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.

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.

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

The Crowned Corvids, Continued

The Jackdaw, Triumphant. Fourth in the Crowned Corvids series, which I am enjoying more and more as I get bolder with my designs.

The Jackdaw is a European species we don't have in North America, and is considered a variety of crow. There are stories about these birds, going all the way back to Aesop, who told a tale in which the Jackdaw wanted to be King, so he picked up a lot of fallen peacock feathers and paraded around in them, lording it over the other Jackdaws and then trying the trick among the peacocks themselves. It didn't end well, with the poor fool Jackdaw outcast from both the peacocks' society and his own.

A much later tale from the 1800s has him stealing a jeweled ring from a Catholic cardinal, and being caught out by the Cardinal's curses. Again, in the end, he was humiliated and brought down.

These stories made me think about the idea of "too big for your britches" -- of people having an intrinsic "place" from which we mustn't try to rise. I know that there's more to it than that; it's simply that I think the "don't pretend to be what you're not" stories can be a good thing or a bad one, because who's to say what you are, or could be? How many people have wasted their potential because "people like me don't [become wealthy, go to college, write books, whatever]"?

So I gave my Jackdaw a souvenir of his adventures with the peacocks, worn with pride; and in my tale, he got to keep that small treasure he found, because God has a sense of humor and the Cardinal was rich enough. It's possible in my world to both be who you really are, and be better than you were.

Shameless promotion time: If you like these little fellows, you can find prints, greeting cards, and even cell phone cases at my FineArtAmerica page. They're a fun site known for excellent quality and service.

And then there were Three

My Crowned Corvids series is taking shape and it's making me really, really happy. The Steller's Jay above is the latest addition; Crown of Twigs (the Crow) and Magpie in a Milkweed Crown are the other two so far, and I've got an RSVP from a Jackdaw who'll be attending this gathering of the extended family. 

I'm posting all these so folks can get prints of them (and cards, and even cell phone cases) at Fine Art America, where they'll come up on my page or if you search for birds there.

Another of the Crow Series, Sold

292, found sign, salvaged metal, oil paint, wax medium, colored pencil.  8 x 10".

This is the piece I made specifically for the Soap Factory's annual $99 Sale. I had fun with the idea that the crow this time had just flown off, leaving a couple feathers in its wake.

The feathers are cut from salvaged aluminum sheeting, and painted with a wax medium that gives them a realistic-looking texture. I have a great time with these, and will be making more.

Still living less safely: I just finished a submission disk for a show opportunity. I might or might not make the cut, but there's only one way to find out.

New Crow Series piece

She Followed Me Home, oil paint, wax medium, found wood and metal; 12.5 x 18"

Dedicated to the crow who started it all by following me, scolding all the way, for more than half a mile.

This piece and several others in my series of salvaged-material Crows and other birds will be on display at Frameworks Gallery in St. Paul starting Jan. 14.

Crows are Geniuses

Today I'm using the birds in this video as references for the Crow Series piece I have in progress. It's worth watching, though, just for the ingenuity of the crows, who have figured out what stoplights are for.

Crow in progress. This 7 x 5" oil on salvaged aluminum is the heart of a new piece, the full design of which I haven't worked out just yet, but that's normal for these things. They develop on the fly.

$99 Sale at the Soap Factory

Saint Paul Crow, 8 x 10", salvaged metal and wood, oil paint, wax medium. Click to enlarge; for some reason, Blogger makes the thumbnail photos a little blurry.

I have no idea who bought this piece; it had sold by the time I arrived at the show. That made me very, very happy. This is the seventh work in the Crow Series and I plan on creating more.

Can safely say a good time was had. There was some amazing art at the sale, worth much more than the $99 asking price. Also very good food, and an ongoing exhibit I liked a lot. See The Soap Factory's site if you're curious.

Salvage art: Corvid

Corvid, found objects and oil, 16" H x 6" W.






Someone asked me about the title. It's a genus name. Magpies, jays, ravens and crows are all corvids, members of the same family of bright, bold birds.

The red wood I used for the "roof" element came from a broken ladder in an abandoned (slated for demolition) shed. The flag is made from tin I found lying around a ruined farmhouse.

The crow is painted on what used to be the front of a small drawer. In the hole where the drawer pull was once attached, I affixed a piece of costume jewelry which had previously been glued to a very gaudy picture frame -- which fell and broke shortly after my arrival in Minneapolis.

The glass vial is one I've had for many years now. It's an antique and once held perfume; the mostly-illegible label is still attached.