Tag Archives: McFall

A New Gig for the New Year

Posted 1/4/2022 by Kerry McFall

CoverPage

Cover art for the Casa de Manana newsletter by yours truly

I volunteered to do some art for the cover of our bi-monthly resident’s newsletter here at Casa de Manana, and that’s the result.  The back cover explains where residents can find the models posing for the “portraits”:

CASA Parrot Tiles

This fella resides just outside the southeast door from the patio to the upper lounge, a gorgeous example of the original Casa tile art from the 1920’s.

Hummingbird

We see these jet-propelled flyers as they zip from blossom to blossom, and occasionally engage in aerial battles with any other bird silly enough to fly past our balconies.  When a sunbeam strikes their feathers, irridescent colors take our breath away!

Gull Discouraging Device

Seagulls decorate the patio and rooftops with their own brand of graffiti… The latest discouraging devices seem to be working: wires strung across the patio at just the width of their wingspread!  Which of course Mic (a particularly loud and chatty gull that one resident named Mic) finds immensely annoying.

Pelican

These majesties soar above us and float in the cove below us, masters of aerial serenity and Olympic diving and fishing skills.

Pompeii

This pet cockatoo can be seen making the rounds of residential shoulders, pecking at earrings and hearing aids, and occasionally flying high in spite of the best efforts of the Wing Clippers!

Rooster

Occasionally seen strutting around on a walking device in the Casa Dining Facility. Move over, Foghorn Leghorn! (This is actually a metal sculpture, about 18” tall, that rides on the lady’s walker)

The folks here seem to enjoy my art, and I really had fun putting it all together.  For the next edition, I’m thinking about all the exotic flowers around here… or maybe the types of waves and tides and cliffs… or all the fish-related experiences… or, oh, dear, here go the fireworks in my head, too many ideas, too little time!

Queen Elizabeth Rose

Posted November8, 2021 by Kerry McFall

StillLifeRose

CASA Rose #1 -Queen Elizabeth

Casa de Manana has a rose bush planted on campus for each resident.  When your rose blooms, you can cut the blossoms – and in my case, paint them!  Ours is apparently known as Queen Elizabeth, creamy petals with deep red edges.  I’m thinking this might be the start of a series of rose paintings… but that being said, I have to add that rose portraits are really tricky…  It’s so easy to get sucked in to fussing over every little ruffle on every little curl of every little petal!

#rosesmixedmedia #roseportraite #QueenElizabethRose

Find the Good and Praise It

Posted October 1, 2021 by Kerry McFall

Painting of La Jolla Cove

Sea Lions at La Jolla Cove

 One of my new passions is watching the sea lions here in La Jolla.  According to the locals and some docents at La Jolla Cove, this particular bunch took up residence here sometime in about 2016.  The females come here to give birth, and then they spend several months teaching the pups to swim, fish, and generally be denizens of the deep.   A few males show up now and then to bark and complain and get on everyone’s nerves, occasionally staging sumo wrestling matches on the rocks with younger males.  Those guys are humongous, up to 800 pounds.

I can spend so long standing there watching that my feet go to sleep.  Sea lions make terrific “life drawing” artist’s models, posing in the sun like furry mermaids, the young ones turning somersaults and playing tag in the surf.  But we all know that no passion is without a dark side, and this is no exception – I hereby nominate the idiots (mostly tourists) who harass the sea lions for The Darwin Award.  And the Queen’s Dog Whisperer agrees, as quoted from  https://www.mcall.com/sd-cm-ljl-dog-whisperer-20180910-htmlstory.html:

“That’s stupid, that,” Mugford said, motioning toward a group of young people about five feet from a group of sea lions and inching closer with their cell phones out. “It endangers the mother-pup bond and it endangers those people.

“Sea lions are wildlife, just like grizzly bears or bison,” he continued. “Obviously, having those signs warning people not to get close does no good if people ignore them. What we need is a few well-documented cases of sea lions biting people and then perhaps people would keep their distance more.” 

To sum up, people who pester wildlife don’t have the sense that God gave a Goose.  For most of the summer, there were yellow tapes blocking the steps carved or worn into the rocks where the pups and their mothers were resting.  Most people stayed back, but every time I was on that Cove walkway, there were the selfie seekers, down there with the sea lions.  The tapes came down in mid-September, I guess because the local ordinance was only effective during “active pupping season”.  But damnation (as my sainted father would have said), those pups are now  teenagers in sea lion development terms.  Being the Momma of a teen makes ANY woman cranky!  If you mess with the rookery residents, you make ALL those Mommas mad… and 300 pounds of angry Momma coming at you on slippery wet rocks is a recipe for disaster.

