Putting together the third of a four panel collection. Falcons of North America. Already completed are the Kestrel and Prairie Falcon.
flight
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.
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….
Owls for Omi
Tonight found me well fed and inspired. I put three owls to page.
These two came from sketches I did last week on the bus to work. They will soon be painted into the grain for good.
Somebody is singing somewhere
But in this room lies silence painted in watercolor.
Flight path.
A pose I had sketched a lot in October. Here it finally came to life in pen this evening with the help of a visit from a Red-Tailed Hawk on my way home tonight. Inspiration move me brightly…
Penciled in like an appointment I never planned to keep.
Turns to splintered sunlight on my page.
Hawks help me get lost in the meadow of my imagination.
No poems, only birds. My classic contradiction.
Sitting at my desk after work tonight. I reckon I could write you a poem, or something of that sort. But I’ll hold onto any words I have in that nature for a day or so. Trying like I do with a pen drawing. Before I begin with the pen work I let the drawing sit in pencil and examine it for a few days. Each time noticing things I hadn’t before.
I like doing that with words too. This helps me find their power or something like that.
I finished another large flying hawk. The layout of these drawings is simple but holds lots of texture. I feel good about this approach and would like to now put these birds into other positions in the natural kingdom. No easy task, but tonight’s pencil studies show promise I feel.
The most recently finished of my 2’x4′ hawks on plywood.
Climb the ladder to bring her the Moon.
It’s that vacation, or trip you went on. You saw something beautiful that reminded you of somebody you care a lot about. Maybe you wished they were there to see it.
That strange dream of a wonderful place and you thought, “My goodness if only I could bring all my friends here!”
Tonight I sit down to my piece of 2’x4′ plywood. It sits on my TV dinner tray that I covered with goofy stickers from here and there a layer of shellac on it helps keep the stickers down, and allows me to spin the plywood around with ease to get at any angle needed.
I get some headphones out of their hiding place. They are quite huge and sound like wrapping a concert hall around your head.
My pen is sitting next to my phone on top of a book of poems.
When the headphones plug in and that just-exactly-perfect song is rolling through them into my mind. I grab the pen off the book and I go on that vacation and have that strange beautiful dream. I think of many different wonderful people. And while I can’t take them to that moment of joy. I can show them the bird I caught in the wood-grain during. To turn off time, leave California for a few minutes to find something beautiful for the people you love.
I like that Idea, it seems romantic.
It was her again, but it was all right.
She promised me poetry on my grave.
Or at the very least, to try and behave.
And as she stood there in the rain she made good.
I write my own poetry on a piece of wood.
Time yet not for a bed of dirt.
her words only echo they do not hurt.
Sifting through these ashes I found the words,
Bringing to page the largest of birds.
In my noblest of efforts to think ahead of my pen.
My thoughts drift back to her again.
farnco illustrations 