Unruly Birthday Bird

Actually, it's the CLOUD that's unruly, not the bird:

I find it ridiculously fun to paint on the little elastic strap from the birthday cone-hats.

Unruly Hero Birds!

I was so inspired by the unbridled creativity in the Unruly Bird Drawing class, I came home and painted these Unruly Hero Birds:

They are hi-larious, if I say so myself.  Birds with parachutes??!!  Skydiving birds??!!  Why not??!!

I've been seeing "Keep Calm and Carry On" here and there and wondered about its origins.  Apparently, it was one of a series of morale-boosting posters prepared by the British government during World War II.  The story goes that it was held for last-minute, last-ditch use only if England was overrun, and was therefore never used.  It accidentally surfaced about 10 years ago and is finally getting the attention it deserves.

A big flock of Unruly Birds on the horizon!

Woohoo!  My very first painting exhibit is coming up.

In May I agreed to complete 30 paintings in 30 days. The result was a huge flock of wildly colorful and frankly silly UNRULY BIRDS.  Opening night is Friday, July 9 (6-9pm) at Avanti Art & Design (7317 Greenwood Ave.) as part of the July Greenwood/Phinney Artwalk. There will be beverages and snacks and lots of other artists' work, so please stop by.

A seriously unruly tower of unruly birds:

This ceramic statue was the inspiration for the squawking unruly birds.  Basically art imitating art imitating life...

A typical conversation amongst avian royalty:

A whole smorgasbord of unruliness:

Unruly Sitting Birds

Unruly Perched Birds

Unruly Talkative Birds

I clipped out these words from a very old book of nursery rhymes.  Some of them are REALLY dark and disturbing.  What the heck is "chop-a-nose" day?  It was SO odd I felt compelled to use it.  If the information I googled is correct, it refers to the little game where you pretend to catch a little kid's nose between your fingers.  Seems like telling a toddler you are chopping off his nose might result in some scary dreams...

Unruly Encaustic Bird and Unruly Friend

Unruly Pink and Purple Birds

Watercolors...

...that I painted while on vacation this weekend.

I tried copying this little guy from a Cavallini notebook I had with me:

If you squint and crane your neck (ha!  get it?  crane!  ha!) 45 degrees, it looks more similar.  I decided to leave out the large black mark near the top of the wing because I figured it would look like a big mistake on my copy.

This view might help the eagle-eyed (ha!  get it?  eagle-eyed!  ha!) make the comparison:

Is there no end to these Unruly Birds?

Seemingly endless Unruly Birds from my 30/30 collection:

Another Flock of Unruly Birds

Another flock of Unruly Birds from my 30/30 collection:

Still More Unruly Birds

Still more Unruly Birds from my 30/30 collection:

More Unruly Birds

Yet more Unruly Birds from my 30/30 collection:

Unruly Birds

More Unruly Birds from my 30/30 collection:

30 Unruly Birds in 30 Hectic Days

I signed up to paint 30 works in 30 days through Avanti Art & Design...a cool picture-framing shop and art gallery in North Seattle.  All of the artists received 4 x 4 canvasses last week and have to turn them back in the first week of June.  They'll be on display in June or July (with artists present for the June 11 and July 9 artwalks).  I'll be at the shop on July 9...which will be a first time experience for me!

Let me tell you...30 blank canvasses are more than a little daunting, so the first thing I did was to slather on colorful backgrounds.  I don't plan my work so much as just sort of launch myself into it and make the best of happy "accidents"...and I am very happy with the crazy birds with their unruly plumages.  

Over the next couple of weeks I'll be posting my creations.  I may go back and add to some of them; a few are calling out for captions or words.

Enjoy!

Fungus, Schmungus!

Yowza! Here's the latest assignment for the Botanical Illustration class I'm taking. We'll be drawing and watercolor painting this tonight. .

Is it just me or is there something kind of eerie about mushrooms this close up???

I'll post my attempt at recreating these bad boys in a few days. Send a search party for me if you don't hear back from me soon...and tell them to look for giant mushrooms...

Thank you, Carla!

When my friend Carla Sonheim posted this painting in her blog, I commented that I absolutely adored it. For some reason it reminded me of a scene from "Out of Africa"...a simple house surrounded by a vast savannah with low, stark trees. Or maybe it's a thatched roof hut on a quiet island beach...

