Some weeks are long for no apparent reason. And then there are weeks like this.

To the Beach

Last Thursday after work I headed down to the Beach House, intending to stay there for about 10 days. I had a list of items to pack, including the dog and kittens. It all went in the car and off we went. Only for me to realize about halfway there that while I had packed clothing, I had neglected to pack underwear. So, the bra, panties, and socks I had on were it. Luckily the house has a washing machine, so it wasn’t a tragedy.

The beach had several day so unexpectedly nice weather, so it was a real pleasure. The waves are still mostly in “winter” mode, but Friday morning the tide was low enough that we got to walk down on the beach for a ways.

Key had a great time. The only improvements for him would have been something nice and dead to roll in and even more time.

“No”

To Reedsport

The reason we had stationed ourselves at the coast was that we were lucky enough to get into the NW3 trial on Sunday held in Reedsport. It’s about a 2 hour drive each way, but from Salem that distance is closer to 3.5 hours. We had a great trial and I left very happy. Unfortunately, due to a combination of wind, excitement, wind, and a small handling error we (yet again) didn’t get our NW3 trial. Did I mention it was windy?

On our way home we stopped by the Dean Elk Viewing area.

To Home

Due to a variety of factors, I decided to come home after work on Monday. The drive hadn’t done by back any good (it’s been doing much better, though) and I had made an appointment with the chiropractor. So, I took some final pictures of the small pieces of art I had completed over the weekend and trundled home.

The theme for painting this month is balance, and both of these are exercises. They were fun, but… different?

To Ankeny

The rest of the week passed in a combination of walks and work. We’ve been having some great sunrises and sunsets. And the animals beginning their spring courtships. We saw an otter down at the St. Louis Ponds. (See the video by going on Facebook.)

In spite of the beauty and good weather, by Friday, I was DONE with the week. Words fail me sometimes and I just end up chanting “all people are weird all the time.”

There have been sighting of a gang of Long-Eared Owls out at Ankeny and I asked a birding friend where they were. He gave me directions and I asked a photographer friend to join me on a little hike (without dogs.) I fully expected to miss them, as is my usual luck. Imagine my surprise when we found them!

There is one owl in this photo for sure. We found more the longer we hung around, and so there might be more in the photo.

As you can see, finding them was no small feat! They were really tucked down in the willows. I’m sure my friend, with his big camera, got great photos. But I got some pretty good ones myself!

To the Studio

After the hike I returned home and did some cleaning, some chores, and some general goofing off. But I started two new paintings and I hope I’ll have an update on Sunday.

This was a tough week for me. As I have mentioned, I have been struggling with back pain. Last Friday (9 days ago), I finally made it into the chiropractor, which lessened the acute discomfort, but didn’t solve the problem. Tuesday Ii went back for another appointment and he adjusted my hips. When he did the right side, I thought I would pass out. Wednesday I had to call my regular doctor for more drugs and toyed with the idea of going to the emergency room. When I went back to the chiropractor on Friday, I told him about it, and whether through coincidence or care, he got the adjustment right. I’m still sore, but I’ve been able to resume schedules and habits that resemble normal. Friday night was the first night in two weeks that I slept through the night.

Giddy from this success, I decided to head out to Baskett Slough to see if I could see the Gyrfalcon that everyone is talking about. No dice (as usual), but toward the end of my drive I found something almost as exciting.

I was so happy, I came back home and plunged into two new paintings using a technique I had thought about, but never done.

I plan to enter these into the ODFW Stamp Art Competition. Though I like them, and they are correct in color, markings, and conformation, I don’t have high hopes for the prize. The winner tend to favor VERY detailed renderings, and background is a factor in the judging. As you can see, I have (deliberately) left the background white. I may change my mind on the streaked horned lark (“King of the Hill”) because I think a dark background might set him off more.

These are three ideas (computer generated.) I need to ponder for a while, but I’m tempted to leave it alone and go with my original idea.

Over the weekend, I received word that my painting, “Transition” was accepted into the WSO Spring Exhibition.

“Transition”

It’s always exciting, and acceptance weekend is always fun because Facebook is filled with images of my friends’ paintings that got in. Congrats to everyone!

In spite of my time driving and then painting, I remained well enough on Sunday to tackle nosework practice, a small furniture rearrangement, and a massive house clean. Six loads of laundry, two loads of dishes, and weekly food prep. With struggling to just remain… alive?… over the last few weeks, the house has been lowered below even my housekeeping standards. But it’s a new week, and with this post finished, I’m ready to take it on.

