Another Long Diapause....

I've been a little uneven since losing my sweet boy. He was always there for me,

and I hope I did all I could for him.

This manifests in the ability to be at times excited about some things that are happening in my life, but other times, especially when all is quiet, I cannot help but remember Maceo. It becomes inertia and a lack of energy. Needless to say I've fallen off the wagon completing the year-long art project I challenged myself to. I will pick it back up, at the very least to finish the Creative Sprint portion, in due time.

The photo above is from the Orlando Wetlands in Christmas, Florida, where I spent a few hours of my Saturday. It was a very good day for viewing animals and I saw my first dusky pygmy rattlesnake (a venomous critter) in the wild:

Actually, there were two of them at different intervals along the same path. These are very small snakes, usually maxing out at two feet. You can see this one's tiny rattle, which is about half an inch long, near the left edge of the photo.

And then there was this glass lizard (a legless lizard) in the Dirt Patch. It slithered right up to my feet.

I also have my first land prospect for the tiny house since leaving VA.

See? Excitement.

And I miss Maceo.

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Day 82 (Day 5 CS) - Collection

"What do you collect? Work with a collection of your own or borrow one." Pure Admiration It's funny, I only recently acknowledged to myself that yes, I do collect something: literature and art books from Heian-era Japan (794-1185), and here is a prompt for that. I just acquired the Choju Giga art book seen in the background (hooray!) which inspired me to recycle two projects from October 2015's CreativeSprint and use them in a different context. The mantispid was made on CS 2015 Day 1 and the painting is a miniature print-out of a mock Choju Giga drawing I did on CS 2015 Day 8 . The easel and paintbrush are made of kraft cardstock. [April 6, 2016]

Day 15 - Historical Precedent

Day 15 Learn about something that happened today in history and make something inspired by it. Rhinoceros Beetle Gong I now realize I may have misread the prompt. I thought I had to merely learn about some piece of history and use that as inspiration, but I'm sure on this day 1,000 years ago, 500 years ago, or even last year, a gong was sounded. Oh well! On the 15th I went to the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) in Phoenix and based my project on the many gongs in their collection. They had a display illustrating how gongs are traditionally made (i.e. - labor intensive), and I learned that there are generally three types of gongs ( suspended gongs or tam-tams which are flat; bossed which have a raised center, are tuned, and sometimes suspended; and bowl gongs which are more like large bells). They originated in China, their first uses are thought to be as a signal for the workers to return from the fields since some gongs are loud enough to be h...

Day 8 - Master Works

Day 8 Recreate or interpret a work of art you admire. This is based on a famous panel of the Choju Giga scroll (Animal Caricatures or Scrolls of Frolicking Animals) which was created sometime in the late 12th century in Japan. Similar to the original's ink on paper, mine was rendered in India ink and red acrylic ink on Bristol paper. I've replaced the rabbit with a click beetle trying to right itself, and the frogs were replaced with mantids (feeling ill today and my hand started cramping after I drew the beetle. The mantids aren't as well done as I would like. I may redo this sometime because I think it came out cute otherwise). The top "seal" in red says sumimasen , which is Japanese for excuse me! and the lower one is my name in Japanese. This was fun to make, but sketching with a brush is a lot harder than it looks, and no erasing! The Choju Giga artist was truly a master, I very much admire the brush work in the original. Here is the o...

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