Spring, Springing

Portland trees are erupting with lovely blossoms all over town. I decided to challenge myself to an art experiment this weekend: capturing the beautiful pink cherry blossoms in the neighbor's yard using a unusual art tool...being the 16-month-old kiddo.

Step one: Admire the awesome flowers. (Wow, huh?)

Step two: Assemble non-toxic art supplies in the appropriate color scheme (in this case, a gray washable non-toxic marker, a custom mix of red and white tempera paint, a nice soft paintbrush, and a stack of cream-colored cards.)

Step three: Strategically hand art supplies to kiddo during a gap in the incessant going-down-the-slide practice and cross fingers...

Step four: Burst buttons with pride at how nicely that all turned out. Brag on internet, mail originals to grandparents.

Yeah, OK, it's not really that much different than the folks who dip grubs in paint and them them crawl all over the paper...But it's a fun exercise in selecting materials and introducing chaos! (Plus, it's so exciting to watch this grub learn how to re-load a brush with paint.)

Happy spring, y'all.

Like Oaks for Turkeys

Mount Pisgah Arboretum is gearing up for their famous Mushroom Festival at the end of October, and they've invited me to do the festival poster and tee-shirts again this year. The theme: turkey-tail mushrooms with a flock of turkeys wandering through the habitat.

Now, turkey-tail mushrooms like to grow on stumps and dead branches of oak trees. Since I no longer live near the gorgeous oak savannah habitats at Mount Pisgah, I headed up to the Hoyt Arboretum one gray and drizzly morning to wander through their fine collection of oak trees, in seek of inspiring oak compositions. Here's what I drew.

 More Mushroom Festival poster adventures to come!

4-T Trail Hike

Way back at the beginning of August, my friend Gretchin threw a birthday party which involved inviting all of her friends to go for a hike! The 4-T Trail uses a combination of public transportation and hiking paths to make a loop from downtown Portland up through the west hills and then back via the south waterfront. * A principios de agosto, mi amiga Gretchin organizó una excursión por el sendero 4-T. Pasamos por el centro de la ciudad hasta la cima de las colinas del oeste, usando una combinación de transporte público y senderos rústicos en el bosque. 

Most of my time was spent walking and chatting with the wonderful people at the party, but I did get in a few sketches at the main rest stops. * Pasé la mayoría de mi tiempo caminando y charlando con la gente en la fiesta, pero también dibujé en algunos lugares donde nos paramos para descansar. 

When we returned home after the hike, I thought I was headed straight for a nap. But--surprise!--there was a block party going on that had a live band in the street. We ended up hanging out with more nice people and enjoying the music to finish off the day. * Al regresar a la casa, yo intentaba descansar. Pero--¡que sorpresa!--había una fiesta en nuestro vecindario, incluso una banda tocando en vivo en la calle. Pasemos un rato charlando y escuchando la música antes de terminar el día.

Alton Baker Park

Last weekend I stopped by to visit the annual picnic of the Philippine American Association in Eugene, Oregon. The picnic was in lovely Alton Baker Park, with a stunning view of the river. Since I was running early, I paused to sketch the river flowing behind the fountain at EWEB Plaza.

I was initially quite focused on getting the angles of all those jets of water without drawing anything out in pencil first. But when I reached the end of the sketch, I realized I had forgotten to add the segment of the watery cascade where each of the parabolas meets in the middle and falls back down to earth. Whoops! It should probably have looked something like this instead:

Ah well. I hiked across the pedestrian bridge and plugged myself into the picnic, and had a lovely time sketching the pig roasting on the spit! Tricky timing challenge to throw down more paint every time the pig rotated to this angle, but it was a fun challenge.

I had some lovely conversations about art and art education with folks at the picnic while I sketched. One fellow, who had been a professor of art before retirement, introduced me to a very insightful quote from James Johnson Sweeney:

"Creativity, in both science and art, is the ability to find new relationships between things that hadn't previously existed. It's the relationships, not the things, that are interesting." 

Mobile Cannery, Tall Lungwort

Spent last weekend in lovely Eugene, Oregon. We stopped by the Center for Appropriate Transport on Saturday to check out their 20th Anniversary Party; had a great time watching folks test-ride ingenious bikes.

