The weekly Zoom art practice session with friends far away continue. We started these virtual meetups back in the Summer of 2020 as a way to stay in touch and have something fun to do during the Great Pandemic. There are currently five of us participating regularly -- three friends from N. Seattle/Shoreline area, one from near Chicago, and me.
We did twice weekly art practice sessions until Tina, the organizer, retired earlier this year, and have now added a third day. On Wednesdays and Fridays, Tina shares her vast collection of images -- basically, stuff she liked on Instagram, Pinterest, et al, which includes lots of landscapes, buildings, plants, animals -- she has a good eye for images that might be fun to try drawing or painting. We spend some time agreeing on a photo we all can work with, and then we draw and paint that same photo in our own ways. We spend about 90 minutes on each piece, chatting away, and sharing our work at the end.
Here are some pieces I did from the past two weeks of these Wed/Fri sessions:
Flower from the primula family, done digitally on the iPad using Adobe Fresco.
We chose this pic because of the dramatic sky. I used watercolor.
Definitely the most challenging picture of late, which I also did in watercolor.
Tina loves Japan, and has saved lots of photos from there. This is part of the Honen-In temple grounds in Kyoto, done with ink and watercolor.
On Mondays, we have a session where we all work on our own projects, such as finishing up a piece, or a longer work that will take several weeks such as an oil painting etc. Recently I've been working on a drawing/painting on Mondays that will probably take a few months (unless I work more on it outside the sessions). It's a complex picture of Aziraphale's bookshop, which I'm doing on toned paper using a little ink but mostly watercolor and gouache.
After three Mondays, and a few extracurricular sessions, this is how far I've got:
It's 9x12". Some of those books are 1/16" wide, and I've been using a teensy brush to paint them:
There are a whole lot more books to go...yay!
So that's the art update. Now, on to the Fightin' Coopers!
At one of our regular parks there have been two juvenile Cooper's Hawks hanging around, and one day we got a treat -- they were in a meadow, flying at each other in an aggressive manner. No blood was shed, it was more for show, apparently. Or possibly one had caught something the other one wanted -- we'll never know for sure. But I did get some good photos of the encounter, which lasted just about five minutes.
The two birds often displayed what's called "mantling" behavior, where they spread their wings over prey to protect it from greedy siblings et al, but there was no sign of any prey (I looked over the area after they left -- nothing but grass).
They mostly just spread their wings and yelled at each other, as siblings do:
There was an occasional respite...
But they quickly got back into the fray.
Note how incredibly puffed out the lower hawk is -- trying to look as big and fearsome as possible by fluffing out those feathers.
Possibly they are having territory disputes, and soon one or both will need to move on to new areas to set up their own hunting grounds away from both each other and their parents.
Glad I had such good timing on what started out as just another dog walk. Five minutes earlier or later, and I would have missed the whole encounter. Yay!
That's all for now.
Hope you are all doing well out there, wherever you are!
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