13 March 05
Returning
Some friends who live in the hills above Winters had their annual picnic today. The brodiaeas were out, almost past; the poppies up there are smaller and more yellow than the ones down here.
We ended up at the table with the pomologists and mathematical ecologists (hey, it was in the shade).
It’s an informal gathering, one where it’s completely acceptable to wander off for a hike or a sketch, which we did.
A year and a half ago, we got married at this spot. It’s a lot greener in March!
12 March 05
Bookstore Luck
Returning from a trip into town on this glorious spring day, we stopped by the used bookstore near the food co-op. And we found three Terry Pratchetts we’ve not read yet — Lords and Ladies, Small Gods, and Jingo. She never gets them in at the bookstore, she told us, and she didn’t really expect them to last the four days on the shelf that they did. We’ve pretty much exhausted the library’s collection, so there we go.
11 March 05
Swainson’s Hawks Return
And then, they were back.
I saw four Swainson’s hawks today, three of them over my office. They’ve been far, possibly as far as Argentina. It’s spring now.
10 March 05
Daffodil Summer
The daffodils in our back yard are already getting past their peak. The one I’ve sketched here is the same one Pica was sketching a few days ago; it lasted quite well with a little water in the vase outside.
9 March 05
Exploring negative space
Kurt over at A Blog is a Happening has an interesting piece today on erasure. He was working on a charcoal portrait last night and he started with a darkened sheet and erased highlights to form the image. It’s an interesting piece on the challenge of self-knowledge.
My own exploration this morning of the negative spaces between these rose leaves is prompting thoughts about edges, and how edges can more exciting than essence (or actually define the essence). Nothing about this is original, but it’s satisfying to come to these realizations by means of graphite.
(The ground squirrels outside my window are very conscious of edges; for the males, most of their life is happening on the edge just now, as they guard it with their lives. I’m starting to see wounds: it’s a bloody business.)
And then a look at the Incomplete Manifesto by Bruce Mau makes me question my work, and how I often opt for a safe design because I’m in a hurry. Best not, I think. Tarry in the negative spaces a bit more… Get a bit bloody. I think… our life depends on it.
8 March 05
Cheese, Gromit?
After this horrible past year in movies, there’s finally a film to look forward to. The new Wallace & Gromit movie, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, is coming out October 14!
(From LibrarianInBlack).
7 March 05
Peregrines Nesting
Peregrine falcons hold some kind of mystique… whether it’s because they came so close to extinction during widespread use of DDT, or because they can tuck into a dive reaching almost 200 miles an hour, or because they’re just plain beautiful, these are amazing birds to see.
There’s a pair now nesting at the PG&E Building in San Francisco. This webcam is updated every five seconds.
update, Tuesday, March 8, 2005: there are now three eggs, and the female “Gracie” is predicted to start incubating full-time, but at 2:34 pm PST she’s absent…
6 March 05
Art Student
As Pica has mentioned, we’ve been doing the exercises in the workbook for The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Yesterday, she was working on the exercise where you draw a flower through an acetate viewing plane. But Charlie reminded us that he too is a connoisseur of the art of botanical illustration.
5 March 05
Counting Crows, Again
My work buddies have been continuing to catch crows as part of a West Nile virus study. The backpacks with the radio transmitters seem to have held up remarkably well in most cases. There is a large roost site in Davis which most of the crows fly into at dusk, and their beep-beep-beeps alert the folks following along on radios to their presence. (This is, incidentally, a VERY bad place to park your car.)
Last week I spotted a crow with an antenna (well, I spotted the silver tag around its ankle) just outside my window at work. I’ve seen it every day since. This crow, #652, seems to be paired up. It’s almost always with another crow now. (By the way, Coup de Vent, it doesn’t seem at ALL bothered by the weight of the transmitter or the straps or even the antenna, though it had certainly lost the tape off the end…)
We heard 652 this evening at the roost site along with 14 others. We missed four, but we hope the volunteer will find them tomorrow night. All this rain we’ve been having is yielding a bumper crop of mosquitoes, and it won’t be long before the virus hits this region like a sledgehammer.
4 March 05
Kitties Reposing
It is well that cats sleep as often as they do for how else would we be able to get practice drawing them. Here are a couple of sketches of Charlie and Diego sleeping. 