Drawing Tuesday - birds of a feather

 Plenty of angles for attacking this topic, among them -

(1) birds  - in life and in art, plenty to draw on there. Audubon's birds - drawn life size, that's why the flamingo looks so awkward - https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/audubons-birds-of-america-fetches-10-million/

Painted onto tiles (found in the Dec16 issue of World of Interiors, which came to hand this morning as my breakfast reading)

(2) feathers - plumage - shapes, colours, variations, flight, evolution (https://scitechdaily.com/how-flight-feathers-evolved-study-of-chickens-ostriches-penguins-ducks-and-eagles/). And the feather trade, when hat fashions nearly wiped out entire species...https://americanhistory.si.edu/feather/ftfa.htm

Items made of feathers - quill pens, feather dusters, polynesian feather capes....

3) "... flock together" - murmurations (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eakKfY5aHmY&ab_channel=raisingmaggie for a video), migration, crowd behaviour... 

From Carol - These metal geese were a present from my Mother-in-law and walk down my garden path.  It used to annoy me that one was off balance and fell over all the time.  Now the ‘clunk’ as it falls on the path is part of the soundscape of my garden and I would not want to be without them. I think my Mother-in-law would have appreciated the joke.

From Sue K - a peacock feather - rendered in pastels on black.

Felt inspired to do another version of this topic using collage - fun was had. Swimming figures were turned into a striped feather. 

From Mags -My drawings in white Posca pens and watercolour pencils  are of Great Bustard feathers  collected on Porton Down in 1986  ( I was working as botanical surveyor  on  MOD Salisbury Plain Training Area  and we visited the reintroduction project ) . By coincidence I'm wearing my guinea fowl  tshirt  acquired ( along with  raku ceramic )  at Kirstenbosch botanic garden in 1998 !

From Judith - London tourists

From Ann - An interpretation of the proverb......I liked the idea of the gang..of like minded people. 

From Joyce -  Gelli plate print of a feather, it was a white feather found in my local woods.

From Gill - Birds of paradise. I felt like being transported somewhere exotic.

From Janet K - A silly feather drawing. Red wig made of dyed ostrich feather and yak hair.

From Janet B - Sunday afternoon silliness. A couple of rubber ducks from the Apex Quay hotel in Dundee. 

From me - a sideways look at colours of plumage. The shapes are all wrong, of course, and the colours are a bit off too (not enough brown, perhaps?), but I'm immersed in working out a subject for this term's woodblock print; this is a reject, but I had to get it out of my system....

The colours are derived from a visit to the aviary in Pittville Park, where this glorious creature can be seen strutting his stuff -

Better than my version is what Freya did with the puddles of watercolour remaining in the palette -

The one at top right is a dead ringer for the golden pheasant, don't you think? 

Poetry Thursday- Crows by Doug Anderson

Crows, my favourite bird (perhaps) ... and here's a lovely ironic dry-witted short poem about them, encountered via that source of Good Visual Things, instagram. (But who would expect to find poetry there??)

I'm a big fan of Carol Eckert's art - she sculpts birds and animals in cotton and wire -

(via)

(via)

The poet, Doug Anderson, is new to me.

"Doug Anderson served in the Vietnam war and his poems reflect the horrors, tragedies, and unlikely friendships of that tragic time. Upon returning home, Anderson earned his M.A. from the University of Arizona, and then settled in Northampton, where he began to write plays and poems in a workshop with Jack Gilbert. A meticulous, unerring chronicler, especially of his experiences in Vietnam, Anderson has published three volumes" (via)

Picnic in the park

An annual assembly at a commemorative bench on Ham Common - the weather was good this year, and the company as agreeable as always.

I was busy chatting and forgot to take photos! Just that distant view, and these two - footwear and nail polish -

 ... and "man's best friend" -

On the way home, jackdaws havig a good squawk on the train tracks at Richmond -

 ... and a glimpse of unrelenting construction in the cityscape at Vauxhall station -

Birdwatching

Norwich Cathedral has a pair of nesting peregrine falcons, which have been breeding successfully since 2012, and the Hawk and Owl Trust is on hand to give people a chance to see them close up, providing telescopes and information (and a live webcam).

The turrets are often used for consuming prey, but this bird was up at the top of the spire -

The photos were taken with a phone camera through the telescope, and it wasn't easy to hold both phone and scope steady, and then "click the button". But quite a thrill to see the bird up close, busy eating!

Plumage

Apologies if you've already seen these photos on instagram - I am being lazy to post them again, but on the other hand, how gorgeous can feathers be? Do click on the links to see what the entire bird looks like.

Vulturine guinea fowl

Crimson tragopan

Wild turkey

Silver pheasant

The art vs design question

A book borrowed from the library which I've been looking at over breakfast has got me thinking about the difference between the world of Design and Art. It's the work of Mark Hearld, which is a bit of both - he started as a printmaker and using collage, and has built on his success by painting on ceramics, designing tote bags for the Tate, wallpaper, etc etc. You've probably come across his work somewhere, somehow.

Mind map of sources and influences

The section called "The artist as designer" (text by Simon Martin) starts by talking about the strong graphic quality and feeling for composition and abstract pattern making in Hearld's work. Hearld says: "As well as just making pictures to go on a wall, I enjoy making and designing objects. The artists I most admire, such as John Piper and Edward Bawden, were also designers. It's about enjoying the visual quality of the objects that surround you. That's really the impetus behind everything I make. Also, there is something lovely about designing an object that people can afford to buy. They might not want to purchase a big painting but they can buy just a cushion. To design something that's functional and domestic really appeals to me because I like creating a home. I like creating a wonderful space."

