Bird Feathers

 

My garden attracts many birds and so it doesn't come as a big surprise that I often find feathers on the ground. Some of them I pick up with the intention to use them in a mixed media project. A short class by French artist Laly Mille inspired me to create these three small pieces.

The top photo shows my first laying out the papers and feathers on watercolor paper that I had cut to 3⅜" by 5⅜" pieces each. I did stick to this first layout, but added more to it in the process.

Here is how the individual pieces turned out.

Gluing down bird feathers is NOT fun and I wouldn't do it again. The mulberry paper under the feathers completely "disappeared" when I adhered it with gel medium which wasn't what I had in mind. In order to achieve a bit more texture I added coffee stained cheesecloth and rubbed some gesso on it.

Years ago for reasons I cannot remember I bought two 9 x 12" burlap canvas that since then had quietly collected dust on top of a shelf (they were wrapped in plastic, so no harm done). I finally found a use for one of them: I adhered the three collage pieces to it, using super strong tape. Voilà, I had a new mixed media art piece.

This is my contribution to Nicole's Sunday in the Art Room.

Following the Cairns

 

It's been a while that I was in this space the last time. Truth be told, I wasn't in the mood to write a new blogpost for a few weeks. Every now and then I need to step away from my blog and that's what I did.

But now I'm here and I want to take you back to the Southwest. We're almost done with our trip of December 2024, only a few days are left and some of them were mainly spent driving. We had to cover quite some distance to eventually get home again. I wrote about Arches, Canyonlands' Island in the Sky and Dead Horse Point, and today we're going to Canyonlands again, but this time we're visiting the Needles District which is South of the Island in the Sky. It's quite a way to drive into Needles which might be one of the reasons that there are way less people. This has always been my favorite part of Canyonlands National Park, with an abundance of hiking trails. We wanted to hike the Slickrock Trail - and that's exactly what it was, a hike mainly across slickrock, the trail being marked by rock cairns.

This was the way up to the plateau. 

From up here and along the entire hike we had a 360º view across Canyonlands and its surroundings.

I took an idiotic amount of pictures and it was hard to select the ones for this post. I hope you have the stamina to look at a lot of photos.

You bet I couldn't leave those trees alone.

Here you can see that we really needed those cairns to follow, otherwise I'm sure we would have lost our way completely.

The views were simply amazing. How can one ever tire of this?

It always fascinates me that this hostile environment is enough for trees growing out of nothing. Their roots and bark made me stop over and over again.

The La Sal Mountains were still visible on the horizon.

You turn around a huge boulder and boom! another great view.

Our faces tell that we thoroughly enjoyed this hike. My contribution to Nicole's Friday Face Off.

View after view after view - and cairns and dead trees, of course.

Our shadows might be big here, but we are so insignificant in the vastness of this desert.

The texture of the slickrock was interesting and so was what remained of some shallow leftover puddles.

Our eyes were constantly watching for those cairns and our feet would follow. This entire hike is not particularly long, just 2.4 miles, but it took us forever because we stopped all the time to enjoy the amazing views - and take pictures, of course.

The soil here - as well as in many other places in this area - is very interesting. It's a living soil called cryptobiotic soil crust, an important part of arid and semi-arid ecosystems. They are composed primarily of very small organisms, created by living organisms such as algae, cyanobacteria and fungi. Cryptobiotic soil resists erosion by wind and water and absorbs water more quickly than regular soils and also have higher nitrogen. Thus they provide ideal conditions for desert plants to germinate and grow. However, cryptobiotic soil crust is very fragile and small pressure can break the crust. Humans can have a major impact on these delicate crusts. In all the parks I've seen signs to please stay on the trails and not walk on the soil - now, please guess how many footprints (and even tire marks) I saw on the soil? A footprint crushes and compacts the soil and it can take several decades or even longer for the cryptobiotic soil to recover. There will be erosion which exposes the roots of desert plants and eventually kills them. New plants have difficulties to getting established. With scarcer plant life, the animals that depend on these plants become threatened. It's a downward spiral. If we humans would be more considerate, look up from our phones and don't make everything about ourselves, this ecosystem might have a chance to persevere. (Sorry for the preaching.)

A cairn, a dead tree and the vastness of the land...

I noticed the wavy shape of this rock, a bit different from the other slickrock. A tale of geological history.

Do you see the spire-like rocks on the horizon? This is what the Needles District gave its name. 

We finally arrived back at our car by the side of the road. We both were in need of a restroom...

Yes, we made sure to shut that bathroom door!

Art from the South of Africa

In one of her first "Sunday in the Art Room" posts, Nicole wrote about some pieces of art she has that are from African countries . So today I want to show you a few pieces of art that my daughter brought back from South Africa and Malawi, a country in southeastern Africa.

The mugs on top are from South Africa. Through UC Davis, Kaefer did an internship in Cape Town in 2018. There she found the two mugs on the left - the elephant one is hers, the girafe one is mine. Both are broken, unfortunately, and when she moved to Germany she left the elephant mug for me. Both mugs now house my watercolor brushes and charcoal and graphite pencils. The mug on the right she bought for me in 2024 when she returned to Cape Town for an epidemiology conference. This one I use for my morning coffee - I am very careful with it because I don't want it to break as well.