Alex Haley said, “Find the good and praise it,” quoting his grandmother I believe.    I’ve always thought that was a good philosophy to guide our lives – otherwise we wind up like those noisy male sea lions, complaining and getting on everyone’s nerves.  And so I offer my drawing of a little boy, sitting on the wall to watch the sea lions in quiet fascination, wearing his bicycle helmet, his scooter pulled up politely alongside.  Occasionally he and his big sister, who stood beside him, giggled at the antics going on down by the surf line.  Their Momma and Daddy did a good job of helping them be caring humans in a changing climate – good job.  Maybe their examples will rub off on rowdy, thoughtless tourists.

Boy Watching Sea Lion

Find the Good and Praise It: Good Boy!

#LaJollaCove #SeaLions #SelfieSeekers #FindTheGoodAndPraiseIt  #ResponsibleCitizens

Are We There Yet?

posted August 4, 2020 by Kerry McFall, who is very tired of this 2020 ride…

Remember when you were a kid in the back seat of the car and the trip was taking an eternity?  That’s what this year feels like, and this month (which is now known as Faugust because it’s weirdly foggy and gloomy here in San Diego), and this week, and this afternoon, and – yeah.  The answer to “Are we there yet?” from my Dad generally sounded a lot like this hawk looks:

Swainson's Hawk painting

Swainson’s Hawk, mixed media by Kerry McFall

The answer from my Mom, the first time one of us asked, was usually something like, “Almost…” or “Pretty soon…”  The second time we asked her, the answer was essentially the same as Dad’s.  Only with less profanity.

This beautiful feisty bird was photographed originally by Christine Paige, Idaho wildlife biologist, who says that it will soon be flying off to Argentina… I wish it well, and I hope there’s no kids in the backseat.  I am fascinated by that blue beak!

Meanwhile, something that helped take my mind off the news/journey/insanity last week was a video about Urban Sketching by Sketchbook Skool.  Since I didn’t much want to go out into the Urban insanity here (“Life’s  A Beach, Bro!  Grab a Brew!  Who needs a mask?!”), I just paused the video and sketched the instructor, Jason Das.  Best hat I’ve ever done!

sketch of man in hat

Jason Das Urban Sketcher, mixed media by Kerry McFall

So Hang in There, folks.  But no, I don’t think we’re there yet.

#SketchbookSkool  #JasonDas #ChristinePaige  #Swainson’sHawk #AreWeThereYet #UrbanSketching

 

 

 

Floofy Red Flowers Instead of Fireworks This Year?

Posted June 25, 2020 by Kerry McFall

Red Gum Tree aka Beaker, mixed media by Kerry McFall

San Diego’s climate is often described as Mediterranean… but I’ve been to the Mediterranean, and this ain’t it.  Basil is Mediterranean.  Grapes are Mediterranean.  June Gloom (and May Gray) are not – I mean, for crying out loud, has it been this gray all month in Italy?!  I think not.

I’ve been trying not to whine about this for 8 weeks, but I’m an Oregonian, born and bred.  Sunshine is a major reason why I’m down here, but right now the surf and the sky are just all one big expanse of No Color, enough to make me think I’m back in Newport, Oregon, only not as wet.  Or cold.  Sigh.  Even so, San Diego does have saving graces: Red Flowering Gum Trees (a type of Eucalyptus) provide the earthbound equivalent of fireworks!  And that may be as close as we come in these Pandemic times to the old “bombs bursting in air” July traditions.  Bees and hummingbirds seem to drown happily in their fluffy blossoms, and I’m pretty sure that Jim Henson drew the Muppet character of Beaker based on the shape and coloration of red gum blossoms – see his head up there, second flower from left?  Just add googly eyes!

Once the blossoms are done, they transform into little goblet-shaped woody seed pods, shown below the vase.  I’m convinced that those goblets are used by the local Faerie folk, who carefully empty the last drops from all the beer cans and whiskey bottles left on the beach into their goblets, and then they enjoy some quite rowdy post-party parties!

Powder Puff Tree, mixed media by Kerry McFall

There are also Powder Puff bushes here, with even fuzzier round blossoms.  The seeds of the powder puff flowers are more like little hard holly berries that cluster into a raspberry shape, leaving berry decor on the plant for a long time past the blooming season, which was last March.  The Gum trees apparently never stop blooming – now is prime blossom time evidently, but there always seem to be a few branches on each tree heavy with red blooms, and seed pods in various stages of party-readiness.  Pretty magical all in all, even if the sky doesn’t cooperate!

