Birdhouses Continued: The Barn Owl House

The first birdhouse, the Screech Owl House, was so much fun to create (it was work, and a lot of work, but work I truly enjoyed) that I chose to make a second one. This has a tiny bird's nest inside just like the first one does.

My goal was to have it completed by April 22, when Saint Paul Art Crawl opened, and I made it!

Deadlines are perhaps the least fun but most useful tool in the Artist Productivity Kit. This is one of several brand new pieces I've completed ahead of Art Crawl, with most already posted to my Facebook page.

Make a Little Birdhouse in Your Soul

The birdhouse project, which has had me quietly singing Birdhouse in Your Soul for the past few days, began with a decorative basswood birdhouse from Ye Olde Crafte Shoppe. Saint Paul Art Collective gave a lot of birdhouses to a lot of artists and asked us to make art out of them. The finished works will be auctioned during Saint Paul Art Crawl from April 22 to 24.

The first thing I did with my birdhouse was give it some legs. Then I needed to figure out what kind of bird it belonged to. I liked the shape of an owl's head with the feather tufts on top, but a Great Horned seemed too big and too serious.

So I chose a little Screech Owl instead. They are an interesting combination of adorable and eerie; the eerie part is when you hear them in the middle of the night and HOLY CRAP WHAT WAS THAT.

A tight deadline meant I had to use acrylics instead of my default oil paints. This needed to dry, and it needed to dry FAST.

All the twigs are attached like pegs. I drilled holes in the base and the roof, just large enough to wedge the branches in and then glue them.

And on the inside, a tiny nest I found fallen to the ground some time ago. It was a perfect fit.

Cardinals

These are details of a fairly large commission consisting of three wooden panels, each 24" square. I am having the worst time trying to photograph the entire thing; its subtle colors and the shifting sheen of the wood seem to confound my camera. I'll give it another shot this afternoon (if you'll pardon the pun), and meanwhile, here are the two birds I painted into the piece. 

Princess Crow in Her Parlor

The Princess at Home in Her Parlor, two 6"x6" panels with collage, oil paint, colored pencil, wax medium.
CLICK TO ENLARGE if you please. She loses a lot of detail at blog-friendly size.

On Monday when I took the trash out, I found a small bit of spangled ribbon on the ground, and thought that it looked like a collar or necklace for one of my creatures. And here's the creature, finished last night, still drying on the still life table in my studio.

I had already taken these two wooden panels -- small ones, 6" square and 1.5" deep -- and used wax to collage some interestingly patterned tissue paper onto them. The pattern is very wallpaper-like, and very red. And then I had the drawings I'd already done of the young crow I once rescued from entrapment in a deep basement window well.

I flipped the drawing and copied it onto one of the panels, then picked up a black wax-lead pencil and began drawing twigs, a nest, a moon. Layers of translucent wax/paint gave everything color, and I allowed the "wallpaper" to peek through, because after all the sky is a living room for our young Princess. Some of the pattern served as remnants of foliage on the tree.

The necklace had to go on carefully, because if I covered it in paint by accident I'd never get that off. A thick layer of translucent wax, a few slippery adjustments, a few strokes of black to soften the edge, and STOP NOW YOU FOOL, IT'S DONE.

Still, I needed a moon: Something silver, with a subtle texture, easily collaged into place, shiny enough to complement the crow's necklace but not so attention-grabbing that it stole the show.

Nothing I had in the studio would do.

So I put my shoes on and went down to the street, in the dark, looking for a discarded gum wrapper in the litter. That's what the moon in this piece is made of.

A Tiny Queen on the Balcony

Queen Amelia of the Garden, 7 x 10" mixed media on tan cotton paper.

So this is a BIG reason why I live where I do.

Because this apartment has sliding doors that open onto a balcony, and I had to have some kind of outdoor space where things can grow. 

The Happy Sparrows series started here, at my balcony feeder. The forget-me-nots and chamomile and nasturtiums, all in pots along the railing where they get as much sun as they can. While I don't have any chickens up here, I do grow the things I use for their settings. 

This spring, I went to look at an artist's loft in one of the big live/work buildings in Lowertown. Beautiful brick, aged wood, the community in the heart of everything -- and not so much as a window box to call my own. I pictured myself there and my heart sank, and I came back home grateful for the sunlight and space of my balcony, full of lively little sparrows even in the middle of winter. 

Always, I'm taking that step sideways from reality, but it turns out I need to have one foot on the ground, even if that ground is three floors up. 

Flying on Half-Finished Wings

Night Hawk, salvaged objects and materials with polymer clay, oil paint and wax.
Tracie Thompson, 12.5" h x 8" w x 5.25" d

I hope you'll click this photo to enlarge it; the pared-down-for-fast-loading blog version loses so much. 

