when eyes go wonky

I'm going to be even more erratic in my blogging for the foreseeable future as I'm having a medical problem with my eyes.  The prognosis is good for no permanent damage but right now I'm getting headaches from trying to do things with printed pages, either paper or digital.  So, not too much typing in my immediate future.  I'm much more likely to be posting to instagram (lizcopelandartist) while on my walks or while I'm in my studio doing some small stuff.  I'll also be trying out my new electric scooter which is supposed to help me go on longer birding walks so here's a picture of it. 

That's the ever supportive and helpful hubster Jeff in the background.  He not only helped me unpack and assemble the scooter but went out for an eyepatch to see if that helps prevent the headaches.  I am always grateful for him but especially when life tosses us something difficult.

Any good thoughts, wishes, energy or prayers gratefully accepted.    And may you also have supportive family and friends when life wacks you with something like this.

best of this week's birding

I got out twice in the last week, well, actually 8 days but it's close, and Pauline and I found several of the sought after birds.  The best of the lot was the Wilson's warbler we got shots of yesterday.  Pauline moved here from the east coast less than a year ago, and the wilson's is a lifer for her.  It's also a tiny little bird, all yellow with that black cap on its head and moves around a lot because warblers do that.  So usually hard to see anyway.  This one got annoyed enough at us chasing it about that it came out into the open and yelled at us.  We apologized profusely and took pictures.  I hope we were all satisfied with that outcome.

From cornell webpage cause mine were too blurry

I didn't take many shots on the earlier trip this month but I did get an interesting series of Common Loon shots.  It was a fairly sunny day and the loon was close enough in that I thought I had a decent shot at catching the green ring around his neck just below the white ring.  The green is usually right at the water level so it's hard to see well but I thought I had a chance with these.

zoom in & see green ring on neck

Then he switched direction and gave a better view of his back.

And then he spotted lunch.  Usually, when the diving birds are diving, it's pretty common to get lots of photos of their backs at the end of the dive just like this one. 

All of these are cropped, of course, to delete all the water around.  This last shot is uncropped to show the expanse of the water and  unexpected second bird (almost to the rocks) I caught without intending it.  The lovely thing about digital cameras is you just keep shooting.

Birding fever begins

Now that I'm past my scheduled art activities for early spring, I can concentrate on birding.  While I'm getting a somewhat late start (earlier is better because leaves are in the way now), the reports coming in from other birders about warblers and western tanagers have me fired up to go walk in the woods.

Yesterday, Pauline & I tried the Chuckanut Pocket Estuary which has a history of having many birds in May.  We got there just at high tide which brings the seabirds in closer and would have had a fabulous day except for the wind coming in off the water.  The smaller birds were not coming out of the bushes and who could blame them.  So we heard lots of common yellowthroats for example, but mostly saw ducks and other water birds.  We did see a small flock of house finches before we gave up because the birds weren't the only ones who didn't like the wind. 

We ended up hitting Marine Park where we finally found the elusive green heron and then going to the other side of the railroad tracks to pursue the warblers we were hearing but couldn't quite get bins on to get a good look, with the exception of a couple of yellow-rumped warblers who crossed the tracks to tease us.  Our first bird on the dog trail/heronry side of the tracks was a bewick's wren doing a fabulous display of singing style. 

Bewick's wren belting it out

We got a nice number of species of birds on that trail but not many good photos mostly because I was having so much fun looking that I forgot to snap photos.  I totally failed to use my camera on good shots of herons in the heronry, the 2 black oystercatchers grazing along the rocky shore of the lagoon, and a fabulous kingfisher who spent a couple minutes flying back and forth between the rails on the tracks and the snag on the far side of the lagoon.  The sun was out, the wind was calmer here and it was one of those days that sparkle in my memory.

I'm looking forward to several more days like this during May.  I hope you get to enjoy spring as well.

Golden workshop on pouring & marbling acrylic paint

Barbara de Pirro is the Golden rep/artist in Western Washington and she does regular workshops & lectures at art stores in the area.  I've attended a couple of her lectures/demos in Bellevue at Daniel Smith so when this class came up in her newsletter, I jumped on it despite the drive from Bellingham to Seattle for a 5 hour workshop.  And it was well worth it.

We started with a demo/talk about the different mediums to use in pouring acrylics and why it was a bad idea to do some of the things seen in various YouTube videos on the subject.  (Short answer:  some of things added can break down the acrylics over relatively short periods of time.)  We each got a folder of info about the materials and she demonstrated several techniques and styles of pours.  Then we got turned loose with our own bag of mediums and *huge* bags of fluid & high flow paints to experiment. (We got to take the sample sizes of the mediums home but could borrow the paints.)  I love marbling so I tried that first.  Here's my most successful attempt at using marbling techniques with acrylics on canvas board..

Calling this one twinkling stars

This was actually my second attempt, the first one turned to mud as I tried to swirl the paint around. But the one above is going to be the starting point for my next batch of experiments with this technique.  I'll be using the results in two ways.  First, I can silkscreen dancers on top of them and voila, I'm doing paintings.  Second, I can get a good photo of the marbled acrylic and print it on fabric and then make a quilt version with fabric dancers collaged on top.  This will give me a direct comparison of my two choices right now for creating small dancer pieces.  As part of my current process of figuring out what parts of creating give me joy, this direct comparison of paint vs fabric should be quite informative.

I started with my basic blue & yellow palette which is what I favor for the dancers.  Darker blue, teal, golden yellow and bright yellow were my starting point.  And if you don't put down a layer of acrylic first, when you drop the colors on a canvas board and swirl them, well, here's some mud.

Note how the blue and yellows combined to give me some streaks of green.  There's only a bit of recognizable swirls on the left but otherwise, an epic fail.  I am really pleased that I so quickly diagnosed the problem and corrected to get the twinkling stars above.

Having one success and one failure, I then attempted to get the swirling marbling that I like so much in my traditional marbling work.  I did two different attempts, adding more blues and some greens to my palette.  The bottom blue one was an attempt at sky horizon and the second was adding more colors and seeing how well the swirling worked with greater contrast.

These satisfied me on the marbling techniques.  I feel I've got a handle on what works and I will be working further with it in the next month or so.  The rest of the class, I spent playing with the pouring technique and creating acrylic skins which was all kinds of very messy, drippy fun.   As I play further with the skins I created, I'll share what results from those.

Regardless of the future experiments, this was a hugely successful experience for me.  I got into that creative joyful spot and enjoyed myself tremendously.  May you do the same real soon!