Snakes in Trees (June 27, 2013)

I try to do Tai Chi everyday. As I was practicing it the other day in a park, I noticed some disturbance in the leaves of the tree next to me. When I was done practicing, I looked up and saw a huge black snake in the branches of the tree. It was about four or five feet long and seemed quite comfortable moving amongst the branches. This was the first time I had seen such a large snake in a tree so I took a few photos below. I believe it is a black rat snake. What do you suppose it was doing in the tree? Was it looking for birds to catch or maybe bird eggs or maybe bugs crawling on the tree. It was big enough that I think it was waiting for birds to prey on.

Wildflower Color Palette (June 17, 2013)

I went on a wonderful long bike ride and noticed all the fresh smells and colors of the wildflowers. As I was biking, I thought to myself that the colors were so beautiful and that it would be hard to get those colors if I wanted to paint them. Then it occurred to me that I could photograph the colors and sample those colors in Photoshop to reproduce those colors. As I stopped to photograph the colors I thought it would be a great idea to compose a color palette for an entire composition based completely on what colors you see on a specific hike at a certain time of day. Following is a specific color palette based on my bike trip. I included the actual photos that I sampled the colors from. I call this palette, June Wildflowers. This could easily be turned into a lesson to teach students about color palettes and the different value of every color.

Felt Axe (June 7, 2013)

Below is my latest felt sculpture. I constructed it with just raw felt and needles, I did not wish to color it. I think that by leaving it the raw uncolored wool, the object becomes more abstract and metaphoric. I put a ‘deckle edge’ on the cutting edge of the blade. A ‘deckle edge’ is a term used in hand made papermaking. A deckle is a wooden frame to control the size of the paper slurry, which results in a very thin, irregular, feathery edge. In contrast, a machined paper has a very sharp geometric cut edge. I liked this detail and think that it and the raw color evokes other objects like paper, bones, or maybe white porcelain.

But, then again, what do I know? What do you think?