Bernini & the Camera

Birdie doesn't like cameras very much, despite the fact that she's a total ham.


She uses her crest the way we use our eyebrows. "What are you looking at?!"


(Notice her orange eyes - when she came to live with us 12 years ago (!), her eyes were black... we thought she was a he for that reason. She's been sexed using DNA, but her orange eyes were our first indicator that we might have misnamed her.)

Something you might have realized, but just in case not, here's something to think about: most birds look almost silly when viewed head on...



... Little Bird is no exception.

Working It Out

OK, given that I am not a watercolorist, I am extremely happy with the way this painting is coming along, and here's why:

1. There's actually some contrast between the background and the subject, and


2. The bird hasn't gone flat or muddy.

Trust me, these are huge steps for me.

Still to do: flesh out the background a little bit more and push it back a bit by neutralizing the green.

Watercolor Doodles

I am many things in this world: daughter, sister, wife, decent cook, lover of birds, reading enthusiast...

What I am not, however, is a watercolorist.

I would like to be one, someday, but for now I'm in that experimentation stage where nothing is very good... and it took me a fair amount of time to get here. But I have decided that I like these little doodles. Not because they're great watercolors, but because they give my journal a shot of color and life, which, if you've read my journals (which tend to be composed primarily of lists and complaints), you'd know that they sorely need.

I'm working on an illustration of a Harpy Eagle for one of my classes. I read somewhere that Harpy Eagles have facial disks, like owls, as a result of convergent evolution. Unlike owls, though, Harpies create their disks by raising their feathers. When the feathers aren't raised, the Harpy has a noble profile.


Puget Sound is home to three pods of resident Orcas, numbering (in total) more than 80 of these very large ocean dolphins. The resident Orcas eat only fish and can be quite vocal, whereas transient Orcas eat all manner of sea mammals and are completely silent. (The things you can learn in class...) I made this little doodle while sitting in one of the Starbucks shops at SeaTac after my flight had been cancelled. The act of concentrating on my little painting was actually quite calming.


I found this image in one of the most amazing magazines ever, BBC Wildlife. A couple of months ago they did a feature story about Caracals.


I'm working on another set of illustrations for a different class, of the Columbia Basin Pygmy Rabbit. Extinct in the wild, this genetically distinct cousin of the Idaho Pygmy Rabbit lived in portions of Douglas County, Washington. The reasons for its genetic extinction are unknown, but it looks like it may have been a combination of factors including (but not necessarily limited to) habitat destruction and disease. The Idaho Pygmy Rabbit failed to gain federal endangered species protections last year, and because its range is - over time - being converted for agricultural use, it may eventually meet a similar fate.


Another magazine find, this time on a bumpy flight back to Spokane from Seattle. It was soothing to think about how I would approach this little doodle while we were being buffeted by crosswinds on approach.


All of these doodles are being done in my Moleskine sketchbook journal and I didn't spend more than 45 minutes to an hour on any of them... the paper isn't noted for being great watercolor paper, but for my purposes it works just fine.

Why did the Snow Goose cross the road?

To visit a thousand of its closest friends...

I went birding this weekend in Skagit County with seven other enthusiastic classmates. The enthusiasm was necessary because IT. WAS. COLD. And snowy and icy... but we still had a good time looking at Bald Eagles, Northern Harriers, a Rough-legged Hawk, a Merlin, a Peregrine Falcon, Pheasant, American Wigeons (plus one Eurasian Wigeon thrown in for fun), Killdeer, a Kestrel, Dunlin, Green-winged Teals, Blue Herons, Snow Geese, Trumpeter Swans, a Winter Wren and one Spotted Towhee (dead, retrieved from the road by yours truly).

Then, because I like having wind-burned cheeks (NOT), I got up on Sunday and went for a short loop around the Union Bay Natural Area, where the highlights were six Great Blue Herons and a couple of Golden-crowned Kinglets (who always make my day).

Yesterday evening and this morning I worked on a very preliminary value study of my next big project: a Harpy Eagle.

Stellar's Sea Eagle

I was at the zoo today and saw the most amazing bird: the Stellar's Sea Eagle. You can't get a sense of the scale of this bird by the sketch, or the impressiveness of its beak (partly because it's foreshortened in this view), but it is amazing.


The Stellar's Sea Eagle is one of the largest eagles in the world by weight, but its measurements don't add up to the Harpy Eagle or the Philippine Eagle. Still, though, it's an impressive bird.

Doodled from this photo.

Let's call the whole thing off!

I made it for 26 days before throwing in the towel - longer than an average New Year's diet, perhaps, but not very long in the grand scheme of things.

The problem? I'm bored. I think the project wasn't well-considered enough, because it's boring the snot out of me. I adore birds, and will continue to draw them here, but maybe a week is more than I want to spend on any one bird for now. That, and at the moment, I'm working on snapping turtle jaw anatomy, horse vertebrae, a rabbit skeleton and a nascent river otter illustration.

This is supposed to be the place for me to blow off steam, and any 365-day project in the future will have to take that into consideration. I still want to do one, just not this one.

Oh well. Lessons learned.

Atlantic Puffin: In Color

What?! There's no Atlantic Puffin here!

For now.

This has been the day from H - e - double-toothpick, so I'm putting a placeholder here at 10:45 p.m. so I can fall into bed and get some sleep.

Yes, I know, I'm cheating... but I did say I could change the rules any time I wanted, right?