Tag Archives: Willamette Valley

Community Poetry Birdhouse – If Wishes Were Fishes

Linn Benton Community College sponsored a call for artist’s this spring asking for artist proposals to decorate “birdhouses” that will be mounted in their Albany campus parking lot.  But there’s a catch – they aren’t for birds!  They’re for interactive poetry… watch for more information from LBCC about how that will work, but in the meantime, here are some photos of my birdhouse, titled “If Wishes Were Fishes”.

When I heard the title for this project, words began to pop into my head: birdhouses > feathers > flight > community > a sense of place > icons >iconic fish > flying fish… and finally a snippet of a poem, “If wishes were fishes, then horses would ride.” I have never really understood that phrase, but I’ve always loved the mental images it inspires! So instead of birds being the focus, my sketches took shape as fish flew inand out of water waves and air waves, progressing through a day and a night in our part of the Willamette Valley, represented by Mary’s Peak and satellite imagery of the rivers.  My background as a fiber artist means that I just had to find a way to include some fabric, so the interior became a silky, glimmering stage to receive the poetry notebook.  A very fun project!

Lovely Day for a Quick Plein Air Sketch

sketch of lupine

“Lupine”, watercolor and ink, by Kerry McFall

sketch of fields and mountains

“Midge Cramer Trail”, ink and watercolor by Kerry McFall

Half a mile from the parking lot at the fairgrounds, there is a bench on the Midge Cramer trail, the perfect spot for sketching.  By the time you’ve reached it, you can’t help but feel your batteries re-charging.  It smells good (wild roses and sweet meadow grass), it sounds good (crickets and birdsong), it’s gorgeous and green.  People jog and pedal along smiling, dogs can barely walk for wagging, the occasional horses even seem glad to see you.  There are lots of wildflowers this time of year, and unfortunately also lots of poison oak so stay on the trail.  The lupine I sketched above are undoubtedly transplants from someone’s garden via a blue jay or squirrel, they’ve sprouted up just behind the bench.

Technique Notes

I sketched these in my Grey toned Strathmore book, which just happened to be the right size to fit in a small pack, and discovered that a toned paper is really great when you’re sitting out in the direct sunlight.  Instead of being blinded by the reflection on bright white paper, you can actually see what you’re doing.  And as a bonus, just a white charcoal pencil makes for easy highlights.  I wondered if the watercolor and colored pencil would still be as bright after photographing, and I think they look good!

Flaming Rainbow

"Flaming Rainbow", mixed media by Kerry McFall

“Flaming Rainbow”, mixed media by Kerry McFall

Rainbows are so simple, and yet so magical.  And so difficult to capture on paper, especially when they are flaming in the sky for 20 minutes!  The science is apparently wrapped around words like parhelion, or sun dog, or irridescent cloud – I like my term better, a Flaming Rainbow.

Seeing it was also an interesting social/cultural experience – I was sitting at a sidewalk table on campus when it appeared.  The folks who weren’t staring at their cell phones were staring at the sidewalk as they trudged past.  Feeling a bit like the Village Idiot, I kept pointing at the sky and saying, “Look Up!”  Almost to a person, they would look at me as if I had sprouted antlers, carefully and quickly look up like I might try to take their cell phone away, then gasp.  Then take a picture of it with their cell phones, of course.   But at least they got to see it, and most of them thanked me and were quite excited to have seen it.  Apparitions like this are so magical, and just a little unsettling for those of us who thought there was nothing new under the sun!

Mary’s Peak from Bald Hill Trail

"Mary's Peak from Bald Hill", mixed media sketch by Kerry McFall

“Mary’s Peak from Bald Hill”, mixed media sketch by Kerry McFall

A lovely bright green morning called for a sketching expedition.  I packed up my arting bag and my 3-legged stool/cane and found a good spot beside the fence up at the Bald Hill natural area.  The cloud cougar was about to creep over the top of Mary’s Peak at first, but it slunk away, leaving the silhouette shining in the sun (you know how people see shapes in clouds?  the clouds behind the peak always look like a cougar to me, just waiting for its chance to leap over the mountain and into the valley.)  It was fun to see all the Mother’s Day hikers (one little guy had a pair of binoculars, wrong end up, and spent a good long time staring at me) and bikers, even a couple of horseback riders.  I’ve been wished Happy Mother’s Day from most of “my” kids all over the world, I’ve got a bottle of Cupcake Champagne chilling in the fridge, and I found some leftover chocolate truffles from Christmas, so I’m a happy Mom!

