Putting together the third of a four panel collection. Falcons of North America. Already completed are the Kestrel and Prairie Falcon.
dreams
Postcards from Oakland.
Almost 25% of my goal. Since April 2015.
Falco peregrinus. (Again probably).
I cracked open a can of cola and laid out the paints I would need. As well as several books opened to pages with peregrines on them. To double check the colors I imagined.
I always start these with some idea but a lot of it I figure out on my way through it. Still learning how to best translate from pencil to paint.
When I got to the wings I looked for blue….I found some in my paint box.
The body through me for a loop, and I sat staring at it for a good bit. In the background I could hear the soundtrack of a movie I was half watching. Somebody was laughing.
A glance to the window and I knew where to go. Like driving in the night and checking the map under a streetlight. (I guess now everybody looks at their phone).
I brought back the smallest brush and approached like it was my micron pen. With the precision of a drunk surgeon with a rusty scalpel.
I like paper maps.
Got it sorted well enough.
No simple highway.
Only this river.
Some folks trust to reason, others trust to might…
Sitting up here in this tree I can see a distance.
From leaving Illinois, to that feeling of being lost and not being looked for.
From stringing her along, to closing the door.
From her lake in northern Michigan, to the western coast I call home.
It seems often that we get lost in the day to day and can forget what moves it all.
I find the easiest way for me to connect to that is to sit on my chair and draw birds.
While I do that I feel I can review my wrongs, and appraise my truths in a manner most fitting for a boy with my middle name.
I’m a big fan of the non-photo blue pencils. I go a bit heavier with them than I need to but I enjoy seeing it through the graphite latter on in the night.
And like a desert mirage brought to my bedroom it comes to life before my eyes. And now yours thanks to this series of tubes we call the internet.
So again thank you for taking a look at the world from my tree top.
Warblers in April finished.
I completed the last work tonight on my 20 warblers on 8×10 wooden pages. I left the 10th page in pencil for “artistic reasons”. I suppose I want whoever looks at these to be able to better see where they come from. People always ask my “why birds?” The best answer I can come up with is that if you walked my mile, I imagine you’d paint a lot of birds too. Maybe the pencil work will help.
Who’s next? Finches? Birds for Atticus….
Floating
I found this watercolor from a few years ago while moving this week. I don’t think I’ve shared it here.
I’m excited to get settled here in this new big city and get to work on some new drawing/painting ideas.
Somebody is singing somewhere
But in this room lies silence painted in watercolor.
Shake the dreams from your hair.
The pile of sketches from the last few days keeps falling off the speaker cabinet in the corner of the room. The bass vibrations send them toppling down to the floor. Water color paintings and pencil sketches taking a brief flight to the paint stained rug beneath. Flight seems an appropriate word as many of them are hawks. Screenshots from my own dreamscape television program. Caught in the echoes. No sense seen in turning down the music. For it’s this moments bird with its talons still grappling my imagination tight. Caught on the wing in my childhood, they still never fail at carrying me away.
But I all ready wrote her that poem.
If I knew the way…
I would take you home.
The other day I heard a friend of mine was having some health problems. I said a prayer in my head as I set out on my bicycle to admire the beautiful piece of the planet I inhabit. As I thought of this good for my friend a Red-shouldered Hawk flew right over my head from a tree behind me. Moments later I came across another tree with a pair of Red-shouldered hawks looking down to me on my bicycle. The smile that brought fueled me further and moments later I was face to face with another Red Hawk. I’m not here to preach to you about anything other than the good that is the natural kingdom, but I will say those hawks brought me good hope on their wings. An experience well timed, I am grateful for. Whatever unfolds down the line from here I am forever grateful to be here to draw birds for you on our planet Earth. If that’s all I’ll do then that’s the best I’ll do.
Thank you.
Watercolor and pen on paper.
Acrylic paint on plywood.
farnco illustrations 