Shell Creatures

Steven Wright, an American comedian, declared, "I have a large seashell collection which I keep scattered on the beaches all over the world. Maybe you've seen it." 

Well, yes, Steven, I have seen part of your shell collection.  In fact, some of your shell collection I keep at my house.  Only I think of it as MY shell collection.  Sorry. 

I like shells.  I like seeing them.  I like collecting them.  I like going through my collection.  I also like turning them into creative little critters. 

This little critter reminds me of Mr. Comic Relief (also known as He-Who-Never-Gets-His-Acorn) from Ice Age.

This cutie started out as a horse...but something about it reminded me of my mom's goats, so I just went with it! 

 Seeing these fellows high up in the mountains is quite a treat...

And, speaking of animal sightings, guess what I saw this week? 

So I had to make a kangaroo, too!

A friend picked out this face and ear combo...I just added a nose and turned it into a cute little dancing mouse.

And here they are, all together.  The happy shell family of critters.

A Painting in Honor of a Cat

On Friday night, I had a hankering to paint. 

It happens from time to time.

Okay, maybe more often than that.

Sometimes I bash the feeling back down into hiding with phrases like, "No time for that now! I'm too busy with other things!"

Other times I embrace it full-heartedly.

This time I had an excuse.

A friend's beloved four-legged feline companion had needed to be put to sleep earlier in the week. That's hard. I know this first hand.


Her cat was a beautiful black and white kitty with a lopsided black nose-marking...I knew this from a Facebook picture, even though I've never seen the cat in person. The second I saw the photo I knew I should paint her.  With the last of the Whitaker peanut butter chocolate, the unusual animation Rango, and my collection of painting supplies, I set to work.

  

Robert Genn, the author of a bi-weekly newsletter ruminating on various art-inspired topics, wrote earlier this week comparing painting to solving a puzzle.  He said, "I commit myself to one stroke or another at the beginning, then look around to see what my next move might be. Thus, I go from move to move--working out the puzzle--until it's either completed or abandoned."  His words really resonated with me because they describe the process that happens every time I paint.

Originally I was picturing a spiraling daisy sun because I love the idea of spiral suns.  After playing with it a bit, I decided just to have one large sunshine-filled daisy instead and painted over the original version.

You wouldn't guess that was part of a daisy, would you?   In the end it worked well enough for the time allotted to the project, but it's the weakest link of the painting.  It needed some more detailed brushwork...and I'm still not sure about the greenish background to the central flowers (daisies are composite flowers).  Realistically, green isn't bad, but one of the joys of painting is that it doesn't have to be realistic!

The real problem-solving came in when I was trying to separate my whites.  White cat cheeks and white whiskers against white daisy petals with more white daisies in the foreground.  I was adding shadows and reflected color left, right, and center!  

LINKS: 

•  Robert Genn's muse on puzzle-solving and intuition.