The Kingfisher Bird

I saw a photo of this beautiful Rufous-Backed Kingfisher bird sitting on a branch and had to draw it this week.  This drawing was done in colored pencils.  I added a colorful shadow to its silhouette to add more depth and three diagonal sun rays to build in dimension.  After Tuneful Nectar, my colored pencil drawing of a Humming Bird, I thought of doing another bird drawing as a companion.  I hung up the first one in my daughter's room.  I asked her if she would like to have another picture of a bird and she was excited about the idea, so the Kingfisher will accompany the Humming Bird on the same wall.

Here are a couple of earlier sketches followed by the completed drawing again.

The completed drawing:

Departures

I created this drawing in graphite pencils.  The emotions in this drawing are a reflection of feelings that families face during a time of deployment.  Five years ago, our family faced such a deployment.  Jake was almost two years old, Alex was a Captain in the Air Force and it was only our second year living a military lifestyle.  During that half a year, as our friends and family know, I was pregnant with our twins while starting to notice signs in Jake, of what we later learned, was autism.  I title this drawing Departures (and not Deployment), because this one big event of the deployment was not only a physical departure (for Alex), but also simultaneous departures, or beginnings, in our lives.  These beginnings took us in different directions, that ultimately condensed into a single focus of family and togetherness.

Here is the progression of the stages of Departures:

The completed drawing:

The Ringgo Bird

Someone had asked me this week to create a drawing for him that is inspired by a graphic of a little bird that had music notation coming out of its wings.  I share here with you the stages of evolution of my drawing.  I titled the drawing after the name of the person who requested this drawing, perhaps coming up with my own genre of a musical inspired species of birds.  I had a blast making it!

Stage 1.  

I started by drawing a diagonal treble clef as the bird's body and later came back to it and added the piano keys.  The graphic's bird had the beak small and closed, so I did the opposite, I wanted it to be more aggressive and animated.  I later added flames and fumes projecting out of the Ringgo's beak.  I wanted both head and feet to have some sort of music notation, so the feet turned into music notes bracketed by a duple sign.  On the Ringgo's head I drew a crest made up of a crown-like bracketed quintuplet fixture, as well as tremolo dashes on each of the notes' stems.  

Stage 2. 

I made the eye diamond shaped and angular.  I always like juxtapositions of opposites: in this case, it's the angular eye and beak in contrast to soft long flowy feathers and the rounded treble clef.  Next, I drew the peacock-like tail feather, which inspired me to continue the light and dark striped texture of the rest of the bird's feathers.  I used a cotton ball to do my shading and an eraser for my highlighting.  I then go over the lighted feathers with the darkened cotton ball lightly, in order to blend in the shades some more.

Stage 3: Competed drawing

I use the darkened cotton ball to shade around the edges of the paper.  I wrote the title of the piece over the flames coming out of the bird's mouth, as if the text is a part of that texture.  I chose only a few elements to be in the darkest charcoal shade: the note heads on the crown, the beak, the eye and long eyelash-like wave, and the outline on the left part of the treble clef.  Having only a few elements of the drawing in the darkest shade, gives the observer's eye a focus.

I hope that you've enjoyed my post.  

Stop back at Creationlily from time to time 

to see some of my new creations.

Shades of Blue ~ Tile

My tile in shades of blue was so enjoyable to make.  For a few hours, being out at Artistic Expressions with some of our lovely JAG Air Force spouses, I had the opportunity to decompress from the stresses of the day, forget about everything, and just focus on colors and textures.  It was pretty much art therapy for me.  I made the circles with different sized sponges, and the smallest circles with the back side of the sponge stick.  I started with the largest circles as a backdrop and created several layers of circles of various sizes on top of that.  Next, I will make two more tiles with the same circle theme in two other colors and shades of that color.  Once my set of three tiles is completed, I will hang them vertically as a collection display.

Musical Display Plate

I made this musical plate during the winter holidays in Seattle Washington 2013.  First I drew a musical abstract image onto drawing paper.  I then traced the drawing with carbon paper, which enabled me to paste it directly onto the plate.  The final step of this stage was to paint the plate.

