Pencil Shavings

365 Days of Art - Day 35 (the remix!)

Well - I am back.  A little tentative, a little self-conscious, and still nursing the wounds that got me in this mess.

But, I am back in the saddle (so to speak) for the 365 Day Challenge, and even though my arm is still hurting me, my hand is working and so am I.

After taking a highly unscientific poll of my community and my online artists colony, I am not restarting the days, just picking up from where I was so rudely interrupted.

It's zoo camp week for my kids so I stay at the zoo in the mornings (before the rush of parents exasperated with their kids and looking for diversion) when the grass is still dewy and the animals are fresh and curious about what the day will bring.

I've been taking hundreds of photos too, so there will be more "zoo" in the future on these pages.

There are some real challenges about sketching the wildlife, in the "wild".  It's not at all like working from a photo, because these guys are busy and moving around in the mornings.

The elephants were so busy playing with the new toys the keeper had put out for them, and snacking on some treats that had been left for them, that I could only do gesture sketches of them as they wandered.

I have learned (or rather re-learned) a lesson from this.  Keep your eyes on your subject.  Really look at them, or it, for a long time before you even put that first mark down on paper.  Especially with live animals.  Sometimes you will never get the right "pose" but you can capture their essence if you are a good observer.

I'm working at being a good observer.  Which my injury has actually forced me to do.  Because I cannot draw and redraw for as long as I please.  I definitely have limits to how long I can work on one drawing before I need to move and stretch.  So observing carefully helps me not waste time on the paper going back and going over.

In My Next Life....

My five year old daughter has already decided that she will come back for another few turns around the planet in “her next life”. 

“I have decided that I want to come back as a Mallard in my next life.” she stated as we walked home from the store the other day.  We had passed a pair of mallards who were swimming in the pond not far from our house.  “I thought I might come back as a rose, but I think a Mallard would be better.”

Then she quacked and played SuperMallard for the rest of the morning.

This afternoon instead of getting my painting of the week ready for listing (sorry 'bout that) the family went to the Bird Sanctuary to look at more ducks, this time all of us were armed with cameras.  The weather was clear, but cold.  We had a really great time wandering around and looking at the old and new nests.  We even saw a porcupine.  The girls had lots of questions about birds and animal tracks and I felt very fortunate that I had the answers for them.  I am a lucky person that I have had the outdoor experience that I have.  I hope that I can pass that along to them before the wilderness is gone.

They had questions for the docent when we got back to the “bird house” and then we bundled up and headed back to the car.

Next we were off to the art supply store for some canvases for a new commission I have.  They also had Purple Lake acrylic ink – which might be just the ticket to get the lilacs painted onto a bamboo tile pendant I've had a request for.  (the blue and red I have now make an aubergine colour that I'm not happy with, so instead of mixing for colour I'll be mixing for tone, which is easier!).

I will get the Painting Of The Week ready and photograph it soon.  This week is going to be insane with a birthday celebration plus school plays for both the girls on different nights.  But I will get through it as long as I don't lose my to do list.

Don't forget to have a great week, no matter what live throws at you.  We have so many choices in our lives.  Choose to be joyful.

Sun Worshipping

After one of the nastiest winters I can remember in a long time, the sun has come out and is shining for us.  The snow is slowly receding from the yard and the kids are starting to draw hop-scotch grids on the sidewalk again.

Every spring I wait for the sign.  The moment that says to me that winter is giving up on us, and summer is waiting to come for it's all too brief visit.  It's the day that it is finally warm enough to hang my laundry out on the line to dry.

So in the very chilly morning my daughter and I went out and put the first load on the line.  I can't even tell you how wonderful it was to see the clothes hanging in the sunlight.

I know most people don't get that excited about laundry, but there is something about seeing fresh laundry on the line that makes me so happy.  Not only do I think that a laundry line can be quite beautiful, I also love the shrieks of delight as my kids chase each other under the towels and sheets and play “laundry tag”, it's  good for our power bill, and the best part it's good for the environment.

I think that someday soon I'm going to attempt a laundry line painting.  The sun shining through the clothes and all that riot of colour up on the line. 

Yeah... I think that is going on my list.

The Green Painter

It’s kind of surprising to think that so many artists who take their inspiration from nature are blindly polluting our world.

I suspect that there is a certain amount of pollution that we tolerate to live the lives we do, and some is inevitable.  But I do a lot to try and reduce my impact on the planet (and my families impact too) and that doesn’t stop when I sit down in front of my easel.

