Watch the birdie

Yesterday, on Messenger, apropos of nothing in particular, one of my new artist friends from Deb Weiers's class (so not that new, we "met" in August) sends me a message:

"What is the deal with putting birds on ladies' shoulders (and heads) in SO much artwork by SO many different people? Is it symbolic of something? Did it just become a trend because some people saw other people doing it and did likewise?"

I couldn't really tell her, so I went to Google and asked about bird symbolism in art and discovered quite a lot of information, both pagan and religious, about the meanings of various birds. I found it kind of fascinating; I was also surprised when my friend pointed out that I had at least three recent paintings with birds in them, one of which was a shoulder bird.

 

Since she asked, and since I hadn't thought of someone else I wanted to paint yesterday, and since her name IS Phoebe (like the bird), here is "Phoebe on Phoebe," with her question spelled out in case anyone else has ideas other than mine!

I feel like I ruined this; she was originally on a plain white background, and I liked the stark purity of it, but I used too soft a pencil when creating my base drawing and then dragged my hand through it so that the white was smudged all over the place, and wouldn't erase properly. I had already done my black lettering on the white background, so when I decided to put in a background color, I almost went with a light Cobalt blue watercolor, but at the last minute decided instead to use one of the Daler Rowney inks.

I was sorry I did; the inks are staining, and even with water on the paper the Marine Blue dried faster than I could move it around, leaving darker and lighter spots and looking splotchy. After it dried, I decided I would have to go over it with something else to make it look like it was streaky on purpose, so after trying two other inks on a test swatch over the Marine Blue, I ended up putting the Cobalt watercolor over the top, which I liked.

That, however, was so dark that it made the black writing almost invisible, so I put a white outline on it, which bolloxed it up completely. What I should have done was write exactly over the top of the black with the white, but instead I tried to outline/shadow it, and it turned into a big mess, barely decipherable. I finally ended up washing off the white gel pen, painting a "shield" over the indelible black writing with two coats of gesso, and re-lettering in black on that, putting a border around it to make it look more like a planned object. The things we go through to salvage an art piece! Thank you, Deb, for teaching me ways and means to do that. Anyway...my "bird on head" picture, just for Phoebe.

Pencil, Daler Rowney inks, black Uniball pen, white Signo gel pen, Paul Jackson watercolors, India ink, stencil, white gesso, on Fluid 140-lb. watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

A sad day

It's always a sad day in the neighborhood when you lose a tree to bugs or rot or just sheer age. But today is an especially hard one—we on Bassett Street are losing the "World Tree."

Back when these houses were built in 1948, the city put in Ash trees in the median strip on both sides of my block, and by the time I moved into my house in 1981, they were at maximum height and glory, and every summer our street was a green bower of shade. For some reason our street was the only one out of the surrounding five or six between Vanowen and Sherman Way to have a full complement of street trees, and it made our block special.

The weird thing was, apparently when the city planted the trees there were a few cuckoos in the nest, so to speak—along with the regular Ash trees, they had half a dozen Shamel Ash, which grow to about five times the height and girth that the regular ones do. They planted them randomly, one per block, across the whole neighborhood, and once they reached maturity they towered over everything else—you could look out diagonally across the neighborhood and see the tops of those from anywhere.

Ours was about four doors down on the opposite side of the street from me, and I always loved looking at it, because it just seemed so primal amidst the more conventional pack of trees. It was full of birds and animals, and its exuberant roots burst out of the ground to buckle the sidewalk up two full feet, and then invaded the street as well. Because of that, which didn't bother the residents but did bother the city (and perhaps the plumbing), we all figured it was just a matter of time; but lack of funding for street tree maintenance these past few decades has preserved it long after I expected it to be gone.

Today, however, is the day. I don't know if it has succumbed to the rot that infected most of the rest of the under-watered street trees (which are not really a good choice for droughty Southern California) and took them out one by one over the years, or whether the city just decided to finally do something about the sidewalk, street, and DWP main lines. But five trucks and a dozen guys showed up this morning, beep-beeped themselves into position and started up the chainsaw. By the time I realized what must be happening and ran out to see, half the tree's branches were down. It will probably take them a full two days to get it out of here, and it's heartbreaking, especially because all that's left on our street are five half-grown replacement trees and maybe three of the original trees, elderly and fragile.

Above is a picture I drew of it a couple of years ago, and this doesn't nearly encompass the height (I ran out of room on the page) or magnificence of this tree. But it's the only memento I have.

There is a program through "City Plants" and the DWP where you can sign up to be a block captain and then go house to house to sign up all your neighbors for a new street tree. Once you have surveyed the whole neighborhood, you turn in your order for the correct number of trees, plus your top three choices for what kind of tree you would like, and the city will deliver them. I meant to do that this past year, but when the pandemic hit so many plans changed. But there's no reason I can't mask up, maintain distance, and go talk to the neighbors—I could use the exercise. Perhaps this will be my winter project.

Just because...

 Sometimes I have a clear reason to paint someone, whether it's because I want to draw attention to them, or fangirl them, or I am inspired by a thought or someone's comment or a quote...and then sometimes I can't really see the motivator, and I have to chalk it up to impulse. I was watching MSNBC last night; something Rachel Maddow said stuck with me, and today I decided she was my next subject, just because. (Also, I was in the mood for quirky, and she's kind of a quirky-looking gal, with her big black glasses, long neck, and spiky hair.)

I did find a quote from her that I liked, so I added that in. And I decided I wanted to go a little crazy—throw some spatter and some squiggles into the mix, and use some less orthodox colors. So here is Rachel, with mostly purple hair and splotches of turquoise and pink scattered freely on her skin, but hopefully still recognizable as the redoubtable newswoman that she is. (The pinstripe suit ought to help....)

Daler Rowney inks, pencil, white gesso, India ink, black Uniball pen, white Signo gel pen, on 140-lb. Fluid watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.