RMW Ramblings

  Mallard I painted Mallard  today out on the porch.  He took about three hours. He's in a found frame, painted on the thin wood panel that was in the frame behind the glass which I discarded.  My original thought was to paint him in a stylize version with metallic and iridescent paints, but I don't have them here.  As a result the little painting (postcard size) is  a close copy of my reference photo which I found on-line.  I flipped the image horizontally to  face the duck to the right.  Not a lot of imagination here.     

  Patina To fit a larger found frame I painted Patina.     In Patina I experimented with the color palette of the oxides and carbonates of copper as they develop a patina.  I also used metallic copper paint. Some of her belt, collar and shoulder cuffs are in raised dimension. The painting coloration was informed by the color and patterns that develop with use on the copper kitchen counter I built for our cottage.  On occasion I polish it back to a clean metallic sheen and a new patina emerges with time and use.   I have considered extending the patinated copper conceit to the frame, but so far I've resisted the temptation.

, Cathartes Turkey Vulture We frequently see turkey vultures cleaning up our beach.  While we usually see them as ugly, they have an imposing presence and serve an ecological service.  Here is a painting I did of one, Cathartes.. .     Wikipedia tells us " Cathartes is the Greek word καθαρτής, for "purifier," referring to these vultures' role as "cleansers" that "tidy up" decomposing corpses in nature." I labeled my vulture with a heraldic vulture and his botanical  name above my monogram. You may have seen my oversized vulture for Halloween on the entrance to Rockford Tower...

  The Innovation Shelf Sitting next to my little collection of books on the fundamental constants of Euler's Identity (blogs on March 14 & November 3, 2021) are a group of books on significant technology innovations over the last half-century plus. Instant: The story of Polaroid follows the development of instant photography and its meteoric success.  By 2001 Polaroid was bankrupt and the brand name sold off.   The other imaging technology business that fascinated me in my graduate school years was Xerox.  Copies in Seconds follows the story of xerography from Chester Carlson's innovation, Battelle, and Haloid which became Xerox.   Dealers in Lightning follows Xerox's break-out research at their Palo Alto Research Center, Xerox PARC.  Here they pioneered the basic elements of the modern computer including graphical user interface, the computer mouse, Ethernet, and more.  Xerox fumbled their opportunity and Steve Jobs snatched the ball and ran....

  Bugs & Such 2 The Rest of Alaina's Bugs You saw the ant, bee, and butterfly from Alaina's Bugs & Such , a collection of my rhymes and illustrations I did for her first birthday several years back.  Here are the others from the book.   Here a dragonfly lands on Alaina's finger...  And on a facing page they fly about a cone-flower...   Then comes the fireflies... And the ladybugs...       The mantis... And finally, a spider... The entire book with all of my verses and  drawings.is posted as a pdf at https://docdro.id/gIoj19O

  Earlier Butterflies In the last posting we saw Alaina's butterfly and its antecedents. Another butterfly is Monarch, a small painting to fit an unusual found frame...    An airborne milkweed seed is floating.  Milkweed is a major source of food for the monarch butterfly.    Here is a insert panel painting for a pegboard shelf at our cottage, since replaced by a painting by Mary...    

  Bugs & Such Butterflies For our great-granddaughter's first birthday four plus years ago, I did a book, Bugs and Such , of insects and like, with rhymes and painting/drawings.  I've been posting some of these critters on Facebook.  I'm now up to butterflies.    Here is Alaina's butterfly...    This image is based on an earlier painting I did, Buckeye and Rudbeckia. ...     This in turn was referenced to photos I took of butterflies and bees on the rudbeckia near our cottage kitchen door.   If you missed them, here is the ant...   And here is the bee...