Firstly I always try to use paper that has less impact than some others.  I use recycled paper when it’s appropriate to do that, I also use windpower produced papers and papers that can be recycled.    I use a lot of cotton paper, and I’m still researching the benefits of that, although for now it is the best choice for my watercolour art.

I use watercolour paints which is generally not bad for the planet, in that there is little waste, and even though I am a “wet” painter I don’t actually use that much water and try to reuse my water as much as possible while I’m painting. 

For my acrylic work I never wash my palette after a painting session... pouring all that paint into the water system is something that doesn’t sit well with me.  So I save all my paint on the palette to dry, then when the layers on my palette are thick enough I roll them off and save these “skins” for collage projects eliminating the need for paint to go into the water system almost entirely.  I also try to filter my rinse water through coffee filters to try and get the biggest particles out.

Finally, and this is something that I don’t really advertise,  I contribute a portion of all my art sales to green charities.  Some years the contributions are larger than others.  The choice of my charity is personal to me, I choose as best I can charities that are not political or religious in affiliation.  I think there are enough people supporting those, I try to give where I think it is needed the most and where I think the money will go the furthest to solving my personal environmental concerns.

Happy Earth Day

It is Earth Day today. Of course given the state of the planet, I'm thinking, everyday should be Earth Day.

Today, because the sun has blessed us with it's glorious face, I will be hanging the laundry out on the line (even though it is against our community by-laws). I will turn the compost and see if it is ready for the garden, and In the second composter I will be making a contribution of kitchen scraps and sad uneaten veggies from the fridge.

The lights in the house are off today, and the blinds are open warming our home with the sun and giving us soft light.

It's really just another spring day in our house. But it is Earth Day. It is a day to be grateful for the planet we live on. To feel the blessings of cool, deep, green forests and the soaring glorious mountain, for streams and rivers and oceans full of life.

Today we will breath in cold mountain air and watch the rabbits, who are shedding winter coats, running along the lane way, and we will listen for the cry of hawks and the sweet song of birds at the feeder and we will be grateful that we still have time to save it all.

What's For Lunch?

We were discussing lunch a few days ago. You know, what to make for ourselves and the kids. We wanted something satisfying on a chilly day.

I opened the pantry and looked at the shelves of food – and the six cans of Albacore tuna that we can't eat. We can't eat the tuna because it has too much mercury for the kids to be eating, and if there is too much for the kids, then really there is too much for the adults too. I can't give it to the food bank, why would I give them something that I think is unsafe to eat?

The recycler in me feels awful about just throwing the cans away. So they are still sitting in my pantry waiting for me to do something. Although they are serving a purpose. And I am doing something, even if it isn't in direct relation to the cans. Their purpose is to remind me of the value of the world and the oceans, and how we as a society express our disdain at that value.

All of the worlds oceans are connected, and dumping mercury into the sea in India, or China or New Jersey effects the water, and the creatures that live in it, all around the planet. Two thirds of our planet is covered in this live giving water, and we are treating it like a toilet.

Mercury is clearly something that isn't used by living bodies. So it gets moved to the fat stores of the those bodies, including the fat that is in the brain. Each little fish that has a little mercury in it's body is consumed by something, most often a bigger fish. That fish eats a lot of little fish and it stores all that mercury from those small fry in it's body, because it can't use it either.

Then that fish is eaten by a bigger fish... and on up the food chain, until the fish that we eat, like tuna, are so contaminated with mercury that we cannot safely eat them.

What does it say about us a species that we have let it get to this point? Where we have poisoned our own source of food, and still we won't stop. Right now somewhere in the world someone is dumping a load of heavy metal, or poison, or chemicals into our water. And it's not just Them, it's Us, pouring cleaners down the drain, dumping birth control pills into the toilet, over fertilizing our lawns and washing the excess into the sewer system.

What are we going to drink when the water is too polluted to consume? Money?

I used to think differently, but now I think that when the human race becomes extinct we will have deserved our fate.

Springtime In The Rockies

This spring storm front that we have been enduring the last few days has made me despair of ever seeing summer come. But there are some signs of spring. A pair of partridges running up the lane way against the the north wind that was sending waves of snow towards them. They are a pair that I think I have seen here before. Last summer I saw them herding a group of young back down that same lane.

I hope I have the chance to see that little miracle of nature here in the heart of suburbia.

How Low Can You Go?

It’s pathetic. How low will people stoop in the pursuit of the almighty dollar? Have we come so far in our drive for wealth, in our worship at the altar of money, that we will destroy our home?