 

If I Were a Beer Brewer…

…I would be in Seventh Heaven here, watching my hops vine climb merrily over the fence, across the neighbor’s deck, and up onto their garage roof.  I may not be able to keep a sunflower plant from being chewed to bits by unknown cooties, but my hops are phenomenal!

HopsVinesSketch1

We’ve reached the point in the Willamette Valley spring where if you don’t like the weather, just wait an hour… anything goes!  The sky was gorgeous one warm afternoon last week, here seen from under the bridge just south of Corvallis: 

"Willamette Spring", mixed media by Kerry McFall

“Willamette Spring”, mixed media by Kerry McFall

The week before that, a mean little hailstorm attacked my baby lettuces, but they survived with bruises and spots.  

"Hailstorm Sketch", mixed media by Kerry McFall

“Hailstorm Sketch”, mixed media by Kerry McFall

Now the question becomes, did I jump the gun this morning and plant my tomatoes too soon?  Time will tell.  In the meantime, I’m just sketching away every day, finishing up assignments for my online Sketchbook Skool, and preparing for the next class.  Here are a few of my recent sketches:

Pink Snow

"Pink Snow", watercolor and ink by Kerry McFall

“Pink Snow”, watercolor and ink by Kerry McFall

Oh, Yeah – that was really fun!  After a week of being dazzled by the Danny Gregory Sketchbook Skool online course, I tried to clear my head with a glass of bubbly Proseco and a painting where I just did what I know how to do.  No new media or techniques.  Nothin’ fancy.  But lots of fun!

How I Spent my Sunday Afternoon

How I Spent my Sunday Afternoon

The streets in our old neighborhood were lined with these double-cherry trees (prunus Kanzan? Japanese flowering cherry?)..  I walked there yesterday to see if they had begun to bloom.  They were at full throttle, bursting and waving in the breeze.  Another two or three days, and drifts of pink petals will fill the streets… Pink Snow Week!

A Multi-Cat Day

This morning when I sat down to begin my “sketching warm-up exercises” (which I have to say are far less painful than the Yoga Plank thing I tried recently), I noticed my old cat Baby catching the sunrays in the front window.  Given the lack of other nearby inspiration, she had her portrait done.  In pencil.  Then I added watercolor.

Next came a flip through the pages of a design book about Art Deco, and the Mean Keelah was born.  “Mean Keelah” was what our little neighbor used to call one of our cats when he was learning to talk… Skyley, aka Mean Keelah, was the original Grumpy Cat.  Only meaner, and with bigger teeth.  As I worked, following the style of G. Darcy from 1920, Mean Keelah was reincarnated.  Reincarnated several times, as I experimented with this and that, including a digitally-enhanced version.

Then I got to wondering how that mean kitty could become a cute kitty – what is it about those lines that implies such evil?  So I messed around for a little longer, using the same approach and style.  Meh… the technique works for “cute kitties” as well as mean, but the cats are just more in a long line of simpering felines – nothing is new under sun.  I like the Mean Cat #2 best, the rest got a bit too dark with additional paint layers.  Although, that digital version does have some distinct Halloween possibilities…

 

 

March Moon

sketch of moon behind tree branch

“March Moon”, mixed media by Kerry McFall

Last night I looked up from my book and was startled to see the full moon gazing back at me.  The moon is even more of a stranger in March in Oregon than the sun!  Rising like a pearly balloon over the park, it floated among the tree branches, silhouetting the swelling buds.  Over the phone lines, beyond the tops of the distant redwoods, shrinking as it rose, I watched it climb until it disappeared above my window.  I found myself thinking how I would paint it as I gazed… so, I painted it!  Now it just needs a poem, or a haiku…