Sunday was the Wildflower Festival out at Mount Pisgah Arboretum. As usual, there were so many old friends to catch up with that I didn't end up having a lot of time to sketch the amazing display of flowers; but I did jot down a few doodles of some especially pretty and interesting specimens. 

Had a great chat with a friend who is studying environmental education about how sketching is such a good way to slow down and be present in the moment, and to really spend time observing--even if the final drawing is not especially great, the act of having been there LOOKING is rewarding. She called this "finding a sit-spot," and I like that concept quite a bit! 

Wildflower Festival Update

When I last updated, it was with watercolor in progress on the first layers of watercolor being laid down for the Wildflower Festival poster. Here's how that turned out:

I then returned to the digital version that we're using for the t-shirt and modified those colors to match the watercolor palette more closely.

An exciting addition to the regular festivities this year is that the Karin Clarke Gallery in Eugene, Oregon is hosting an art show devoted to native wildflower paintings, as a way to get even more Wildflower Month activities happening this May. Yesterday I got to work on framing my early sketches and the final painting for this exhibit.

Baby blue-eyes and dance flies as far as the eye can see! If you're in the Eugene area, do stop by the art show--grand opening will be Fri, May 3, 5:30pm – 7:30pm.

Paint to Pixels to Paint

A quick recap: The art for this year's Wildflower Festival poster started off as ideas that I sketched in watercolor, then was adapted to digital art that will work well on the t-shirt for the event. * Una breve recapitulación: El arte para el cartel del Wildflower Festival empezó como ideas explorada en acuarelas, y entonces fue adaptado a arte digital para el camiseta del evento.

Now, I'm doing the final art for the poster in watercolors. * Ahora, estoy pintando el arte final para el cartel, otra vez usando acuarelas.

Oh my goodness. After staring at pixels on the screen for half the weekend, I am really delighted by using real paint this afternoon. It flows! The pigment drifts around in its tiny puddle of water in the most delightful way! Even just "plain green" has a whole universe of color hidden inside of every wash. * Hijole. Me he enfocado en píxeles por la mitad del fin de semana, y ahora usar pintura verdadera es como una revelación. ¡Fluye! Los pigmentos flotan por ahí y por allá en sus charcos dimunitos de agua, y me encanta verlo. Hay un universo de color escondido en cada lavado de un verde simple. 

More updates as the paint dries! * Mas noticias cuando la pintura se seca!

T-Shirt Ideas

The poster design for the Wildflower Festival always gets converted into a t-shirt design as well. I often find that starting with a simplified set of colors that would translate well to screen printing helps me make some of the big decisions about tone and contrast, which then inform the more elaborate art for the poster. Here is a record of the day's experiments! * El diseño para el cartel del Wildflower Festival siempre se convierte en un diseño para camisetas, también. Para mí, trabajar con colored limitados que se traducen bién a serigrafía es útil para hacer los decisiones fundamentales sobre el tono y el contraste, lo que guía el arte mas detallado del cartel final. ¡Aquí hay mi documentación de los experimentos de hoy!

Wildflower Studies

The Wildflower Festival at Mount Pisgah Arboretum in Eugene, Oregon is coming up this spring. I've been invited to do the poster again!

The featured plant is a tiny white flower called  Nemophila menziesii var. atomaria. I've been playing with different possible approaches to the composition-first with digital scribbles, then working out those ideas more in watercolor.

Not sure which view wins yet...I think it will partly depend on how it all interacts with the pollinator! More sketches to come.

300 Years of Mark Catesby

My recent trip to Washington DC was triggered by an interesting day of free lectures. Mark Catesby was a scientist and an artist who published one of the first books about plants and animals of North America, Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, starting in 1729. As it turns out, he was heavily influenced by another favorite illustrator of mine, Maria Sybilla Merian--no wonder I like his work so much.

I met up with my wonderful friend Ikumi Kayama for the day of lectures at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. The topics included techniques for drawing, printing, bookbinding, and self-publishing in the 18th century, as well as the science behind the plants and animals depicted in Catesby's amazing two-volume work.

It was eye-opening to learn that after 4 years of gathering research, the book itself took 20 years for Catesby to produce. He didn't have funds to hire a professional engraver, so he engraved all the plates and hand-painted them each afterwards.