The fabric elephant is also from South Africa. I have always loved the joyful colors of fabrics from African countries - the colors are actually a bit more brilliant in real life than in the photo. It usually sits right next to the mugs on my lazy Susan so that it doesn't feel lonely...

Art can be practical as you can see here:

Akshar is a heavy duty cement manufactured by Shayona Cement, Malawi's largest local cement manufacturer. Cement is filled into very strong sacks  and bags, and from these shopping bags are made with a strip of beautifully patterned fabric on top. I use this bag for my weekly shopping trips to Trader Joe's and as a you would expect from a cement bag, it can carry a lot. Recycling at its best!

But Kaefer also brought some paintings from Malawi where she goes every year for work for a couple weeks. This is one she gifted to us and I like it so much. She has three more in her home in Germany, one from the same artist as the one above. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find any information about the artist. Here are Kaefer's paintings, decorating her living room and kitchen.

All of these beautiful or practical pieces are for SITAR.

Another Portrait Challenge

 

After a week of "hiding" I'm back to blogging. After the murder of Alex Pretti I didn't feel like writing any posts at all. I was sickened, sad, angry, mad as hell - all at the same time. I don't know how you deal with all of what is happening in our country right now; I have a hard time with it. Long walks help, talking with friends, watching German movies, escaping into books.

Thankfully Nicole's new challenge was looming just around the corner and up to then I had successfully procrastinated. No more! It was the most welcome escape.

I had decided to try my portrait painting "skills" with the help of a photo of my daughter that I took during her stay with us in June of last year.

On Gene's blog and then on Nicole's I had read about a tracing method using oil pastels and I wanted to try it out. Wow, it works like a charm!

Unfortunately I didn't take a picture what the traced face looked like. Like with the self-portrait challenge I used watercolors again. It's a medium that I don't "master" at all, but I find it so fascinating. If I don't practice it, I will never learn it. That includes painting something that is not necessarily "good" or "pretty" or whatever word you want to attribute to it. There are only two progress photos.

The ugly stage:

This was the moment that I stepped away from it. How do you eliminate those lines and rough edges? How do you control the amount of water? Practice practice practice...

Better:

Those eye lashes are for real! Look at the photo - she is so lucky to have these long and dense lashes. She never uses mascara (like her mom, she doesn't use any make up except for a lipstick every now and then) since they always look so beautiful. She got these from her dad - it was one of the first things I noticed about him when we had our first cup of coffee together (thanks HP for those coffee corners).

Finally I thought I was done. I was afraid to ruin it if I would "doctor" it more. I'm not too unhappy with it. Here it is, joining FFO.

Nicole, thank you for this new challenge. It took me several days to paint, it was frustrating and fun at the same time. I'm glad that I did it even though there was a time in between when I was tempted to throw my watercolors and brushes out the window. Good thing I didn't!

Hummingbird Woman

 

Melanie Rivers, Dance of the Dragonfly

In 2024 I did a few classes of the Art Soul Gathering. One of them was by Melanie Rivers, an Indigenous mixed media artist from the Squamish First Nation in Vancouver, Canada. Many of you probably know her and her beautiful art. This class was called "Dance of the Dragonfly" where she showed how to create the portrait you can see above.

She used this photo as a reference:

I tried to create a textured background on a wood panel, using some paper package filling and also scribbled in the gesso. Then I traced the woman and painted with acrylic paints. I'm not super happy with it, but also not unhappy. Kind of neutral. Since I didn't have a dragonfly image and I really like hummingbirds, I decided to use the image of a hummingbird that I had found in a magazine. Instead of "Dance of the Dragonfly" I called her "Hummingbird Woman".

This is for Nicole's Friday Face Off.

I apologize for not commenting very much on your blogs at the moment. I got another big order that I hope to wrap up this weekend. Hopefully, after that I will have more time.

At 66, Life is just Beginning

 

Last week I turned 66 - in German we would say this is a Schnapszahl ("liquor number" meaning repdigit). There is a song by Austrian singer Udo Jürgens called "Mit 66 Jahren" (at 66 years) and one line goes "Mit 66 Jahren, da fängt das Leben an" (at 66, life is just beginning) - I take that!

I met with my good friend Lyz and we walked around the lake. The weather was mild and sunny and this was the first time in months that we walked together again, since Lyz had had knee surgery last year. We both enjoyed it so much to be able to walk together again, albeit slowly. But who cares? We had so much to catch up on anyway.

This Great Egret perched right on top of this tree and was observing his surroundings - he must have had a great view from up there.

Afterwards we went for lunch to a Mediterranean restaurant - I had half a chicken fajita wrap and sweet potato fries. It was so good.

Lyz is a quilter and she had made these beautiful placemats for me. They are now sitting on our dinner table and are such happy color spots.

In the evening, the Geek and I had some bubbly - that's how we celebrate our birthdays. This is for Bleubeard and Elizabeth's T Tuesday.

My birthday wish was to have dinner with our good friends Bim and Patti - you have met them on this blog several times. They came on Saturday evening for cheese fondue. Only a week before they had returned from their annual vacation in Hawai'i and they had brought us wonderful Hawai'ian peaberry coffee. This coffee is so good, smooth and full of flavor.

On top of that, they gave me this photo that Bim had taken on Quadra Island, BC several years ago. Both Patti and I love rock cairns. I put it in a frame and it is now sitting on my work table in my studio.