Can you say, Overpopulation?

Got another big album of deer up on Photobucket. These were mostly taken at two particular encounters that I can remember. The first one was highly amusing--I was driving down the lane that feeds into our street, and there was the small group of does that we often see around here, sort of hiding around these pine trees that line the sidewalk, though the pines are spaced, and don't actually cover that much. This one little doe had settled under the tree, just 8-10 feet from the sidewalk. As I watched from my car on the opposite side of the road, this young couple on a walk came right down the sidewalk and walked no more than two yards from this little doe without noticing her. She didn't even spook. They noticed me, though, and I was laughing my head off in my car.

Small Changes...

I did a little bit of revising based on what you said in the email, Nick, and I think these newer versions are a little improved. The perspective and contrast thing with the fox I think is better, and there's some more content in the cougar composition that helps distract from the head-framing a little bit. And I changed the color a bit as well.

Doe, a Deer

I have a few sets of photos from the last couple weeks, shot at random places at random times of day. It's mostly been the deer that have triggered me to take the camera out, so there's lots of shots of them. They like to bed down in the woods around my house when they feel there's snow on the way, so they're around here a lot more than they were earlier in the season. There's a whole other gallery of deer shots that I have yet to upload, so those will be up by the end of the week as well as some blizzard shots.

I got another batch of songbird photos as well. Some more really pretty cardinal shots and a nuthatch and chickadee. But mostly cardinals. They make me smile no matter where I see them. :) I must do a painting with them. I have a few design ideas in the works, but nothing worth posting right now, but probably by the end of the week.

Bethvision; now in color!

Well, it's been an intense couple of weeks at home, but I think things are getting better now. We're getting into a routine at least, which will go a long way toward allowing me to think more about work. I've been busy, but at least not totally idle.

This weekend I got to messing around with some of the references I took, and I ended up doing a bunch of digital color studies of ideas for paintings. Some are more involved than others (see fox and cougar), but at least they've been getting me to think more about painting.....you know, with color and stuff. They might look a little photo-manipulation-y at this point, but for the most part I could start painting off of them. I used some silly photoshop filters on the ones I'm posting here because they look better that way than with all my cross-hatchy digital strokes.

These first two I'm most optimistic about. I know they might seem a little cliche, but I like that sometimes. The cougar I'm thinking of doing really quite large, maybe 36" wide or something like that. It was done from this image I took out in Byron, and the references of the young cougar out at Oxbow. I think the fox would be nice done larger as well. I like the color in that one--I originally did the water in the same blueish palette the others are in, but when I was messing with the color filters in photoshop I found I liked it a whole lot better in green. :)

I was messing around with the duck photos from the last post and came up with this one. I'm not sure I like it well enough to paint it right now, but I like the idea of ducks or geese sitting on ice. I have some shots of frozen reeds that are sort of neat.

These last two were done first, and only in about 15 to 20 minutes each. Not sure I like either, but they helped me at least get some ideas down to start with. I've only seen wild snowy owls three times in my life, but they're always so cool to see. I remember only seeing the markings moving over the snow, the rest of the feathers blended right in. The last was an early idea for a geese in mist painting. Still needs work.

Frozen Feathers

We seem to be in the midst of a particularly nasty cold snap. The high temperature hasn't hit positive numbers for nearly a week now. Today, for instance, the high was almost -5 degrees with a wind chill of -30. The national weather service is issuing cold warnings for people to watch out for hypothermia, and many of the local schools are closed on account of the cold. In spite of the ungodly temperatures, the days have been very clear and sunny, and except for this weekend (when there were advisements not to leave your house) I've been able to take some pictures out and about that I'm quite happy with.

