The Roar

Yesterday, just about twilight, we had a visit by our "resident" black bear.

I was sitting on the porch, reading, when I became aware of more noise than usual in the woods, just 50 or so feet from where I sat.  It took a while to register, because the cicadas were in great form, as they have been for a while and twilight seems to be their signal to start up.  The noise in the forest  grew louder, the sounds of breaking branches, loud thumpings, and then snorting and snuffling noises --  and coming closer..  The cat that had been sitting by my feet jumped up and ran indoors, hissing.  I followed, not hissing, but very curious.

My second cat ran up the stairs and into the bedroom, jumped up on the table under the window and flattened himself on the table so that only his eyes were above the window sill.  I had never seen him behave that way before; he is nearly 14 years old and is generally calm and pretty laid back.

I walked over to the window and began peeking out.  Suddenly, a huge roar shook the window glass.  Another followed almost immediately.  I jumped.  The cat jumped.  The window glass shook.  I gathered my courage and peeked out again.  (As though somehow whatever it was could be right outside the window, 30 feet in the air -- could it be Godzilla?  King Kong?  T-Rex?)

All at once, I spotted him:  the bear!  And in a terrible temper!  He continued to roar, breaking branches, scuffing up the forest floor and snorting/snuffing/growling in between roars.  After a few minutes, he continued along his way, still upset and letting everyone in the area know about it.  He looked unhurt, just angry. 

About midnight, I heard a large animal moving though the woods again.  I suspect it was the bear,  but this time, there was no roaring or growling.  Just his normal "snuffling around, checking things out and looking for food" nightly wanderings.

And suddenly, I wondered -- it is mating season for bears?

A Few New Pieces

I've had very little time in the studio this week, but I've managed to do a few cards and sketches.

My friend, Nina, got a shipment of inks from Dick Blick, so we got together to do some creative stuff with them.  We both worked on a scrap of paper, and at the end of the day, it was quite a mess.  But a mess with some potential....

Nina had painted large blocks of copper in two areas to test the opacity/sheerness, and we had both used a calligraphy pen to test the inks.  But I liked the scrap of paper and after she left, I played a bit more with it.  I added some trees with watercolors and tried out some new Old World Oak Gall Ink I'd gotten from John Neal Booksellers.  That made some fairly credible rocks, so I turned the biggest of the copper block areas into a not-very-realistic, but fun, spirit bear walking down the rocky slope.  I actually think the bear looks a bit more like an elephant (note the ink dribble by his muzzle/trunk), but what the heck --  elephants don't live on rocky slopes with birch trees.  A few blotches of green served as leaves and here is the result:

From Nina and my ink testing experiments on a scrap of paper.

 Another day, I was looking out the studio window and saw a clump of birch trees half-buried in snow.  I am so tired of winter, that I decided to make a bit of spring.  So...out came the tags, my brushes, some watercolors, and this was the result:

Wishing for spring.

I was working with some Silks Acrylic glazes one day, and decided to stop wasting the beautiful paint that was left on my brush when I changed colors.  I got out a piece of 90# watercolor paper and started cleaning my brush off on it.  I liked the result, so when I was all done painting, I had a big enough piece of "cleaner" paper to make these two postcards.  I know I will be doing this again!

Cleaned my paintbrush on watercolor paper...now it's a postcard.

This is the other half of the watercolor paper...another card from just cleaning my brush.  Silks Acrylics are so much fun to use.

I'm always finding ways to make postcards (yes, I mail a lot of them) and if I can use pieces that didn't work out as planned, I'm even happier.  I was working on a watercolor background for my March Calendar Journal pages and it was darker than I wanted, so I put it aside.  Then, I decided it would be good as postcards if I added more paint.  Layers later, these postcards were the final product.

I got some fantastic new stencils from Joggles, and used one of them, with a couple of colors of Lumiere paints, to liven up this leftover hand-dyed scrap of fabric.  Naturally, it is another postcard!

 


And, last but not least, I have a new book that is great fun.  It is called "Drawing and Painting Imaginary Animals: A Mixed-Media Workshop with Carla Sonheim" and today I tried my first drawing from the book.  I dropped some yellow liquid watercolor onto paper and when it was dry, dropped some blue-green on top of it.  After both were dry, they seemed to suggest bird shapes so I gave it a try.  It was fun!  And totally silly!  

 I really wish I had more studio time.  But then, don't we all?

A Mystery Solved

Last Tuesday night, our suet feeder disappeared.   Gone completely, not just on the ground below or at a few yards distance.  Gone.  The feeder is positioned over a balcony that is 3 feet wide and the bottom of the feeder is about 7 1/2 feet above the balcony's floor.  The hanger is another 8 inches above that.  The squirrels can occasionally knock it down, but they cannot carry it away.  And to knock it down takes a flying leap on their part, pointed in exactly the right direction to un-clip the chain from the big hook, and it isn't easy.  The balcony connects to our entry courtyard deck. 

I replaced it with a different suet feeder on Thursday.  Thursday night, it disappeared, too. 

Then, I came upon this clue, right on the entry courtyard deck, a few feet from the front door to my house: 

Bear print is about 7 inches side-to-side and this was pretty fresh, not enlarged by melting snow.

 
A bear!  A BIG bear.  Big enough that he could simply reach up and take down the suet feeder by unhooking a chain more than 8 feet in the air.

I haven't put up another suet feeder...