Holiday Art Part One: Plants = Love

It's great fun painting with the family during the winter holidays. Here's mine for the gardeners....

Plants = Love by MRobb, 2015

It's the Year of the Horse!

In Chinese astrology, the Year of the Horse can be very unpredictable and action-oriented. The motto of the Horse is, "I act!" It can be a tricky year, full of ups and downs. But I noticed a few months ago I was becoming interested in depicting horses, and by very cool coincidence, Chef Riccardo sent me some wonderful photos he took in Italy of...horses!

Photo by Riccardo Senettin, 2013

Photo by Riccardo Senettin, 2013

The spacious, almost surreal quality of the photos got me painting (no surprises there). So far, I'm enjoying the results, though neither painting is finished yet. My acrylics generally take several months, as I paint in very thin layers, about 20-30 per painting, and collage various bits in as I go.

"Cavalli 1: In Process", MR, 2014

This one's about halfway done, with the basic areas blocked in.

And here's a peek at a corner of my studio, with the second horse painting, "Cavalli 2", on the easel. I'll post photos when they are finished. Anyone else inspired by horses this year? Anyone dreading or excited by the wild ride that is the Year of the Horse?

Freaky Friday the 13th: A Miscellany

I'm working on  parts III and IV of Tillandsia care, and I've got a great new monthly post coming on Sunday; it will be a tasty surprise! But for Freaky Friday the 13th, I've got a random collection of images I haven't been able to fit into the blog yet, so... it's Irrelevant Picture Time!

My last batch of ceramics features a new technique I made up. I carve a linoblock (this one is a 5x7 of my sunflower garden from this summer), imprint it onto wet stoneware clay, fire, and glaze. I think it worked rather well, and I'll keep trying new designs like this. I love carving linoblocks, but don't have much use for plain prints on paper. This gives the blocks new life.

I've got a number of my paintings on exhibit at our county library for a few months. This means there's more space in my studio to paint! Bwahaha....

I may have posted this lovely cottontail before, but I don't care, I love bunnies. For all you fellow rabbit fans, here's a portrait of a local English Angora, looking exceptionally fluffy....

Snuggle angora rabbits, don't wear them!

As you may notice, these sweet creatures have little to do with gardening, except for maybe the fact that bunny poop makes a wonderful soil builder. Not that Tillandsias would care about that. Let's see if I can find one more completely irrelevant image for the weekend....

Our sea-turtle nesting season went reasonably well this year, despite a lot of shore erosion that left little space for the nests. Here's the empty shell from one of the last hatchlings to leave for the sea...good luck, little guy!

Well, that's enough miscellany for now. I'm off to photograph some Lithops and Tillies....

Pensive Tuesday: How Do We Depict Them?

Today I'm musing about how we depict the flora and fauna that we love. Every fellow blogger reading this is making aesthetic and practical choices about how to illustrate their blog. I've seen some stunningly beautiful work out there, and I try to leave comments about it on those blogs when I see something truly marvelous.

Since most bloggers reading this are plant enthusiasts, I'll be talking (mostly) about depicting plants. And for those who don't blog but love gardening, or animals, or both, you probably photograph or draw or paint your gardens, pets, and so on. So we're pretty much all in this illustration thing together.

Dr. Nel fell on the horns of a dilemma when he wrote his book, "Lithops". He wanted to show how the Lithops looked in situ, in a formal, scientific way. But he also wanted to show how amazing they looked, how they looked to his heart, oh heck- let's- get -corny and say, in a more spiritual, all-encompassing sense. So he used both B&W photos, and watercolor paintings. Here's an example from page 154:

The watercolors in this book are just gorgeous. But the photos help me understand exactly how big each species of Lithops gets (see the ruler??) and what they look like precisely in their habitat. John James Audubon, my favorite naturalist/artist, worked in the years before photography, and he had a similar dilemma. His renderings are rich in scientific detail, yet truly from the heart. Here are a couple of squirrels:

J. J. does it all in one package, huh? Amazing!

So this week, I have a homework assignment for everyone who wants one (and who doesn't want homework??). Find a favorite plant in your collection, and try a scientifically accurate photo or photos. One that will help anyone identify a member of the same species, or in situ. Then choose any medium to do a "portrait from the heart" of that plant. Paint, collage, sculpt, draw, go digital. Whatever you like. If you have a blog, I hope you'll post the results and let us see them. But if you want to keep it to yourself and significant others, no problem.  It should be a fun exercise that illuminates our choices in how we depict the world we live in, and those living things we love! I'm going to try it, too, and I'll post the results next Tuesday.