This was finished last night, and in a sense it was 5 years in the making: that's how long I've had the main piece, which was once part of a wooden planter but which, when I found it, was debris along the tracks in Robbinsdale. I took home several of these slats, and have now used all but one.

The "2437" piece, I picked up in a parking lot on Ford Parkway about 3 years ago. It was night, and I had a fever, but I was out walking anyway. I recall that I had a reason for that, but not what it was.

Originally the plan was to truly finish the bird's wings. There were going to be more feathers and I thought I'd paint them black. Yet the longer I worked, the less I wanted to do that, and the more I liked the feeling of the wings half-constructed yet still somehow working: It felt like life as I know it, and so it stayed.

This piece is available, $350. 

A Charm for Hope and Comfort

About seven years ago, when my Grandma Thompson was still alive and I was still in Florida, I found several of these little bluebirds half buried in her back yard. I'd been making art with rescued materials for a long time by then, so I plucked the little birds from the dirt and took them home. They came with me to Minnesota, and since the move I had used all but this last one, whose tail was broken when I found her and had to be glued. Over the past couple days I worked out this design and assembled it; it's one of the smallest of this series of works at about 6" high. 

All my salvaged-object pieces are about hope and comfort, even when they're also about a lot of other things. There's a meaning for me in choosing to use materials and items which have been deemed 100% worthless, either by being abandoned, forgotten, or outright discarded. It feels like a way to honor all the parts of our own selves which have taken a beating or been neglected or deemed unimportant. 

Remember the Owl?

I finished it last night, quite late, like the owl I've always been.

Any time there are owls in my art, it's got something to do with my dad, who could call to them and get them not only to respond but to come close. This is a barred owl, the kind he could talk to. I haven't titled it yet because there are so many associations I have with these birds that I'm having a hard time narrowing it down. Its working title has been Owl House, and it may just stay that way.

This is 17" high and -- I say this because I've had a couple folks ask if that was an actual, stuffed owl -- no owls were harmed in the making of this art. The owl is oil paint and black pencil on a thin piece of tin I found discarded around an old barn.

I salvaged the wire, both the heavy copper and the fine stuff, from a friend who had scrap she was throwing out. The central spire is a surveyor's stake I found while walking around Saint Paul. The heavenly bodies are bits of found-on-the-street jewelry, gears, washers, and punched-out pieces of metal from the mill district along Minnehaha Ave near 38th. 

I want to thank Bob at Front Yard Video in Florida, for giving me permission to use still images from his owl videos as reference photos. 

This piece is available, $500. I will have it on display in April at Saint Paul Art Crawl, at J.A. Geiger Studio, provided it hasn't yet sold. 

Owls in Kindergarten

That's when I first remember drawing owls. I was five. My owl lived in a hollow in a big, dead tree, in the middle of a flat, open, kindergarten landscape. That drawing was the first time I stopped coloring the sky as a band of bright blue across the very top of the page. I was very proud of it, and I wish I still had it. 

 

37 years later, and I'm working on this piece. It's about 12" high, made of wood and metal and other salvaged items I picked up off the ground. What you see here is the point at which I've got the design figured out, and am about to start applying oil paint. The "house" part, which was a discarded surveyor's stake, will be shades of blue and green. The owl is a barred owl, and I'll paint it fairly realistically. 

When it's finished, I'll post more photos, and tell you why I've loved owls all my life.

Happy Sparrows 6 & 7

Happy Sparrow 7, above, and 6, below. Both 10" x 8" mixed media on heavy, 100% cotton paper; available, 300 each unframed. These are the result of me putting a banquet out of the little rascals all summer -- pretty pitchers of water and dishes of seed. I'm aware they're an invasive species but since they're here anyway, I am enjoying them.

Red Winged Blackbirds

Two of four are now finished. Both 10 x 8" and on the same heavy, cotton-fiber paper.  These are birds I've always loved to watch, bright and energetic as they are; they make me happy, and I hope to share some of that joy in these paintings.

Happy Sparrow #5

So, you know how this was supposed to be a series of four Sparrows? Yeah, about that ...

I was looking for photos of horses (and I found several great ones) to use for art, and stumbled on a photo of this little female house sparrow by chance. She was so cute I figured, well, what's one more?

8 x 10", original is sold; prints and greeting cards available here.

Blue Jays 3 and 4

Blue and Gold #3, above and #4, below. 10 x 8" and 5 x 7", respectively. These are both sold and I'll miss them, even while I'm happy to send them flitting off to new homes. One will be landing in Pennsylvania and the other, down in Texas.

Blue and Gold -- two Jays for March

Blue and Gold, 10 x 8" mixed media on cotton printmaking paper. Original sold; you can buy prints here.

These happened because a few people on Facebook voted for the Blue Jay as the next bird I ought to paint. Sounded good to me! I added forsythia for the lovely color contrast, immediately sold the first one, and then created a smaller second piece that same night.

