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.
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.
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.
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.
