Making orcas happy by going green

I'm struggling with some health issues so no new art stuff this time.  Instead, I'm spreading the word about changing some of the ferries in Washington to hybrid or electric.  Norway has already done this successfully and here's a couple of articles about current plans to go that direction here.

In Skagit, there's this about an all electric ferry.  http://crosscut.com/2017/08/washingtons-ferry-future-orca-friendly-low-emission-electric-vessels/  Again, we see the initially higher upfront cost to convert to electric and the compelling significantly lower maintenance & fuel costs.  The big bonus is lowering the noise level for the orcas.

Norwegian electric ferry, photo from Nor-Shipping

Even closer to home for me, our local shipyard has landed a contract to build a hybrid ferry for Red and White Fleet of San Francisco.  Read about the details here.  Lots of progress going on and I am glad to see it.

Robinson Crusoe Island, or where the firecrown lives

I've decided to pursue the endangered hummingbirds as my first art work for my new studio.  I'm going to start with a classic hummingbird at a flower design.  Obviously, first step is to research the flowers found on the Juan Fernandez islands.  Since I have never been to the Juan Fernandez islands and have no photos of my own, I am forced to rely on using photos from the web as references.

A little research told me that Robinson Crusoe Island is one of the islands in the cluster and that led me to a wonderful webpage,  https://www.cascada.travel/en/News/Robinson-Crusoe-Island-Wildlife-Guide.

This page has all kinds of info about the islands such as it being a National Park since 1935.  Here is where I found the name of 2 of the flowers that the Firecrown uses for food.  The Cabbage Tree (dendroseris litoralis) has large yellow flowers which will go perfectly with the teal & cobalt colors of the female Firecrown.  The first photo shows the foliage well and the drape of the flowers.

From http://www.strangewonderfulthings.com/

And here's a closeup of the flower from the same webpage.

This will be a fun flower to do because of the long skinny petals which will fit perfectly with some traditional methods of piecing.

The other flowering bush that feeds the Firecrown is the Juan Bueno (rhaphithamnus venustus) tree.  It is at a much higher altitude, and has much smaller leaves than the cabbage tree which will give me some variety in the textures of the foliage which I plan to use for the background.

I've picked these 2 flowers because the colors set off the 2 colors of the Firecrown hummingbirds.  Complementary colors cause the feel of the piece to be more energetic rather than soothing and this is exactly what I want for the feisty hummingbirds.  Next step, doing the design sketches so I know what poses I like for the hummers and what the overall composition will be.

August goals made explicit

I am a list maker.  I have a nice big white board in my studio where I list the projects I have in progress and ones I want to do next.  As I come into the final stretch on unpacking and setting up the studio, I decided to make my next month's goals public.  Because external deadlines are easier for me to meet.  So, here's what I want to accomplish in August.

First, of course, finish the unpacking & setup.  This was my goal for July and got delayed due to a nasty summer cold made worse by the last few days of smoke hanging over Bellingham like winter clouds.

Next, in no particular order, finish the Green Eco-chicken.  This is the fourth or fifth chicken I've done and while doing this one, I'm taking notes so I can publish a pattern for it.  It's also the only goal for August that I have a picture to share which is why it's being mentioned early on.

When I was doing research for the first chicken, I realized chickens came in an amazing array of colors but not green.  And since I'm in the PNW, green can also mean Green so I started thinking about what an Eco chicken would look like.  So far, I've picked the fabric for the chicken from sea to mountain (right to left in the photo).  What's left to do?  The stitching on the edges between colors, some stamping or painting added on to most of the stripes to make the sea to mountain more explicit, and creating the background.  I'm of 2 minds about the background:  a single piece of patterned fabric or a background with realistic photos collaged onto fabric to suggest the whole Seattle/Green idea.

My other major project for this month is to do some silkscreening with the new soy wax pastes I bought for myself in January.  Due to the whole packing/moving thing, I haven't had a chance to play with them yet.  I have a large plastic bin of thrift store shirts to upcycle in some way so my goal for this area is to do a dozen shirts this month.  I'm going to use the screens I have already made so that probably means leaves or dragonflies.

Along with making the shirts, I'm going to reactivate my etsy store and update my webpage.  I'm still deciding what goes in which place but I definitely need to redo my webpage to reflect all the sales I did at my moving sale in March and the changes I'm making to what I'm working on.

Longer term, I have my endangered species piece to start.  My goal for August is to do the paper sketch which will include picking a flower for the hummingbirds to hover near and what pose I want them to be in.

And in the personal life area, we are putting a storage shed in the backyard.  My motivation is that moving storage stuff from the garage into the shed will give me room in the studio to do demos and consultations.

I have a tendency to try to do too much when doing my goal setting so I tried this month to rein that in a bit.  We'll see how I did in 4 weeks.