Blue and Gold 2, 5 x 7" mixed media on cotton printmaking paper, available at $69, or buy prints here.

So now there are two, and they're making me happy, what with all the snow still on the ground around here. They're perfect greeting-card format images, too, so those will be coming soon to an Art Crawl (and a local retailer) near you. I will make two more Blue Jays and then it's on to the next bird, but which one?

Robins? Cardinals (which I've avoided because it seems like EVERYONE does cardinals)? Goldfinches? I don't even know. I'll have to have another round of voting.

Happy Sparrow Number Four

I wanted at least one of the series to have its wings stretched out, and I wanted another vertical format image, so I'd have two verticals and two horizontals in the set of four. So I picked a slanted landing surface (a branch with rose hips, from a photo I took late last summer) and played until I made it work.

When I do things as a series, there's a trend where they get more complex and time-consuming as they go. Maybe because I get more confident and adventurous. I love this piece, yet I'm thinking of doing a fifth with a much simpler setting, like the round edge of a bird bath.

Click here to order prints or cards.

Another Sparrow, and How He Got Here

Happy Sparrow #3 ...

Happy Sparrow #3, 8 x 10", sold

The first two Happy Sparrows were based wholly on snapshots I took of birds on my balcony. For this one, I needed something different, so I found a sunflower photo I took last summer, printed it on plain typing paper, and then drew on that to figure out how to place the bird and where to crop the edges. Before I ever touched my expensive drawing paper, I had this:

The second photo I was using was this one, a moment I screen-captured from a video on Youtube. It's not in focus, and it's the reverse of the direction I wanted -- but I can work with that.

The fourth Happy Sparrow will be in motion, with its wings extended either in flight, or taking off/landing. I'll begin him just as soon as I find the references I need.

Did Not Go as Planned

When you make art, it's common for the thing to miss that left turn at Albuquerque -- and take you somewhere you didn't know you were going.

Sometimes, that's a disaster. Sometimes it's not. It's what happened here ...

Kings of the Goldenrod City, set of three oil paintings on canvas, each 20 x 20"

First of all, these were supposed to be abstract, and they were supposed to be a continuation of my Cracked Concrete series, and there were supposed to be four of them.

If you look closely, you'll see the cracked concrete pattern in the lower parts, peeking through. It also gave me the basic division of space that I used between the lighter "ground" and the red "sky" areas. But once I got those lines and divisions in place, it all just stalled. Totally. These canvases sulked on the wall of my studio for something like six months, and might be there still if I hadn't had a DEADLINE OMG DEADLINE looming.

The first thing I did was recognize that the red paint I had already applied -- which up until then was a diseased patchwork of blotches -- had been a real mistake. I decided, if I was going to make a mistake, I ought to make a BIG MISTAKE, and I put a ton more red in.

Those odd, gourd-like "houses" are based on dry goldenrod stems I'd collected a while back. Something makes homes in these things while they grow, and then drills out, leaving neat little doors behind in the fall. I loved them, but the paintings needed something alive and in motion, and then I was playing around online and found a documentary about crows. I paused it repeatedly, took screen shots, and off I went.

By then I was running out of time, so I pulled the fourth canvas, the one I had the least idea what to do with. It'll reappear soon enough, not as part of this set but as its own thing. Not what I'd planned, but what happens.

Happy Sparrow #2, today's fast-and-loose original, sold

Sorry, folks, but this one got snapped up before I even had a chance to post it! It's the same bird as the first; the two reference photos I used were taken within seconds of each other. These are house sparrows that come to my balcony -- really the only species I ever see here -- plain and "boring" birds but also cheeky little things, very entertaining to watch.

While the original of this one has sold, prints and cards are available here.

Carried Away by a Raven: Original Drawing for Wednesday

SOLD

Carried away, in the sense that this was supposed to be another half-hour drawing but it took at least twice that long because, well, how was I supposed to stop?

Autumn Queen is 10 x 8." Sketched out in terra-cotta colored pastel pencil, then micron pen, watercolors, and white acrylic. I love this image a lot and will miss her when she's gone; $60, plus $5 shipping if applicable.

Click here for  Prints and Greeting Cards of this image

Very Happy Sparrow: The $30 Original Drawing for Monday

This little guy was eating seed from a china bowl on my balcony when I snapped his picture. That blissed-out expression was more than I could resist, so he became the first of these fun, 30-minute drawings.

I used watercolor, white acrylic, and micron pen on my usual lovely Rives BFK Tan paper. Size is 10 x 8", so he'll be easy to fit into a standard, ready-made 11 x 14" mat and frame (if you don't frame a lot of art, take my recommendation and do either mat or float mount your original art so it isn't touching the glass of the frame; it's a preservation thing).

SOLD Available for $30, or $35 total if I need to ship him to you; if you'd like him, click here to contact me. I take PayPal (which lets me accept major credit cards), cash or check.