Purple Rain

Posted June 4, 2020 in San Diego, CA

Mixed Media by Kerry McFall

Jacaranda – Purple Rain

I’m accustomed to Oregon’s “pink snow” week, when ornamental cherry trees drop pale pink petals by the thousands onto the streets and sidewalks.  It usually happened in May.  This in no way prepared me for the absolute saturation of deep purple blossoms of San Diego’s many Jacaranda trees.  These trees start out slowly in mid-May, with a few blooms tantalizing passersby from way up in the bare branches.  But now, early June, it is breathtaking to see the trees in rows, draped in the deepest of royal velvet cloaks, blue from one angle, purple from another, but never ever pale, no subtle lavenders or lilacs.  Just PURPLE!!  And once in full bloom, it rains purple for days!

The trees, according to my Google sources, are a type of Mimosa, Jacaranda mimosifoila, with tiny rows of leaves similar to the Mimosas I have seen in other places in the world.  But instead of the Seuss-like fuzzy pinkish blooms of those mimosas, these have big bell-like blossoms that could swallow a hummingbird alive!

I think I saw my first Jacaranda in Botswana, but there were so many other amazing new things for me to absorb that they took a back seat.  The Shelter In Place happening now in Southern California has given me many opportunities to walk through the neighborhoods, so now I know where to find the prime Purple Rain.  In the painting above, I tried to capture the special leaning-toward-indigo color of the shadows, and the sheer volume of petals, with limited success.  I think this may be another example of me being overwhelmed by color…  But I may take another stab at it using a more botanical style.  Unless I get distracted by some other Seussical wonder… or a hummingbird…

 

Back in the Saddle Again (figuratively speaking)

It’s been a little over a year since I posted here.  I’ve been painting and drawing this whole time, but life got complicated.  After the end of cancer treatments, a major relocation to California, and a couple of surprises including pandemic pandemonium, I’m going to try to pick back up here with my art and stories.

Photo of neighborhood fence   

  1.  Photo of fence                        2. First watercolor pass

3.  Mixed media final version – “Morning Plunge”

Down the street a ways, there is a tall fence where the morning glory pours over the top like a waterfall.  I love the riot of color, and I recently noticed (because what else is there to do when your favorite beach boardwalk is closed?) that the vine has two completely different types of leaf.  Pretty sure that’s not possible I told myself, so off I went down Uncle Google’s Rabbit Hole and sure enough, there is such a thing and it’s called Ivy Leaf Morning Glory.  It has the expected valentine-shaped leaves, plus 3-pronged ivy-ish leaves.

Techniques

I enjoy reading how other artists achieve their special effects with different media, so I’ll try to remember to include these notes.  For this painting I used some of the leftovers from our move: two types of plastic shelf liners, one with parallel grooves and one with a lot of little holes in a pretty random pattern.  I painted the areas where I wanted the texture, placed the plastic over it, covered it with a book to weight it down, and left it to dry.  Once it’s dry, I sometimes paint over it, draw over it with ink, or shade it with the side of a colored pencil.  The pencil technique seems to bring out the edges of the textures.

Turns out the holey one wasn’t the best choice for a sky area, but I think it could be nice for shady forest backgrounds, and I like the parallel effect for wood grain.

 

Pandora’s Recipe Box

Posted by Kerry McFall December 3, 2018

Christmas is upon us, time to make fudge and cutout cookies, so out comes the old recipe box.  ‘Dusty’ doesn’t do justice to the accumulation of oily residue and fingerprints and smudges on it as I wrestle it out of its position as honorary bookend on the cookbook shelf, resulting in the usual cascade of books and 3-ring binders off the shelf and onto the floor.  Dang.

sketch of wooden box and recipes

“Pandora’s Recipe Box,” mixed media by Kerry McFall

I pry up the lid of the box, and there is “Kerry from Dad 87” etched into the inside top with a woodburning tool.  He made it for me during his Woodworker Phase, one of many oak-and-walnut projects, including my pepper mill.  Utilitarian and one-of-a-kind, both my Dad and the box.