We were entertained by some of the strange myths that other science books of the time were publishing about wildlife in North America: the idea that turtles can hunt by slamming shut their carapaces on neck of a snake to chop its head off; or the idea that rattlesnakes can hypnotize a squirrel and make it run down a tree right into the snake's mouth, for example.

We were thrilled to look at an actual copy of one of the original books after the lectures wrapped up. A very exciting day for me, all told!

Pinus contorta

The wonderful folks at the Hoyt Arboretum looked up the location of their Pinus contorta specimens for me today. Nice to have the library of trees available in this town! * Que conveniente tener una bibliteca de arboles en nuestra cuidad! Los empleados del Hoyt Arboretum me dirigieron a las especiminas de Pinus contorta hoy.

Cape Lookout

Yesterday I grabbed 110 colored pencils; ten pounds worth of field guides to plants and birds and mushrooms; a sunhat and a sweatshirt; and I went out to the Oregon coast. Having soaked up some of those impressionist paintings at the art museum the day before, I was all set to sketch the landscape at Cape Lookout. * Ayer agarré 110 lapices de color; diez libras de libros de identificación para plantas, hongos, y aves; un sombrero para el sol; y un suéter para el frio, también; y viajé a la costa de Oregon. Haber admirado las pinturas impresionistas en el museo de arte el día antes me ayudó mucho en hacer bosquejos del paisaje en Cape Lookout.

The contrast between those stiff trees and the vague and delicate light of the ocean and the fog was very dramatic. * El contraste entre los arboles rígidos y la luz tenue y vago del océano y la neblina era muy dramático.

As night crept in, the sunset took me off guard: a big pink ball was floating in the middle of the gray fog, like a giant balloon that some child had let go. Incredible. * Al atardecer, la puesta del sol me sorprendió mucho—era una bola rosa en media de la neblina gris, como si un nino había perdido su globo rojo. Increíble.  

Elfin Forest in Morro Bay

While visiting Grandma in San Luis Obispo, I biked out to the "Elfin Forest" to go sketching one bright sunny morning. These oaks, while also very old, are much more compact and slow-slung than the trees at the Los Osos Oak preserve I had sketched the day before.

I wanted to hop off the boardwalk and crawl into the snug, shady spaces underneath these lovely craggy trees and spend the day there, listening to the bumblebees and staring at the patterns of the branches...alas that my time in town was so short! But I did get to admire the lovely fractal patterns of the estuary before I biked back into town.

Los Osos Oaks

While visiting my grandmother earlier this month, I took a bike ride to the Los Osos Oaks State Natural Reserve. I'm already a fan of oak trees, but this particular spot simply knocked my socks off--gorgeous grizzled coast live oaks that are estimated to be around 800 years old, and have a ton of character and expression in their branches.

There were so many amazing shapes to explore that I quickly realized it would be good to fill my sketchbook with little thumbnail sketches, to catch as many snippets as possible while I wandered around. In the margins around each mini-sketch, I've got notes on wildlife--lizard behavior, transcriptions of unfamiliar birdsong, etc. (Click on the image to get a zoomed-in version.)

Navigating by the Roses

Ladd's Addition is a delightful neighborhood in Portland that has a complicated arrangement of streets and alley-ways. A colleague recently described the neighborhood as a "cluster-f**k," which seems a bit harsh. Sure, there are a lot of one-way streets and it's tricky to drive around in your car, but that means that it's a low-traffic neighborhood that is really safe for walking your dog or letting your kids bike to school.  I like it.

I will admit that, even as a slow-moving pedestrian with all the time in the world, I still do get disoriented in the neighborhood. One of the joyful things about summer, however, is that the four diamond-shaped rose gardens on the cardinal axis that radiates out from the central circle are in full and glorious bloom. If I find myself disoriented, I just need to look for a brilliant swath of pink petals, and it won't be long until I've figured out what corner of the neighborhood I've wandered into!

More Zoo Watercolors

Last weekend at the zoo, I decided to play with watercolors. How splashy and free-form could I go? (Ah, the salmonberries are blooming, hooray for spring...)

And how dark and contrasty could I go? (Hello, surly cattle egret! What fine plumage you have.)

Ultimately, I ended up in the middle somewhere, watching the mature elephants proudly swish their tails while the whippersnapper elephant sprayed water from his trunk and playfully head-butted his elders.

I had a good time painting that day. (See also the hippo and Mount Hood.)