Two “news” stories have come up this week. First there is the shocking article relating to Al Gore’s home heating bill, which is higher than the average North American’s bill. Let’s be brutally frank here… when the average American lives in a twenty-room home with a guesthouse… then we will be talking apples and apples. The article failed to research the heating cost of a comparable home, and it failed to recognize that the former vice-presidents energy comes from green sources. Don’t be sucked in by this “non-news” story.

This smells like a planted story whose sole purpose is to discredit the loudest and most believable climate change voice we have heard in a decade.

The second story is in regards to David Suzuki, the voice of environmental care for over two decades. He is under attack - again, a position I am sure he is used to. Supporters of the Canadian Conservative party, who have begun a phone in campaign to have the David Suzuki Foundation’s tax-exempt status revoked, are targeting him. Why? Because Suzuki had the nerve to disagree, vocally, with the environmental policies of the Conservative government.

People do these things for all kinds of “stated” reasons. But the ultimate reason for trying to discredit, or disable Gore and Suzuki is the worship of money.

Yes, sitting on our hands and doing nothing to help the environment will save us a lot of money. Now.

But we will pay later. We will be willing to pay for clean water, for clean air to breathe, for safe food to eat. But you can’t eat, drink, or breathe money.

Save This House

“When you have cut down all the trees, when all the animals have been hunted, when all the waters are polluted, when all the air is unsafe to breathe,……Only then will you discover you cannot eat money”

Cree Prophecy

The Doomsday Clock has been advanced two minutes by the Board of Directors of the “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists” at the University of Chicago.

The Doomsday Clock is an arbitrary measure set by the board based on perceived nuclear threat. The last time it was advanced was just after 9/11. Interestingly this time around the clock isn't being advanced on nuclear threat alone. The board sites nuclear ambitions of many countries, and the wealth of nuclear arms at the fingertips of the trigger happy president* as well as stating that climate change is an imminent threat to life on the planet.

Within the lifetime of a child born today the world will barely resemble the life giving orb that we occupy.

Let me say that again a little more emphatically ... A child born today will likely be one of the last people alive on the planet..... forever!

It's time to stop wringing our hands and hoping that someone comes up with a magic bullet to cure the worlds ills. It is time to stop daydreaming about colonizing Mars – (tip: It's not gonna happen). It's time to clean up our home, not try to move down the block to destroy another one.

It is time to start being accountable for what you do, what you eat, what you drive, where you live, and how you deal with the waste that you produce everyday. It's time to force your government to pull their collective heads out of their asses and do something real to save this house! Because it's the only home we have, and until YOU do something, nothing will get done, and my kids are going to have to pay the price. It's not that far away, and we can't just move. So, go clean up your room!

*my description.

Deny All You Want

But I know... this winter has been way too warm. A friend told me that she found fleas on her dog! That's just not right in the middle of a prairie winter!

My girls have only made two snowmen since they were born... it's just not right. Making snowmen and snow forts is a huge part of the Canadian winter. When I was the same age as my oldest daughter we lived in a rental house in the south of town. It had a balcony on the front and faced north. Each winter, without fail, a big winter storm would blow in from the north and a huge snow drift would form just below the balcony.

Don't tell my mother, but my brother and I would race through the house in our snowsuits, climb over the balcony rail, and jump into the snowbank. (although she must have known with all the water on the floor and giant body holes in the drift. )

Two winters in a row we decided to make igloos... sort of. We dug tunnels into the drift with the plan that we would meet up and join our tunnels and make a really cool winter fort. Well since we were kids, and not engineers, our tunnels never met. But we spent days digging and packing snow and smoothing down the insides of our tunnels trying to out create each other.... shouting back and forth through the snow about the great secret storage space we had – or the cool skylight!

All that ended with Jeremy came by with his nasty dog and jumped all over our snowbank – collapsing the tunnels and taking away our fun, that was only replaced by the fun of watching Mom chasing him and his dog down the street in her slippers, swinging a broom, after the dog started snapping at us. Jeremy was a little prick, who had a tough dog, but no one was tougher than Mom.

I suppose I would be anxious if I could only see my kids boots poking out of a snow drift, but I remember spending hours and hour outside playing in the snow. We have some snow this year, not much but a little. Not enough for a snowman, certainly not enough for sledding, or a snow fort or even a half decent snowball fight. It makes me sad that the wonderful memories I have of playing in the snow won't be shared by my kids.

I won't even mention how frustrated the SUV drivers must be without snow to show off in....