The box is packed so full that opening it makes me wonder what keeps all those cards and papers from literally jumping out.  The dividers, printed in my hand-writing on blue cardboard, are frayed and stained.  Given the accessibility of recipes via the Internet, this collection doesn’t get as much use as it did back in the day, so it’s been several years since I really paid any attention to it, but I’m on a mission: the fudge recipe on the back of the marshmallow crème jar just doesn’t look right.  Didn’t the marshmallow jar used to be way bigger?  Wasn’t it the large can of evaporated milk, not this itty bitty thing?  I need to find my old “original” recipe, THE recipe that actually results in creamy, delectable fudge.  As opposed to gooey chocolate sauce with walnuts sunk to the bottom…

As my fingers “walk” through the categories (two of my favorites are “Front Burner” and “Tea Treats”), I am remembering when I discovered the hard way that just because my mother gave me A recipe didn’t mean she had given me THE recipe.  I had tried for years to make Parker House Rolls during the holidays, but they were never as light and fluffy as hers, which I couldn’t understand because she had copied the recipe for me.  And then one day, she said smugly, “Well, I see you still can’t make them melt in your mouth like mine!” The light dawned.  I compared the two handwritten 3 x 5 cards.  She had written “1 package yeast” on my card, hers said “2 pkgs yeast.”  She had written “let rise” on mine, hers said “let rise, punch down, knead lightly, let rise again.”  Oh for crying out loud!

I put that memory behind me with a low growl, and finally coax out the recipe in Mom’s handwriting that says fudge.  And sure enough, the label on the jar is different in several places from this old yellow chunk of legal pad where she copied the recipe, so I’m going to have to call my sister-in-law.  She’s got Mom’s old originals now… but then I realize that squeezing the recipes back into the box is not going to happen unless I get rid of some of the never-used bulk.  In my head I hear the words to “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie…” echoing: “…he’s probably going to want a glass of milk…”

But it can’t be helped, they just refuse to be jammed back into the box.  I start at the back.  There is the 3-hole-punch version – with hand-drawn X-rated illustrations – of “Fricasseed Boar Balls” from a once-young man who shall not be named… I’ve always thought this could be used to great advantage in a blackmail effort given his affinity for public office, so clearly that has to go back in the box!  There is a page of graph paper with a recipe for a potato casserole, in French, from someone named Devismes – nope, recycle.  But I wonder who that was?  Is that the family I stayed with on my first trip to France?  A double-folded card spells out a complex process for a casserole from the mother of the husband of my husband’s ex-girlfriend, with a sweet note at the end: “When you take the first bite, think of Ursula and Christmas 1993 in Corvallis”.  Aww, what a sweetheart.

And so it goes.  I find my long lost recipe for Hot Buttered Rum squirreled away under Vegetables.   There are pages and pages of typed gourmet entries (which means the main ingredient was cream of mushroom soup) from my Aunt Muriel, who loved to entertain – I never tried most of them so they go into the recycling, but a few are now family classics.  Most of the recipes are on 3 x 5 cards in the handwriting of the cooks who shared them with me, with unintentional samples of most of the ingredients spattered here and there – those are very hard to part with.  Ultimately I was able to recycle just enough so that I can close the box – but this little exercise was thought provoking.  When I google a recipe, it comes with no memories, fond or otherwise.  It comes with no evidence of little helpers in the kitchen with peanut butter on their fingers, no notes from friends, no reminders of co-workers who organized recipe exchanges, no clippings from ancient newspapers with ads on the back for honey at $.59.  It’s faster, yes, but it is SO not personal.

I wipe down the recipe box, and try not to think about how much shelf space I could regain if I took the time to sort through the cookbooks before I smash the books back into a row and wedge the box back on the shelf.  The fudge ingredients are calling my name…  I’ll save the cookbook shelf “weeding” for another Mouse and another cookie on another day.  Besides, I had to write about this while it was fresh in my head, and after I make the fudge I want to do a watercolor of all the ingredients and the recipe box… Time Flies!

(No surprise, finished the painting, still haven’t gotten around to the fudge or the cookies or the cookbook shelf.  What the hey – Christmas is still WEEKS away, right?)

Natural Wonders

Posted August 15, 2018 by Kerry McFall

The term “Natural Wonders” may bring to mind the Tetons, Victoria Falls, orchids, rhinos.  But think smaller, think about your own little piece of paradise.  The wonders are right beside you, you just have to look a little closer, a little longer, maybe get out of your car and put down your phone.  And maybe grab a sketchbook or a paintbrush and make the full impact of that wonder last for hours, even years!

oaks on a hill plus a turkey feather

“Bald Hill Iconic Oaks”, mixed media by Kerry McFall

Sunday morning I got up early – well, not fishing trip early, but early enough that the cat wasn’t clamoring for breakfast yet.  As soon as I could get my sketching gear into the car (and feed Sparky) I was off up the road toward Bald Hill Farm, aka my “church”.  The staff at Greenbelt Land Trust (which owns the farm) had organized a “Paint Out”, so I got to go beyond my usual trails and the closed gates, past the house and barns, all the way around the next long curve in the gravel road to the shop.

