What the World Shows Us, Sometimes

I saw a little hawk take down a pigeon in traffic today. They struggled between cars stopped at the light, pigeon feathers swirling about in clouds. When their struggle took them into moving traffic, the pigeon escaped, they both escaped the truck barreling down on them. Pigeon wheeled around a building, hawk in pursuit. Bruegel's "Fall of Icarus." Did anyone else see?

New paintings: Song (top) & Duet

Drawing Wakes Up Seeing

Am I mistaken or is this broken patch of sidewalk reminiscent of the bears I've been drawing?
Here's another pair from a walk today:





Moments later a flock of songbirds with yellow bellies flew overhead. Is spring really that close? Tomorrow is Groundhog's Day, the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. So the answer is yes even if I hadn't seen this sign of urgent love posted high on a telephone pole along 9th St:

6am Drawing

Drawing a stack of watercolor palettes is too much at 6am. But the bears… love them. Sketched from a photo series. The brown bear is a female, in the next two pictures she attacks the black bear, an inopportune suitor. These bear shapes are very appealing. Have been drawing & painting them quite a bit.

Have been looking at archaic space again. It is flattened, figures and objects in silhouette or profile view, "background" of indeterminant depth, areas of flat color in a limited palette–often red, yellow, black, & white, action arranged on a baseline. What else? Call it archaic not only because it seems to be historically old, but also because the root of archaic is arkhe, Greek meaning beginning, and this is how we start depicting space, as children. These are gouache sketches from my sketchbook of wolf & bear. Notice the Latin names spelled in phonetic Greek–lupus & ursa–a convention of Greek vases that I love.

More sketches from A Book of Rings by Anne van Cutsem, found at Norlin library (CU Boulder). Pages and pages of antique rings from Asia, Africa, & America–wow!

First thing every day

Happy to have a routine of drawing, though am switching to gouache & sketchbook for a few days. Here are some pages from December & January.

Dryads

Seems these paintings are dryads. Happened upon the reference somewhere and then the different kinds. Heard recently that Ecuador is the first country to protect other living beings, including trees and plants, under their constitution. Could it be? Cringe to think people cut down trees without a moment's hesitation.
Eddie Lenihan saving thorn trees in Ireland from road builders; or saving motorists from retribution?

When was I here last?

My retreat has been over nearly a month. What did I learn? To have a routine is essential. Get up at 6am, draw, take a short walk to welcome the day (during the "pink time" if possible), eat breakfast, head to the studio till lunch time. Afternoons are for business and errands. Evenings a little more painting at my desk with gouache, or study, meditate before bed, bed at 10pm. An alarm has been essential for rising at 6 because it's still dark.
The light is already changing. Mr. & Mrs. Fox were dancing, the skunks are out, the finches' song has changed; but the note I'm waiting for, the first note of spring, is the flicker's call. Unmistakably spring calling from the heart of winter.