Let’s not make it too challenging though, huh? I think we could all use a break!

With the President’s Day holiday, this will be a four-day weekend for me. I hadn’t been down to the beach house for a while, but a weather event was heading our way and it made the decision more difficult. I haven’t been able to do any ice painting for more than five years. As a reminder, this is when an artist takes advantage of extremely cold weather to apply paint to paper in hopes of getting the paint to crystalize and create texture. It needs to be really cold for ice painting to work, and while a storm system was coming, the temperatures were all predicted to be high 20’s-low 30’s. With this in mind, I decided to leave for the beach Wednesday night and take advantage of some quality time for painting. I worked Thursday, then got up Friday to go to the South Jetty in Newport. There had been reports of snow buntings and snowy plover, and the birding is always excellent.

While my target species did not appear, when I drove in, I did get a surprise.

In addition the pleasure of seeing elk, these photos really show how wet and miserable it was. It was cold with a wind and raining in the kind of soaking manner that gets into and on everything. Any two of these conditions are doable, but all three created a truly heinous combination. Though we did go down the jetty, it wasn’t long before we were back in the card with the heat on and the defrosters fighting to kill the humidity.

We did some car birding for the rest of the morning and had some really nice spots.

We drove around the north Yaquina Bay to Toledo, which has some of my favorite marsh views.

Cold and wet, we returned to the beach fireplace and I tried to decide what to work on. My friend, Sandra Pearce, has been working on Yupo lately, and it’s probably because of this and the weather that I felt drawn to finishing two images that had started out as ice painting experiments on Yupo.

I was so pleased with this, I took out another start and played with it.

Flushed with success, I decided to try the inspiring coastal marshes from earlier.

While this is not finished, and there are things I like, I don’t think I will count this as a tremendous success for one simple reason: I forgot about design. I’ll put it on my board and ponder it for a while.

I decided to go back to playing, so I took out some newly purchased Sumi ink.

I hadn’t used this before. There is something luscious about putting down the ink and also about getting such a dark line.

I had intended to return to Keizer on Saturday evening, but the Van Duzer corridor was closed and the weather indicated that the trip once I got over the mountains would be in freezing to near-freezing temperatures. I decided to wait until the morning. So, I got up this morning, checked the conditions, and hit the road. Because the Van Duzer was still closed, I had to go south through Corvallis before coming north up I-5. The weather was 38° clear through Corvallis, but once I started north, began to gradually lower. When I hit Salem, the ice was fully visible and the temperature was 33°. As I drove through the neighborhoods to home, the trees looked as though an angry giant had stepped on them. They were crushed, bent and broken. When I arrived home, I was relieved to find my power on and no big damage. My neighbor, however, wasn’t so lucky.

A little while after we arrived home, the city of Keizer came and removed the tree from the road, but they just pushed everything to the side. He’s still going to have to deal with the debris. I’d feel bad, but with our history, I’m afraid I don’t.

Everything is covered in ice. Up in Portland, they got eight inches of snow, but here, it’s all ice. The weight combined with the cold and wet and the wind was just more than the trees and bushes can handle.

Sometime over the last few days, we lost power, but it’s up again now. I have several Salem-area friends who have been without power for a couple days. I offered to let them come over and partake of the heat, but so far, they are staying home. I hope, where ever you are, you are able to stay home, stay warm, and stay safe.

I had a post all planned out yesterday. I did. I had points and a conclusion and pictures. It was going to be awesome. Then about 3:00 my back started to hurt. By 6:00 I had to give up sitting and go lie down. After a night with very little sleep, I finally did what I should have done in the first place and Googled the issue. I appear to have somehow strained my lower back, which, according to the website, destabilized the spine, causing periodic severe pain. I should ice for the first few days, take a painkiller, and avoid heat until day three. While this evening I am not 100% (approaching 10%, which is better than last night), I do think the ice is helping. So, I’m going to bang out some version of the post I wanted to do yesterday, have dinner, and call it a day.

***

I recently skimmed an article (another thing I can’t find) that suggested an artist needed to carve out (at a minimum) about 25% of their time for “admin” work such as keeping up the website, answering inquiries, entering shows, etc. This weekend, I spent WAY more than 25% of my artistic time fighting with my website.

One of my 2021 goals is to sell more paintings. This is mostly a goal that is coming from the enormous stack of finished art that is piling up around the house. As a friend says, “You don’t want to become the best collector of your own art.” A friend and I have come up with some goals (such as a regular newsletter) and she is helping me achieve them. Another goal is to get the inventory on my website up to date (I haven’t updated the paintings page for about two years.) I have a spreadsheet that I use (periodically) to keep track of things, so I thought I’d bang out an update. My friend and I had discussed it, and we decided that putting all my paintings on one page was too much, mostly because the load time was long (and people are impatient). So, I wanted to spread things out a little.

