This is what the day is good for. Just taking a nap. I had every intention of going to the store early this morning but just did not feel well enough, so waited until the caregiver came. I got everything on the list and now it is all put away. Lee will love the rotisserie chicken that I got for dinner, and I am glad that all I need to do is some simple potatoes with broccoli and hollandaise sauce.
I am not up to working in the studio today….too dreary! But the other day I tried to paint a leaf from the October Glory maple tree in the front yard. This effort took over an hour layering the colors to get it exactly like the leaf and then it started curling up on me…so I stopped. The lesson here is that I need to go faster….but I did love doing it. I am so inspired by the botanical artists in Australia and one of them, Annick, showed the most lovely detailed lichens the other day on facebook. My goal is to keep working until I get as good as that. And Lee has no problem bringing me all sorts of leaves, feathers, sticks, and wildflowers that he thinks I might be able to use.
And I have been doing the drawings a day.
Lee finally found
a blue jay feather, tattered
with small companions.
Feathers, feathers, and
more feathers, along the trail
found their way on here.
Purple wild aster
picked with a root that refused
a separation.
Feathers and a leaf –
early fall gifts from above,
now caught on the page.
(I really loved the results of that tattered feather this morning)
Yesterday we received a bumper crop of personal mail.
Some from Australia, one from Kent’s cereal box and another one that Barbara sends to Lee on occasion that are “fun facts”. It is very kind of you all to do this. Another good bit of mail came earlier this week. A woman who made our walking sticks tried her hand at the avocado ink making from my post a while back and getting out an old nib, she wrote a many paged letter using that ink! It was a delightful newsy letter about her honey crop this year and other goings on in her life. It is beautiful to see that much cursive writing on lines and pages, not to mention the envelope. So thank you to another Barbara for that.
And the other day I was working on the Sandy Writer head. The small book cases are on each side for her right and left brain thinking and draped over her head is a part of a dictionary. I pulled out some of the pages to make some curly hair for her and while gluing them on found this phrase. How perfect is that….Sounds of Silence. Silence is so necessary if you are going to be able to get into your head and meet up with whoever or whatever is in there and write about it. It was only by accident that I found this “curl” and I have no idea what context it came from in the cut pages from the dictionary. But I put it right in front. Both sides need a bit of silence.
I will post more pictures of her as I get further down the line. I think the left brain bookcase will have orderly books and the right brain one will just have a large waste bin with wads of yellow legal pad pages and some chewed on pencil nubs. I don’t imagine she will take long to finish up.
Til later.