 

The plate before getting burned

After glossing and burning the plate the colors are rich and vibrant.

You can view it from any angle you choose.

Musical Strings

Music ~ acrylics

Listening to Andras Schiff performing some of Bach's Prelude and Fugues on my drive home from the base today brought up some emotions to the surface for me - the main one being gratitude.  The genius of Bach never ceases to amaze me.  His musical thread initially starts out with direct sincerity, as if it were as simple as black and white, and then before we know it, a multitude of colors spin out majestically, leaving us at awe of what had just transpired.  They unravel multi dimensions of emotional depth.  Each layer pealed back, reveals gratitude for all of the little intricate details that connect our life's fabric.  A single spool spins out one seamless piece of string.  As it unravels, it unfolds for each one of us, our individual life's path.  

A man who had lived his life not being appreciated for his gifts yet, is only later appreciated and glorified after his passing - much too late.  As we reflect on what we not knowingly let slip through our hands through the cracks of music history, we ought to not let that happen with the little intricate details of our daily lives.  Some of the challenges that spin out our inner struggles, not yet capturing the lessons to be learned from their journey, may only seem black and white to us now.  However, if we let them slip through the cracks of every day's burdens, we may miss the later multitude of splendid color that would spin out too swiftly for us to appreciate.  Once the string completely escapes the grasp of its spool, there would only be a shadow left behind - only an afterthought.  It is with this mindset, that we'd only appreciate things after they are gone - much too late.

Clefony ~ charcoal pencils

Hold on to that piece of thread and take note of every unraveling rotation of that spool, because once the colors start flowing, it's hard to appreciate all of the detailed intricacies that turn that one piece of thread into our personal life's path.  Hold on to the little details with gratitude while they present themselves, and not after they spin right by you.  

There are many lessons to be learned from the life and artistry of one man who was too precious to be recognized during his life's spool of thread.  He was a visionary - ahead of his time.  If we had only known back then what we know now...imagine all the possibilities....all the musical strings yet to be played.

Creations

Clefony a made up word for a symphony of clefs
charcoal pencils



The Rose
charcoal pencils

  Seaweed
Acrylic 

Solitude
Pastels

Music

Acrylic

 

Waiting

Charcoal pencils

Musical plate

Blue
paint on tile

 Hummingbird
colored pencils

At the beach
charcoal pencils

 Deployment

The Kingfisher bird
colored pencils

Who knows what’s next.... 

Clefony

Music - inspired art

Clefony ~ charcoal pencils

  My drawings in charcoal pencils are my latest Creations.

  
 The two additional smaller drawings of Clefony, 
are a couple of the earlier stages of this piece.

 

Completed drawing

CLEFONY

The term Clefony is my made up word for a symphony of clefs.  It is an artistic-inspired word since bass and treble clefs intertwine in this abstract creation.  It is a word-play on the coupling of clef with symphony.  In Clefony, I fuse together non moving images such as the musical clefs, in contrast to moving elements, such as the small music notation.  The treble clef endings resemble bows of the string family, adding a more angular contrast to the roundness of the clefs, as if playing them like they were instruments.  The angled treble clef closest to the top spirals downward, glistening in imitation to the brass wiring of a french horn.  The hook of the top bass clef rounds-off into a pear's seed, hinting at the notion that music and art appeal to many of our senses, causing us to feel more alive.

The Rose

In The Rose, leaves blowing in the wind from diagonal directions intersect and merge to form the image of a rose, which is suspended at an angle.  The Rose is a fusion of the soft smudged leaves on the interior of the flower, which interlace with the more ornate sharper edged intersecting leaves.  It is a play on the two textures.  The flower head itself acts as a magnetic force that pulls the sharper edged ornate leaves into it's center, causing the panoramic view to seem multidimensional.  In this piece, I play with the idea of the still life image of the flower being juxtaposed with the crossing of the leaves and the illusion of motion contrasting it's windless leafy bulb.

The Rose ~ charcoal pencils

Evolution of The Rose:
 

The Rose ~ stage 1

The Rose ~ stage 2

The Rose ~ stage 3

The Rose ~ stage 4