And guess what...less than week later, I received a surprise package from Carla, with that very painting! And it's even more beautiful in person. When I thanked her she just said, "Well, I'm going through things before we pack up and move so I thought it'd send it to you."

I was so touched by her thoughtfulness and generosity...and all the more excited that she'll be moving to Seattle sometime this summer, close to where I live.

Yahoo for artgirl friends!!!!!!!!!

It's been way too long!!!

Oh my goodness...I knew it had been a WHILE since I blogged, but I didn't realize it had been almost a month! In my defense, I have been crazy busy remodeling the downstairs area of my house. It's a daylight basement with 2 bedrooms, full bath, laundry room and odd sort of common area.

It was also covered with old, tired berber carpeting. That carpeting looked great when first installed, but the cats have had their way with it over the years until it showed signs (both visual and olfactory) of too much clawing and "liquid immersion", shall we say.

Anyway, using my tax refund (some good financial news for a change!) I hired a handman recommended by Salvage Sisters Beth and Lisa who spent many an hour ripping out my old carpeting, taking up the tack strips, sanding the wooden stairs, removing the baseboards, replacing old light fixtures and painting areas I just couldn't get to.

I spent that same time painting the stairs leading down from the kitchen, painting woodwork (clean, crisp white), painting the stairwell and one bedroom (robin's egg blue), painting the laundry room (shiny white) and painting the common area (sage green).

Did I mention I did a bit of painting over this time? And cleaning and piling up stuff to get rid of and chasing the cats away from the paint...

One night I cleverly painted the stairs on my way down to bed thinking that they would dry overnight with only the random cat print. I did not count on having a massive asthma attack (from the new cat litter I poured out) and having to run upstairs to get my inhaler. I felt the paint squishing underfoot as I wheezed my way upstairs; when I got to my kitchen floor, I scrunched down the legs of my sweatpants to make impromptu slippers to cover my painted feet so I could walk without making huge trackmarks.

I sucked down enough albuterol to bronchodilate an elephant and then had the bright idea of putting plastic bags around my feet as I walked/sloshed backdownstairs, so that I could remove said bags when I got to downstairs. However, I quickly found that the surface tension between paint and plastic is such that the bags were sucked off of my feet after about 3 steps so I had to replicate my sweatpants-as-slippers maneuver to get to my bed. The next morning there were teeny little cat paw prints next to my size 9 imprints which was pretty amusing. Thank goodness that was just the primer; I learned to sequester the cats when I put the top coat on.

But the really, really, really big news is the new flooring I had installed. I originally toyed with the idea of painting or staining the concrete under the carpet for a funky faux look. Then I took one look at said concrete and realized it was way too bumpy and cracked and covered with discolored adhesive for that. So I looked into laminate flooring but found out my basement is "peaked" meaning that any rigid flooring would basically be "high centered" in certain spots. My options were rapidly dwindling unless I wanted to spend $$$$$ having my entire floor re-concreted which was not feasible. Then the wonderful sales person at the flooring store mentioned a linoleum product that looked a lot like wood that she thought I'd like.

When I first heard 'linoleum' I immediately had flashes of avocado shag rugs, harvest gold appliances and badly paneled basement rec rooms. But in to the store I went (covered with paint) to check it out and my to my surprise, I LOVED IT. I couldn't belive how much it resembled actual wood. And it was less expensive than the laminate, so I could afford to have my laundry room covered, too. Woohoo!

The guys who installed it were great...even though it took them WAY longer to repair the concrete that they had anticipated. As of last night, the baseboards were back on and I had touched up the paint around them and had gotten the boxes of stuff back into the correct rooms.

When I unpack my camera I will take and post some pictures. I absolutely love the new look...clean lines, soft colors, less clutter. Ahhhhhhh.

Which means that I will finally be able to get back into my studio and make things AND I will be able to get back to posting on my blog and working on the upcoming Salvage Studio Art Party!

Very odd bedfellows...

Cherries and hedgehogs...who woulda thunk it? And prompted by my friend Kim in Illinois, I found this video. Disco and hedgehogs...I NEVER woulda thunk that.

Beaded ribbon curtain