Bird Frenzy - First Peek

I have been working on the birds on and off for a long time.  It is finally starting to converge, and I am so excited that I just cannot keep it to myself. 

Spring Is Almost Here

I first started sketching ducks and ducklings after watching an episode of BBC's Planet Earth depicting baby Mandarin ducks leaping out of their nest in the tree.  I am still working on the ducklings, but the duck led me to create this greeting card.

The bright colors will hopefully make you think of spring, even it is still snowing or sleating outside.

Designing Socks

I decided to participate in the sock design contest, held by Oregon based company, Sock It to Me. Below are the five designs I have submitted.

Here are a few variations that did not quite make the cut—the contest allowed 5 submissions per person.

The finalists are supposed to be announced on Monday on the Sock It to Me Facebook page!

A Little Late Night Screenprinting

Here is a preview of the little sea shell cards I have just screen printed.  More photos to come when my SLR is back from the shop. 

Winter Flowers and Owl Matryoshkas

In the last three years, I have been making greeting cards by hand. I had a great time learning how to make linocut prints and trying out screen printing. Yet the experience shows that the precious month between Thanksgiving and Christmas might not be the right time to try out any new techniques. Combining the usual holiday time crunch with my hopeless tendency to procrastinate results in lots of stress and less then perfect product.

This year I chose to curb my urge to do some screen printing. Instead I am digitizing my designs and printing them out on my inkjet. Delegating to the printer gave me a bit more time to bring my designs to completion sooner.  The current themes seem to include owls in the shape of matryoshkas (those nested Russian dolls), largely inspired by burrowing owls, and patterns--both are now available in my Etsy shop.  The plan is to work on nested owls next.

Reeds in the Back Bay Fens

The Back Bay Fens is a beautiful park, designed by Frederick Law Olmstead to be part of Boston’s Emerald Necklace park system. Olmstead turned saltwater marshes and swamp into a beautiful green park that surrounds meandering Muddy River.

In many areas of the park, the river banks are overgrown with reeds. While plans exist to remove these non-native, invasive phragmites next year, today they are still swinging high in the wind, providing refuge for a variety of birds, animals, and occasionally homeless people.

Green in spring and golden in the fall, they whisper gently in the wind and always shine brightly against the sky. I realize that they need to be removed, but still I find them majestic.

A few greeting cards with my attempts to capture the beauty of these tall grasses are now available in my Etsy store.

Fields

Every winter my husband and I visit Walla Walla--a small town in Eastern Washington, known for its sweet onions and more recently for its wineries. The town is surrounded by fields, everywhere as far as the eye can see. Mostly wheat fields.

Nick and I love to drive out into the fields. We get out of the car at the top of a hill, look around, breath in the icy fresh air. It is a bit idylic really.

I love the multitude of lines that transform the baren farm fields into patterns. I finally tried to capture those patterns. First my fields were snowy.

Then I went back to Walla Walla in July, and the fields were green with ripening wheat. Now my fields are green too.