Later, in regard to his first (complicated!) wallpaper design, he writes: "I had long been interested in surface pattern and textile design, but, as an artist, felt it was somebody else's world."

... which leads me to wonder how separate the Art and Design worlds are seen to be - especially by those making a living from either, or both. 

Seems to me that Fine Art is the world of big paintings at big prices with big cuts taken by dealers (who distance the artist from the owner of the work?) - a million miles away from Just a Cushion and its processes of commissioning, making, outlets, status. 

Just a few of the miniprints at Morley College

Seeing art shows - eg the miniprint exhibition at Morley - or the RA Summer Show - you encounter the work of literally hundreds of People Who Make Art, and I do wonder, why do it... is there room for more in this already overstuffed world. (Why am I bothering? is another question...)

After mulling on things like this I looked at the book some more and read "It's satisfying to get the most out of each creative idea" and maybe that's another way Art and Design differ ... how far the idea can be stretched, and the recognition that at some point it's become a different idea - or that it's run out, and you have to switch to something different. I have only a vague feeling about this ... which so far boils down to: Design = finish a set project, whereas Art= see where a visual idea leads - ? 

And then there are the Two Big Questions about making Art: 1. who is your audience. 2. what is your intent. 

What are the Two Big Questions in design? Maybe ... 1. who will pay for it. 2. how can it be used.

Oof, it makes the brain hurt. Let's relax and look at a little more of Mark Hearld's work (or have a look at this short film - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byG6w2qaWnw) -

mm, those corrugated buildings!

 This page spread put me in mind of a "folk art object" seen recently in a local charity shop.

I regret not buying it, but did take a photo; might have to make my own, maybe even out of painted metal, some day -

Poetry Thursday - Short Ode to the Cuckoo by W.H.Auden

Not a pretty sight, perhaps - but cleverly adapted

Short Ode to the Cuckoo

No one now imagines you answer idle questions
— How long shall I live?  How long remain single?
Will butter be cheaper? — nor does your shout make
husbands uneasy.

Compared with arias by the great performers
such as the merle, your two-note act is kid-stuff:
our most hardened crooks are sincerely shocked by
your nesting habits.

Science, Aesthetics, Ethics, may huff and puff but they
cannot extinguish your magic:  you marvel
the commuter as you wondered the savage.
Hence, in my diary,

where I normally enter nothing but social
engagements and, lately, the death of friends, I
scribble year after year when I first hear you,
of a holy moment.

- W.H. Auden (via)

Discovered on Natural Histories (Radio 4), a programme of observation and information and sometimes poetic delights. Hear the cuckoo programme here.

The cuckoo is "one of nature's most fascinating cheats" (hear about it here, another BBC programme, from 2011). It can lay its egg in 10 seconds (discovered  by Edgar Chance in the 1920s), and when the egg hatches, the chick will toss the other eggs out of the nest. The female lays 8 or so eggs as season, in separate nests - the record is 25.

They fly to equatorial Africa every year (each chick all by itself!), leaving in summer and returning in spring; there's a traditional verse about it -

The cuckoo comes in April
he sings his song in May

in June he changes the tune
and in July flies away.

Only the male makes the two-note sound. The female is busy removing an egg before she lays hers ... but the host doesn't notice. It's thought that she does this so the host's incubation limit isn't exceeded.

I was thrilled to hear a cuckoo "in the wild" earlier this year on a walk in the Lee Valley, I'm amazed (having listened to the two BBC programmes) to find out what the bird gets up to, and how scientists found all this out.

Art I Like - Breon O'Casey

Looking for a birthday card in my collection, I found this -

Summer Garden by Breon O'Casey, 1996

Simple and satisfying, as is so much of Breon O'Casey's work. And that lovely orange colour really adds the heat of summer. The perfect card, I thought, for someone born in the summer, with a garden in the making. 

And yet, I can hardly bear to give it away... So let's look at some other works by this artist.

Most popular - what google images puts at the top of the page

O'Casey turned his back on fashion, says this blogger. "Throughout the 60s and early 70s he was part of the complicated jigsaw puzzle picture that was the St Ives school, but then he cut himself off, getting out in 1975 just as the dealers and art historians were beginning on the forensic process of cataloging, pricing and documenting the scene there."

O'Casey's studio; more views here

Living midway between Penzance and St Ives, " his painting became more assured with certain motifs recurring – the single form on a divided ground and a distinctive double ended anvil shape."

I'm particularly fond of his birds, both painted and sculpted, of which his gallery says:
"Breon’s archetypal birds owe an amused and open debt to the birds in Braque’s paintings. Birds in flight are ideal companions in the spatial explorations that have preoccupied them both. Breon has learnt from Braque’s tactile space – the way in which the space around an object becomes as palpable as the object itself. The dark backgrounds of many of Breon’s new paintings contribute intense luminosity and depth. Their surfaces are sensuous. Breon’s colours have a special richness and harmony, with many different browns, ochres, rusts, reds and greys in particular. Bright accents accompany the more muted and subtle earth colours – including some surprising pinks."

Winged bird, bronze, 18x23 cm (via)

(via)

He used bird motifs in jewellery as well:

(via)

O'Casey was born in 1928, the son of playwright Sean O'Casey. He died in 2011; a website of his work is at breon-ocasey.co.uk