Some New Winter Seattle Art

Top to Bottom:
1.   Pen & Ink and Watercolor portrait of sulky grandson Cole Taylor.  His nose is too long in the painting, as can be seen from the photo below it.  That might have been because we were reading the book Pinocchio!  Cole was not as willing to pose as his twin brother so this is the only time I had to paint him.
2.  Watercolor painting of Wilson, which doesn't do him justice, as can be seen from the photo of him above the artwork.
3.  Pen & Ink and watercolor and pastel pencil portrait of Wilson in his sport shirt.  He looks a bit like a Nazi youth in this picture, which Wilson said was "creepy."  It does not look much like the photo of Wilson above the art, holding up the world with his dyed red Mohawk hairdo. 
4.  An Abstract, inspired by going to Discovery Park in Seattle, one of my favorite places to hike
5.  A Memory Abstract of my week in Seattle ends the tableau.

Pink Diamond Owl Trees

My first wall hanging quilt! 

Some New Fabric and Paper Art

Top to Bottom:
Paper Art Collage:
"Flamingos and Yellow Roses" Paper Collage 22" w x 19 1/2" h

Fabric Art Quilts:  (photos could show the final work better)
Wild Animal Baby Quilt 49" w x 49 1/2" h
Wild Animal Baby Quilt back with various Minky fabric patches
"Under the Sea" 48 1/2" w x 71 1/2" h (includes batik fabrics bought in India, photos and various other applique art)
"Robin Walking Away From Chaos" 47" w x 68" h.  Tons of hand embroidery and a wool punch bird!

Illustration of a Summer Cold

Getting sick in the summertime has never seemed fair.  But it  recently happened to me.  I decided to try to tackle how it felt by doing another mixed media collage.  The (for now) final version is at the top of the page, an earlier version below it.  So what's the backstory on the elements used in this new creation?  The photo of me in the collage goes back to a Christmas in 1971 when my sister  Susan came to visit me while I was living in Madrid, Spain.  As I was often sick during the two years I lived there, I'm pretty sure I was sick that Christmas.  I was also pretty poor.  I always liked the moody photo Susan shot of me in front of the wall calendar.  To illustrate my sore throat, I used another little piece of my new red Japanese washi paper.  I didn't have any picture of viruses to throw at the image so sampled a few I discovered Tal Danino had created and posted on his twitter account (link here)  I could have used my own bacterial design which I created for a Spoonflower (link here - although they aren't showing all of my designs anymore) fabric design contest - a Paenibacillus done in 2015 because it looked cool, but I didn't because that wasn't what was infecting me.  Finally, I spent too much time trying to create a brain image using various photos (from the ocean in Pt. Reyes to the Botanical Gardens in Berkeley.)  I'm not too happy with the resulting brain but think it is time to move on from this project.

Japanese Popsicles Artwork Backstory

One of the few benefits of being older is there is some personal history now I can pull from when creating new artwork.  My latest craze doing mixed media collage is benefiting from various other expressions on similar subjects done in the past.  Case in point:  In 2004 I did a watercolor of some orange ice cream and multi flavored popsicles (because I used to love to eat them).  In 2009 I turned that painting into a digital composite with some scanned buttons (art using scanned buttons kept me entertained for about a year.)  Now, I used some new Japanese washi origami papers to create the ice cream/popsicles and placed them onto a recent landscape photograph of trees printed on Hiromi kozo-shi paper.

Revisiting an Old quilt

Trying to put my quilts together in one place on my Pinterest page LINK HERE, I found a few that were saved from an old defunct website (redcrowartworks) I closed out years ago.  So, I'm reposting one of my first little quilts titled "Bee World," created in 2014, so the link will be more viable.  The quilt was mainly comprised of a collection of my art printed on fabric, some original fabric designs and a centerpiece of beautiful french silk I bought off of eBay, in a mix of silk fabric remnants, and which had some beautiful little embroidered bees on it.  My sewing skills are not the best, as one can see from the irregularity of the piece.  One of the artworks, a digital rendering of an oil painting of sunflowers, has recently reincarnated itself into a paper collage.

What If ...

there were Greater Flamingos in California?  Wouldn't that be nice.

Sunflowers in Vase

Continuing on with my variations on a theme spree is my newest version of Sunflowers in a Vase. Top:  Photo and paper collage on Arches watercolor paper, including a pattern of local sunflower photos printed on Kozo paper which make up the vase.   18 1/2" x 15".
Bottom:  My 28 x 22 oil on stretched canvas painting done in 2012.

Lotus Pond Mixed Media Photo Collage

Like the previous post, this mixed media collage of cut up photographs, a variety of papers, and pen & ink, glued onto Arches watercolor paper (11x15), includes images from a photo of orange and yellow flowers, shot at the Botanical Gardens in Mendocino in 2015 (below).  Also included here are some cut-outs from a print of a digital composite, comprised of an underwater photo shot in the Galapagos together with a field of Calla Lilies in Mendocino - both shot this year.  The inspiration for the piece is a photo of a Lotus Pond in the beautiful "Extreme Horticulture" book by John Pfahl with an introduction by Rebecca Solnit.

Evolution of an Bird Inspired Idea

I seem to flit from media to media, as evidenced by the evolution of the above bird art.
From the bottom to the top:
1.  A 100% digital painting done in 2005, with an old painter software program.
2.  An oil painting done in 2006, recreating (kind of) the digital painting but adding a Vincent van Gogh sky.
3.  Another oil painting, this time in 2006, with a different bird and a pink cloud in the sky.  Sold to a friend.
4.  Fabric applique of a crow drawing in 2016, on a T shirt.
5.  The same applique crow, under a pink cloud and starry night sky, now done by cutting up photos and adding various bits of ripped Mulberry papers, all glued onto 100% arches cotton watercolor paper - just finished yesterday.

New Pen&ink Watercolors plus Mixed Media Collage on Paper

Top to Bottom:
1.  Pen&ink & watercolor 7x10 - my hand holding a photo of the Taj Mahal with a view out the window in Queen Anne, Seattle of Puget Sound
2.  Two portraits of grandsons Cole and Wilson Taylor (which look nothing like them but they were kind enough to pose)
3.  Bottle of Amber's favorite hot sauce, also sharing the view of Puget Sound out the window
4.  Something new!  Mixed Media collage with cut up photographs and various papers glued onto high quality 100% cotton rag paper then inked.  Vase of Flamingo Flowers is 11.5" wide x 15" high
5.  The first of this new formula collage:  Woman with a Bird on Her Head is 11" w x 15" h
6.  Bottom two paintings by nearly 8 year old twin grandsons:  Cole's is a still life of two beer can openers found on a treasure hung; bottom is by Wilson of his legs and feet resting on the balcony.

Man Versus Nature

Working on a new series of Photo Collage.  Here is the first.

My intent is to illustrate the reality that mankind does not live in a vacuum.  The natural world is beautiful.  It is up to us to try to keep it that way.  Why we exist is unknown; it is not clear where we come from nor where we go when we die.  What is known is the impact our lives have on the physical world we inhabit during our lifetime.

Celebrating World Sea Turtle Day

Lucky to have just gone swimming with a sea turtle in the Galapagos this past April on a great tour through Wilderness Travel http://www.wildernesstravel.com/.  Bonus shot (bottom) is a photo composite of two fish I shot underwater, snorkeling off of Santa Fe Island, with a sea turtle I drew in 2011.