Last Friday was the last day the temps were livable, with the daytime average right around 0, so in between running Mike I stopped by that same Silver lake again, to find it even thicker with steam than I've seen it yet. While shooting pics of the geese in the steam again (some nice color and atmosphere in those) I started to feel bad for the little mallards who are just totally dominated and out-competed by the geese, so I ventured out of my car to feed them some corn and kick the geese away. It was cold, but I was glad I went out because the cold and the hunger (and the fact that people drive by all the time just to throw bread and such for the waterfowl) no doubt made the ducks and geese very bold, and I was feeding them mostly right out of my hand--the geese even pecked and pulled at my hair and coat. It was fun. :) In any case, I think I got some rather extraordinary shots of the ducks this time that I'm quite optimistic about.

Something of note is that when I picked Mike up at school earlier last week, I noticed a large group of ROBINS (wtf?!) hanging around the area. No doubt they were freezing their butts off. Usually they move a little south, but not this year I guess. The weekend after was shot (partly due to Mike's science fair project needing to be finished, and partly due to cleaning the house) *mostly* due to the cold. The temps over the weekend never rose above -15, and the wind chill was pure insanity. I remember winters where it was this cold for a month at a time. I think I'm actually getting used to it now, though, because I don't feel any colder in these temperatures than I did when it was 15--either that or I'm living much of my waking time in a mild state of hypothermia.

Today, however, we were installing a radon mitigation system into the basement, which apparently involves drilling a hole through a cinderblock wall and another in the cement floor of the tuck-under garage. I woke up to loud drilling at 7am, and decided (after an hour of laying unhappily awake) to retreat to Gramma's house for the duration. That actually worked out pretty well, because the harsh cold and the snow had all the local birds out and desperate for the feed we put out for them. I got some great shots of cardinals, chickadees, and a couple woodpeckers, but what made me really happy was that there were about 5 bluejays that came and went at various times of the day, and I filled an entire album with just bluejay shots.

I'm continuing to try to wade through the work I need to be doing, but efficiency around here is not so good lately. So I feel like heel, but I don't have much art progress to show for the last week. Hopefully now that Mike's big project is done, I'll have a little more time to myself.

Bluejay Linework

So I've been working up several versions of the Bluejay idea, and I think this sketch might be pretty close to the final linework. Actually, yes, it is the final linework. Any other changes I want to make I'll just do in paint. I know it's really similar to the first version I posted, but I like it. Since I got the shots of the corn in the snow yesterday, I think that those will serve as my primary references and the color palette. I'm anxious to get to into a painting, and I like the muted blue and yellow look. I'll probably punch up the saturation in photoshop to paint from, because it will inevitably look more muted in the painting. (Because that's how I work)

Snow and Waterfowl

It's been a stressful week or so, and it's still been slow to make great progress on things. I spend a lot of time driving Mike around, though, and I keep seeing things that I would like to paint. I really think that beautiful things happen around here all the time, and no one seems to stop and notice. For instance, today we had several snow squalls come through during the day, and it was that nice heavy, fluffy stuff that's all made up of real snowflakes. The kind that all look different? It was beautiful. People hate it. While I was out I happened across a cornfield that was just full of geese, but it was snowing to a point that you just saw all the silhouettes of them flying through it. I took a lot of shots there, but mostly after the really heavy snowfall--but that's how I remember it best, with the white-out conditions, and the geese circling. I think that might be an idea for my next painting plan, something with geese flying over a snowy cornfield. I probably shouldn't do too much corn, though, seeing as the bluejay piece I'm working on is already in a snowy cornfield (for which I got a ton of perfect references today, by the way). This album is sort of a composite of shots I've taken over the last week (there were more, but they were boring), plus a few pictures of my chinchillas.....because they're just so damn cute.

Something of note today is that while I was sitting outside right around dusk waiting for Mike to finish his trumpet lesson, and all the sudden a dozen little sparrows burst out of this evergreen tree to my right, closely followed by a little saw-whet owl (I think, could have been a screech owl). It was AWESOME, but I couldn't get my camera (which I do carry everywhere with me just in case) out in time. I jumped out of my car and tried to follow them, but I lost track of them, and the lady in a car behind me asked if I was okay. When I told her what happened, she just gave me a strange look.