What should have been a simple fix turned into a three day saga involving two calls to tech help, more trial and error than the average scientific study, and a lot of words unbecoming an artist. In the end, I figured out the problem, but I am still waiting on a response from the tech company that caused the problem and we all may grow old before I get an answer. So, I patched up a fix and moved on until I figure out a better plan.

All this is to say that I only did one painting this weekend.

Sandhill crane (name TBA)

I have done a small version of this in the past, but this is bigger. Unfortunately, it may end up staying unfinished. My mop brush had a wire that scratched the surface of the paper and created the scratches you see. Sigh. Typical luck.

***

My best guess for the cause of the back pain mentioned earlier is that I did quite a bit of birding this weekend. I visited Basket Slough (Friday), Finley (Saturday), and Ankeny (Sunday). I’d get up in the morning and head out, returning by noon to fight with the computer. I did see some nice birds, though. My back is hurting, so I’m not going to give you a detailed explanation. Just enjoy.

Happy Holidays to all who are celebrating and (possibly even more exciting) happy countdown to the end of 2020. We’re in single digits now!

While this Christmas season hasn’t been as raw for me as last year, when it was the first anniversary of my mother’s sickness and death, my mood hasn’t been chipper either. I got up and wandered out to Basket Slough this morning. It was rainy and atmospheric and lovely. The big spot was a pack of three coyotes with a dead duck. My photos aren’t great of them, but it was an enjoyable encounter for me. This little pack wasn’t as wary as others I’ve come across and didn’t immediately dart for the hills.

Other critters and scenes were enjoyed as well.

I’ve been pondering how to add a little cheer to the rest of the day and landed on taking Ruth Armitage’s “Land Lines” online class, which I have access to as part of the Roaring 20’s program, which I will be doing again for another six months starting in January.

The first task was going through the first day’s materials, followed by a little journaling about the place you were interested in drawing. I may have cheated a little on that. Then we were asked to do warm ups with different lines. I cheated again and added color.

Then we were supposed to do two painting. Again, I cheated. I did these paintings late last week and they have more work to be done. But I’ll be using them to finish the assignment tomorrow.

In addition to the above, I viewed a video by admired artist Dawn Emerson. I’m toying with (more than toying with, really) taking her workshop in pan pastels next month. This might be the trouble I’ve been looking for.

I think I’m getting weirder.

This was a LONG week. Work right now is very busy. I got a new cell phone, which resulted in three days of technology rants. Various animals in the house are doing well, but the kittens are entering the “too cool” tween stage.

As this was my short weekend, I had a modest list of chores to accomplish and I banged them out Saturday morning. Then it was play time.

I promptly squandered that time trying to coax myself into doing something artistically productive. In one sense, I was a success. I finished the three paintings I wanted to send to the Western Federation of Watercolor Societies for (hopefully) jurying into their annual exhibition. This is my first time submitting anything, so my hopes aren’t terribly high. The quality of the competition is even harder than WSO!

I have had “Transition” ready to go for quite a while (since August).

But I had to make some adjustments to “Fleet”. You’ve seen so many versions, but this is my final (see other versions here.)

Finally, I wanted to submit “Big Personality”. I like this painting, but two trusted mentors have commented on the background. So, I made the decision to go “less party” and let my hummer shine (see original version here.)

Just before this writing, I finished the changes, took the photos, and submitted the work. Fingers crossed.

On the side of productivity, I was a complete failure. I sketched a few ideas, but nothing grabbed me. I wanted to paint, not plan. So… I did.

I’m getting quite a collection of dragons…

If you decide to send me to the funny farm, please let me take the crayons…

In an attempt to prove I have a vague association with reality, here are some photos from my weekend birding outing.

What a week! I had tummy trouble, neighbor shenanigans, and a phone uprising. After all that, what’s there to do but apply paint?

Other stuff

This happened to be my three-day weekend, so I actually did other stuff. Friday I took the dog for a hike and went to a variety of appointments and errands.

Saturday morning I got up and went to bird Ankeny. All the Willamette Valley NWRs are great this time of year, and it’s sometimes hard to choose, so I tend to migrate between them. I didn’t find anything earth-shattering, but I did get photos of an unusually cooperative heron and a Canvasback (only second time I’ve spotted that one, anywhere.)