Rebecca, who works for the Trust, explained a bit about the Trust and how the land belongs to the Calapuya people, which we are holding in trust for the future.   The farm is being managed as a working farm with a goal of returning the landscape to the native oak savannah of Calapuya times and to bring back many endangered or at risk local species.  I find it comforting to know there are so many people in this area with priorities focused on the future rather than profit.

The critical first part of a paint-out involves choosing your subject.  For me, that was right where I stood beside the shop, looking west toward a cluster of oaks outlined against the crest of a golden hayfield.  The bottom edges of those oak branches looked like they had been drawn with a ruler, a product of hungry cattle or deer reaching up as high as possible for tender new growth.  A gobbling noise drifted down to me, and voila, a flock of wild turkeys suddenly found themselves in my painting!

A few more quick strokes, and I went in search of another subject.  As I walked through the oak forest, avoiding poison oak, and mysterious holes in the ground (snakes? bunnies? moles?) I gathered several turkey feathers. Those turkeys are big, and so are their feathers, 10.5” x 2.5”.  If you pull the “vanes” of the feather apart, (vanes are those little skinny threads coming out of the quill, the stuff that clumps together and makes it, well, a feather,) you can see what might have been the inspiration for Velcro – talk about a wonder of nature!  And then you can smooth the vanes back together again and the feather is good as new!  Did you ever do that when you were a kid?

I was about to wander past the logging truck parked up the hill, then decided it might make a challenging subject, a contrast to all the surrounding organic shapes.  Apparently it’s used when needed to clear out the invasive fir trees in the oak savannah areas.  The background was splashy and quick, just took a few minutes.  But then I began detailing the truck, carefully sussing out those little holes in that chrome muffler pipe thingy that runs up the back of the cab, or counting how many lugnuts on each wheel…

logging truck in oak forest

“Working Farm,” mixed media by Kerry McFall

The end of the Paint-Out came much too soon.  As I packed my art supplies and feathers, one feather drifted down across the first piece I had done – and “Oh!”  That was just what it needed, so once back at home, I painted in a feather right in that spot where it had landed.  Since I was painting with watercolor over some of the original landscape, the feather seems a bit ghostly, perfect for the feeling that this place belongs both to the future and the past.  Perfect for a natural wonder.

The allure for me of Bald Hill Farm is not so much that this place is particularly unique or full of hidden treasure,  The appeal is simply that I know it is there, with its natural wonders quietly existing as they have in the past and will in the future.  Thanks for reading!

Click on a thumbnail to see a larger image of other recent paintings:

 

Where Else But the Benton County Fair and Rodeo?

Posted Friday, August 3, 2018 by Kerry McFall

brahma bull lying down

“Spotted Bull #44”, mixed media by Kerry McFall

Where else can you find out if you’re going to Heaven, uncover your true psychic aura, pet a sting ray, marvel at bull bollocks, interact with robots, eat fried Twinkies, and see the results of a table-setting competition?  In this part of the world, nowhere but at the Benton County Fair and Rodeo.  The fair has changed very little over my lifetime, which is good in many ways, although I’m sure my Uncle Paul would tsk at the pitiful size of the squash in the produce area.

The most treasured and enduring tradition for me is cowboys in well-fitting bluejeans.  Praise Be that they never fell victim to the style of droopy drawers or drag-ass cargo pants.  Add that walk they do in those boots… melts my butter as Dolly would sigh.  True, there may be fewer exhibits in general as we fall prey to the changes in our world.  Women don’t sew much any more, so there aren’t many quilts or prom dresses.  Not many folks put up preserves apparently, or bake pies either.  Maybe I just didn’t run into the old-school wood-working and fly tying exhibits.

But what will never change is the awkwardness of the young people as they strut their stuff through the carnival, pairing off or ganging up, smirking, giggling, whispering, enacting the same dramas that have been played out since tribes had potlatch and clans gathered to throw tree trunks around.  And wonder of wonders, very few people of any age were staring at their cell phones!

If you take the time to wander through the animal areas, you’ll find that country kids still learn and practice manners.  Several 4H teens made a point of greeting me, and even cheerfully put up with my questions and comments.

In the Improvements Noted department, the good news is you can drink beer pretty much anywhere on the grounds except the Carnival and inside the buildings, no more being corralled into a dusty little beer garden.  However based on the old college-era acquaintances I ran into in the concert area, the guys who couldn’t dance back then still haven’t learned how.  Oh well, at least they’re still enthusiastic about the music!

The county fair is a rarefied atmosphere, and that’s what makes it all the more endearing.  Don’t miss it!