go ahead, there's some cool stuff there.
I feel blessed that I've seen all four of them listed in the States. Moving along...

And I found in today's news, a brand new World Heritage Site, Dolmen de Viera, in Andalusia, Spain is an underground tomb from 4,000 years ago. Pretty interesting!

I've been mostly bouncing around this internet thingie. Too hot to do much else. I dragged myself from underground and started heading to the "exit," the word for the TwobyTwo. I was trying to channel my inner rocker and create something along the lines of "In through the Out Door, " by Led Zeppelin. I always thought that album cover art was really cool. Especially the paint-water-and-it-changes-colors part.
Hmm, no.
What I found was a "documentary" on street artists called "Exit through the Gift Shop." Paintings associated with the film show lab rats, so I went this a-way:

Exit Strategy

Having seen a massive lab rat once try to escape our school, it just kind of, almost, makes sense.
Riiiiight.
Thanks for stopping by. Stay cool. Have a brilliant day!

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.

Putting My Heart into It

I was kind of ahead of myself, again, last week while I was speaking of "rain" before the EIM this week. The week before last we had rain and have had none since. This is our rainy season; we should be getting rain.

Instead, this is what we're getting:

We're not even getting virga, also known as phantom rain--it doesn't even touch the ground!

I'm not so secretly praying for rain as we're tinder dry and forest fires are a reality. So far, so good.

Other than that, this is what I have to give to you, my world, this week:

It's a collage specifically for the Two by Two. And a personal statement and challenge to do what I must.
What is YOUR "must?"
Have a brilliant day!

And the Rocket's Red Glare

The weather has been fabulous for this spot in the desert. We had rain (for ten minutes or so) a couple days in a row, which made the air just plain steamy.
Then it rained.
The Navajo have ten different names for rain and while I don't know what they are, I can easily identify a few. There are drizzles and showers. We have one we comically call twelve-inch rain--that's where we get a few splatters 12-inches apart. Then we have fat rain--big, burly splats of water that hurl themselves towards Earth and bounce off the ground.
It just rained, pure and simple.
Then the air cleared, just glorious. One hundred degrees and deep cerulean skies. And more of the same all week long. Perfect.
I have to get out and yank the weeds that were patiently waiting for a good soaking. They multiply before my eyes! But not until I take care of these little artworks....

These are for last week's IAST.

The first was the happy result of trying the #heftyhack that the Diva proposed a couple weeks ago. After many an attempt, I used Prismacolor brush-tip markers and kosher salt to create the watercolor background with "Ahh" fireworks. The second is a more traditional piece with my trusty Sharpie, Derwent charcoal and General white charcoal for highlights. The pattern "Floatfest" floats just above the surface.

Moving along to the inchie of the week...the EIM word is "computer." We are surrounded by them. I watched a program two weeks ago that showed the computers that helped put the man on the moon--with a whopping EIGHT megs of RAM! I don't think I knew what computers were in 1969, let alone RAM. Now here I am with 2,000 times the computing power at my fingertips.

That said, I give you the first known computer punch card created by a Mr. Korsakov in 1832.

The concept of which just begs that whole dangling chad debacle (2000 presidential election, Florida). This is an example of swinging door chads (and a single properly punched space):

Supposedly, there are some precincts that still use punch cards for the voting process. That's as scary a concept as thinking I could launch a rocket from this computer.

And while the Diva's proposal this week was to show our true (country's) colours, this was having none of it. I tried the Star-Spangled approach, humming the anthem all the while. I started with "the bombs bursting in air" and kept coming around to..."and the skies are not cloudy all day," (which has nothing to do with anything other than our beautiful weather). Doesn't explain this one wit:

It was supposed to be stars and streamers, fireworks and all that. Yeah, well....I guess I used that all up for the String Thing.
Hopefully, not a discouraging word is heard. Be sure to check what other crazy and tangly people are up. Always a treat. Have a brilliant day!

We are Victorious

It's a good thing I'm kind of ahead of myself as all of a sudden it's "INFERNO" season. That's when the temperatures are too hot to rain (115 to 120F) then it cools ever so slightly but the humidity goes up. Yes, from single digits to forty percent or better. It wants to rain.
When it does rain, we stop what we're doing and watch the sky or even better, stand out in the drizzle and act like we've never seen water fall from the heavens. Well, we get about three inches a year, so it's not a normal occurrence.
We haven't yet seen it where we could use a little less of it--where it pours all at once for twenty minutes. The weather wonks call it "monsoon" season. Back East it was "HHH" for hazy, hot and humid.
I guess i just need to add another "H." And it's not for "hilarious."

Here are some thoughts on "Physics" for the EIM. I'm glad I saved Einstein for this week.

That's a solar flare thanks to NASA; a hydrogen bomb test code-named, "Ivy Mike," from the DOEnergy files; another NASA image, the Helix Galaxy, also known as the "Eye of God," and Albert Einstein, who advocated a liberal dose of imagination in life. I'm glad his brain did a lot of heavy lifting so we don't have to!

Last week was an investigation into "Victory" for this week's TwobyTwobyTuesday. I liked what I did, but one in particular needed a quick revamp:

Funny, that's what the Diva was thinking for her challenge to us tangly people. I didn't so much rework an old piece (the point of the exercise) so much as just re-do it.

The one on the right was done while I was still in that "will-not-shade-at-any-cost" phase, while working through the exercises in "One Zentangle a Day." The scribbles are an indication of what the string looked like. The new one has dimension (including using the General white charcoal for highlights), a full-range of tones from light to dark, but lacks variety in form. Everything is a similar size. I need to diversify!
(BTW, I still haven't finished that book. WAAAAY too many different types of materials needed, even for me! Yet, it's a great introduction to method outside official Zentangle releases and a source book for tangles and methods).

I finally did last week's IAST. It seemed disingenuous of me to skip over an important milestone for Adele's blog just because I didn't like the string. I shy away from representative images as it shuts down  my creative juices and I just could not make this one work in its original form. So I rotated the string and made a mirror image of it. The result is a full-moon garden which evolved when I didn't worry about what it should be. The stripe represents the Milky Way, much like graphic representations of the stars in Native American petroglyphs.
So much for non-representational artforms....

Colored with Spectrum Noir professional pencils. (ANYBODY out there have the Essentials set??! Must have...And then there's the whole batch of watercolor sets they came out with! No more art supplies, ha!) And I'm very happy with my new Brother all-in-one; color scans are spot-on. I love Photoshop, but if I don't have to use it, all the better.

To my friends stateside, a very happy Fourth. And to all, have a brilliant day! c