Taming My Inner Squirrel

Was it just a week ago that I picked a branch of tumbleweed out of a fence at a New Mexico rest stop on the highway, humming to myself that Sons of the Pioneers song about tumbleweed?

tumbleweed

Has it been just a week since I left colorless winter behind and came home to a muddy garden lush with weeds (and slugs… and sowbugs…)?

sketch of tumbleweed

“BitterCress”, mixed media by Kerry McFall

Driving through so much flat, brown land back in the heartland had calmed my Squirrel Brain a bit, but as soon as I touched down here at home, it was back with a vengeance.  Gotta finish the Call and Response piece!  Gotta make a painting from all of those photos!  Gotta fertilize, gotta weed, gotta take care of a mountain of mail!  But then it slowly dawned on me Sunday evening that I was NOT getting up to go to work the next morning, so I didn’t have to get that all done in one fell swoop.  What a luxury!  I really can draw every day.  I don’t have to give up anything else to make that happen.   Happy sigh.  My Inner Squirrel is now seated quietly in a yoga position, softly humming the tumbleweed song… which is stuck in my head…

I’ve always wondered what the name of that little weed was.  Yesterday a neighbor clued me in to Bittercress – it grows incredibly fast, matures quickly, and once it starts to shoot seeds like a machine gun (thus the nickname shotweed), your garden beds are doomed!  On the plus side, it is edible… supposedly tastes like radishes.

Technique Notes – The Bittercress painting was sketched lightly in pencil, then outlined with a Pitt artist pen.  I painted the plant with a thin watercolor brush, let that dry, then outlined around the ink lines with white china marker.  I then quickly flooded the page (outside of the circle and inside the border) with blue (spring sky blue!) using a fluffy fat brush.  I like the “resist” effect so much!  Once dry, I added a few tiny shadows, etc. with colored pencil.

3,500 Miles & Seven States

In three weeks we’ve traveled over prairies, plains, and plateaus in a big loop starting and ending at Denver.  We stayed 24 hours ahead of the Arctic Vortex at every stop.  Another title for this adventure might be “50 Shades of Brown on the Blue Highways” … this time of year, 90% of everything in America’s Heartland is either brown, or brown covered by snow.  This is a trip we would probably have never thought of if a business project hadn’t made it possible – you’ll never see a glossy tourist brochure for, say, McAllen, Texas in early March… It reached a point where we almost looked forward to roadkill just to break the brown monotony.  (There was actually very little roadkill – apparently only skunks venture out in winter…) But even so, It was fascinating, enlightening, I’m very glad we did it and I would do it again.   Just not right away… my buns are tired of sitting.

It’s good to be back in our lush Willamette Valley.  I wish everyone in Oregon could see all of that brown back there, up close and personal; I wish everyone could read all the notices about drought and crop failures, could drive past all the dried up little towns – we would never ever pave another square foot of this paradise if they had taken this trip.  This is the best farmland and forest land in the world, bar none – we need to remind ourselves and our land use planners and legislators of this constantly.

sketch of adobe buildings

“Canyon Road, Santa Fe”, mixed media sketch by Kerry McFall

Okay, I’ll come down off my soapbox now.  My favorite state on this tour was New Mexico, favorite city was Santa Fe, aka Disneyland for Artists.  Definitely on my list of places for a return trip, and hopefully to spend several days.  There was no one around much, this being the “off season”, so I had 100+ art galleries and museums all to myself.  That provided a great opportunity to talk with gallery owners, and to learn what kind of art and artists they are interested in representing.  I made the above sketch of a group of sculpture galleries from across the street at an outdoor cafe – it was out of the wind, and that was as close to “plein air arting” as I got, munching on a panini and sipping a nice Chilean chardonnay.

One of the best art venues in Santa Fe was the New Mexico state capitol building, which was filled with art in every nook and cranny.  Bonus: it was free!  In the 90’s some visionary legislators put into place an art acquisition program for works by NM artists.  Reading the well-written artists statements about each piece was an education about New Mexico history, culture, technology, economy and vision for the future.  If you find yourself in Santa Fe, check it out!