A couple nights ago we had the local white tails run through the backyard. I often see them at dusk, but these guys showed up in mid-afternoon, so I got a few shots of them as they passed. I'm thinking of doing some various ideas for the white tails with the material I have so far. I'm a little sad, though, that I seem to have missed shooting the bucks in full-antlers. I think most of them have dropped by now. I found an old dropped antler while out earlier this week, but it seemed like the squirrels had been at it for quite a while, so I left it. Sometimes I find nice, fresh drops. I like to collect antlers and stuff like that. :)

Painting Designs

Well I've been trying out some different types of compositions for the bird paintings I'd like to start. I think this blue jay design is pretty close to what I was going for, so I'll be proceeding with that first--I'll post the final linework when I put it on the canvas--of course that work will be much more sensitively drawn. I was thinking 18x24 for them, or at least that's the size of one of the canvases I prepared. I'm still not sure about how I want the background to be, though. I was hoping to make it not too complicated, possibly in an atmospheric focus with snow coming down.

I've also been thinking about a chickadee piece featuring some of the prairie plants I've been collecting. I threw together a rough idea for that one--something done very close-in and focused on the plants and birds. Also with snow, I hope, although the color palette I have in mind for this one is considerably more muted than with the jays. I have a 12x16 canvas that I think would be well suited for this one.

Oh for COLD.

Well, here's a quick update that should have happened on January 17th. I went out on the 16th to shoot references of my target locations and subjects out in the new snow, and although it was clear and bright, it was still ungodly cold. I went back out to the unharvested cornfield I've been watching for the bluejay painting to get references of how snow sits on vertical stalks. It seems to only sit in the crevices of leaves and in the bends of stalks--and it just slides off of everywhere else. I also drove out to Oxbow to re-visit those sandstone ledges and the frozen crick, although as I found the river was completely frozen over. Due to the cold, the ice flow was huge and solid, and somewhat more indistinct than it had been at the milder temperatures. I guess I'll have to sort of wing it as far as the ice in the bobcat painting I'm trying to put together goes, but now I know I have enough material to work from.

I found the cold too harsh to go out into the animal enclosures at Oxbow, so I went back into town and ended up shooting the geese out at silver lake and the associated river systems again. The mist was more intense than it had been the day before, so I found that I had a lot of very atmospheric shots with the bright light and steam--in all some very cool stuff. I'd like to do something with these references, especially since the geese are such a unique part of my experience here. I find the goldish light in these shots very appealing as well.

SNOW!!!

IT SNOWED! Finally, after so much time thinking it just wasn't going to, we got a real Minnesota blizzard. I was so glad. Anyway, it started snowing Sunday afternoon and pretty much went straight through to Monday afternoon, leaving behind a nice 7 inches. It was heavy to shovel. Again, me being tied up at home, I don't have as many shots as I had wanted, but tomorrow Mike's in school so I can go out and re-shoot the references that I want. I figure that I had intended to do these projects with snow in them in the first place, and since it's finally here it's still not too late to do just that.

So I did go out briefly today (between running errands) to Silver Lake, which is a sort of famous local spot. The lake is man-made, but heated by the local coal-power electricity plant (which uses the water to cool boilers), so the water doesn't completely freeze during the winter no matter the temperature. It's like a sauna for the geese, and when the temp drops below 15 or so (like today) the water steams. The lake has the largest year-round population of Canada Geese in the lower 48, and the population triples during winter as migrating flocks decide to stay. Today the high temp was around 13 degrees with a stiff wind--meaning the wind chill was like -10 degrees, which as I found out is DAMN COLD. I tried to walk the paths around the lake, but when my extremities went numb after about 2 minutes, I'm sorry to say that I simply chickened out on that. I did manage to get some very nice shots right out of the car and on the shore of the lake, though, so there's plenty to give an idea of the area. I'm thinking of ways to do a very atmospheric geese painting, possibly on the water in thick fog. Lots of light blues.

So that's all for now folks, but I am hoping to start in on at least the bluejay painting, and the bobcat by the weekend. I bought canvases for each and prepped them this weekend (three coats of gesso+sanding), so I'm more or less ready.