Sunday, the early-morning fog stymied me, so I settled for a nice backyard feeder watching session.

Apply paint (not painting)

Even this nice bout of birdwatching couldn’t get me completely over my funk. What I felt like doing was just applying paint to paper. I didn’t want to draw. I didn’t want to plan a painting. I wanted to put the bright paint onto the white paper. That was it.

As such, this was my work over the weekend.

Nothing show-worthy, but I had a good time. Gonna call that a success.

Processing the rest

We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbor. ~ G. K. Chesterton

I’ve always been pretty fortunate with neighbors. Yes, a few have been loud. A few haven’t kept their houses up. A few just generally made me question reproduction criteria. But, generally, it’s been okay. As you know, I moved here about six months ago, and the neighborhood has proven to be tidy and quiet.

The first neighbor to great me was my neighbor to the west. As I was moving in, he came over, introduced himself, asked if I was an owner or a renter, grunted at my answer, and left. And that’s all I’ve heard from him in six months. I’ve waved a few times when I’ve seen him.

Actually, I’d like to add to that statement. I did speak to him one other time. Over the summer, Key spotted a racoon one night about 3am and ran out to guard the joint. He made A LOT of noise. The next night, the same racoon was back. I grabbed Key after a bark or two, dragged him into the house, and locked us all in. The next morning, the neighbor came over to ask me to please not let my dog bark at three in the morning “every night.” I apologized profusely, explained about the racoon, and I’ve kept the doggie door shut at night from then on. He said, and I thought it was a weird comment, “There isn’t a racoon every night,” before stomping off. I was on a Zoom call for work, so I couldn’t really pursue the conversation.

November 20th, I went into the backyard to do a dog cleanup for the yard guy. When I was doing that, I spotted a plastic container filled with green fluid that looked A LOT like antifreeze. It had clearly been slipped under a gap in the fence. I pondered this, but threw it away and made a mental note to repair that second of the fence as soon as possible.

Then November 29, I went outside and spotted this.

I was stunned. It was the same liquid as before (I think.) But I just couldn’t imagine what was going on. I pushed it back under the fence, went down and bought some fence stakes, and figured I would fix the fence on the first nice day. Later that day, I spotted one of the women who live there and asked her if she knew anything about the plate. She said no.

Wednesday, the weather turned and it was cold and clear. I made arrangements to take a break during the day for fence repair. At “lunch” I went into the backyard and drive stakes every twelve inches along the fence. Then I disassembled a second of the fence where the cross beams had completely rotted away, leaving the slats standing up mostly by habit. This little job had been on my list for a few months (since I had first spotted it), but it hadn’t risen to the top because I didn’t think it was urgent.

When I took down the fence, I found an “anti-bark” device installed on the fence.

The ideal way to control your neighbor’s dog and its nonstop barking! Disguised as an ordinary birdhouse, this weatherproof PetSafe® Outdoor Bark Control Ultrasonic Unit detects barking up to 50′ away and emits a safe, high-pitched sound (inaudible to humans) that encourages the pooch to cease and desist.

Huh. Okay, clearly there was a problem.

I finished the fence repair and went inside to Google what to do and worry. I ended up calling the police (non-emergency number) and talking to them to get advice. Not surprisingly, there isn’t much they can (or at least will) do. They encouraged me to talk to my neighbor, which was the advice of the websites as well.

After sleeping badly, I went over to talk to them at lunch the next day. I had spoken to a friend who is good at mediation and facilitation (she likes that kind of stuff!) about what words to use and I was prepared to ask them to “help me understand” the problem.

When I made my foray, their garage door was open and the same woman as before was inside, smoking. I had been hoping to talk to the older gentleman that I had first met, but I would take who I could get.

She confirmed that her dad didn’t like the dog and had put up the barking stuff. But she said she didn’t know about the plates and contended it was just trash. She also said she didn’t think the dog barked at all anymore, though he did in the first few weeks. I don’t know about “at all” but this generally agrees with what I think, especially as I’m working from home so much. I begged her to please let me know if there was a problem. If they have a concern, I will try to fix it. And went home.

The next day I saw the gentleman while I was taking Key for a walk. I made a point of saying hello. He said hello back, but it was a pretty bland exchange. I noticed that day that the anti-bark device had been reinstalled on the fence.

Sigh.

I am not sure I can do more. I have a reminder for myself to check the yard before letting Key out. The kittens are 100% indoor all the time.

I posted this basic story on Facebook during the week (partially for documentation purposes), and the outpouring of care and concern was a real balm for my soul. Thank you, friends.