Back at It.

After the last pen & ink drawing which can be seen here I needed to take a break from the drawing table.  A couple weeks later I was ready to start again and picked something less labor intensive.

While searching for the above image online I saw this version which I cannot take credit for the design.  I like this style and would like to practice doing it more creating some pieces of my own design.  I just wish I had a more creative imagination.

Roadside Art #5

These art pieces have been along Highway 101 for a few years now and I never quite understood them.

This time I noticed this plaque.  Now I get it. 

A bird got it too.

Roadside Art #4

Best of Show!

Running Boar.

This piece was made by a local artist in Glen Ellen just down the road from where I live.  

It was trucked out to the Nevada desert last month for the annual Burningman event.

So you can imagine my surprise finding it here 25 miles north from its birthplace a week after the event ended.  I read in the paper it will ultimately wind up at its final home at a winery nearby.

Roadside Art #3

Well it is wine in country after all.

No comment.

 This one was kind of neat for every once in awhile a gust of wind would set it spinning.

Roadside Art #2

Umm... I don't know.

Weld some chunks of metal together and call it art?

I know this one!  A tree...I think.

Roadside Art

Along Highway 101 twenty miles north of where I live.

I have no idea what the artist intended here.  Perhaps a portal into another dimension?

I didn't walk up the ramp to test that hypothesis.

I don't understand the title either.

Oh the power of the Internet!  I found this:

EXSUCITARE TRIECTUS ( “PASSAGE OF AWAKENING”)

This sculpture is a relic of galactivated* passage for all beings. 

The husk of the portal is a symbol of all directions coming to one point, which is where you will stand when crossing the threshold of two 1000lb ring vessels counter rotating around you.

These ring vessels have an enormous range of  content, from intelligent lights, steam, fire, water, and fog. The symbols on the rings represent the four elements that they produce.  When fire or other vapors are released into the ring vessels they create a tangible elemental wormhole effect that one may, or may not choose to pass through.  

Your passage and cleansing of fire leads you down the bridge and delivers you back to a different time, space, and point of consciousness. 

* Galactivation:  This is a term I self-discovered that I feel accurately represents the intentional awareness and humility necessary to actively observe the multitude of parallels between the micro/macro verse, with relation to our place and gratitude for symbiotic resonance.

Well I still don't understand it much more than I did when I started this post.

Two Trees Dancing

Burnt Redwood Grove

Moving on down the trail there are signs of a fire having gone through the area at one time.

You may not be able to tell in the photo but the tree bark is blackened although the trees are still alive.

Redwood trees have neither pitch nor resin and their bark is like asbestos so they are quite resistant to fire.  Only if the fire can get high enough to the crown will it burn.  Also young redwoods can be killed by fire.  Here you can see how the tree has grown since that fire expanding the burnt bark revealing new bark underneath.

This and their resistance to insects and fungi is the reason redwoods have lasted for thousands of years, one of the oldest living trees on the planet.  

Then man came along.

Young Redwood Grove

This one of many small groves of redwoods that grow in my next door State Park.  These redwood trees will grow to be mighty giants beyond my lifetime.  Redwoods are lovely trees when in their place.  They are not the tree to have in your yard or around your home.  

I had three large redwoods in the backyard where I used to live.  They are messy, forever shedding dead fronds of needles.  They're great for plugging up rain gutters and a real bear to rake up.  

Where gloves when cleaning up redwood waste for the needles are sharp on the ends.  

Now I live in a different house but again I am burdened with a large Redwood tree in back. 

I've started to rake it up some but the debris bin is full.  Next week. 

Those are the neighbor's homes to the left and right.

After any reasonable wind there is a mess to clean up on the lawn in which the fronds cling tightly to the grass.  This is after raking the grass and the few stubborn ones remain.  

No worry, there'll be more after the next wind.

Forest Spirits

When you go for a hike in the forest it is always a good idea

 to leave an offering for the forest spirit to insure safe passage.

Past Meets Future

Recent pen and ink drawings were street scenes and this time I thought I'd do a citywide scene. 

I do most drawings on paper around a 6 x 8.5 inch in size so this may give an idea to the detail confined in that space.  This drawing proved to take a lot longer to do than I had imagined it would when I started.  I also learned I cannot be drinking a cup of coffee while drawing at this scale either.  I recently bought a new set of pens just for one pen that has an smaller tip at .03mm than my other pen set that has a .05mm as its smallest.  It is like drawing with a blunt sewing needle.  I ended up using it for most of this drawing.  I refer to an image for most of my drawings and while working on the foreground I kept thinking about the skyscrapers in the background I had yet to do.  Somewhere along the way I got the idea to give the skyline buildings a futuristic look so that is why the title.  I scan my drawings for posting on the blog.  When the image is inserted into the posting they always come out not as nice as the scan.  Blogger messes with image in some way I cannot seem to overcome.

I think I'll take a break from drawing for a little while after this one.

I found if you click on the image it looks better but still not like the original drawing.

The Birds

Bodega Bay is the setting for Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 horror film The Birds.  This is the school house used in the film.  In the movie it gives the impression the school is near the bay itself but in reality it is inland a few miles separated by hills and you cannot see the ocean from anywhere around the school house location.

This is the hill the kids are running down away from the attacking crows.

 I was thinking there was a from the behind scene in the movie

 but this is all I could find and it is looking uphill.

I'm surprised no one has made a remake of The Birds now with the computer generated imagery they use in movie making these days.  Well there was a half-hearted attempt back in 2007 but development of the movie sort of stalled.  Tippi Hedren (the leading lady in Hitchcock's film) stated her opposition to the remake saying "Why would you want to do that? Why?"  

Guess you don't mess with Hitchcock. 

One doesn't make a trip out to the coast without getting a large cup of clam chowder.  

I like the red style myself.  Yes, it was delicious.  

It was half gone before I thought "I'd should have taken a photo!"

Bodega Bay continued

To the left of that crescent of land is the bay and calm waters.

You can see the fog or low cloud cover, whichever.

To the right is open ocean although it is still somewhat protected from the waves of the Pacific.

That is Doran beach and as you can see there is camping there.  Looks nice but there is one problem.  The Coast Guard station is there also and out on the very end is a fog horn that bleats continuously off and on, fog or no fog.  It can become maddening and difficult to ignore.  I guess you eventually get used to it and don't notice it anymore but I've never been that fortunate. 

The waters inside the bay is the perfect place for these kayakers. 

That is some very expensive real estate in the background.

Part of the docks at Bodega Bay.  Pay heed to the sign in time of earthquakes.

Bodega Bay

These images are from Bodega Bay a large water inlet from the Pacific 

so none of the high rocky cliffs or big surf are to be had here.

Someone planted some driftwood upright to look like a dead tree.

Inland further is a water estuary with a nature trail passing through it.  I thought this scene would look good in black and white in an abstract way but it didn't, so I left it in color.

 He knew I was there and was trying to make up his little crab brain to scurry away back to the surf or stay put and not move.  I didn't want to get my feet wet so there we were, neither of us moving.

More of the Sonoma Coastline

A nice clean beach.  No sea foam suds here.

This man knows how to spend the day.

Some of the local residents.

A Day at the Coast

An early morning decision to take a drive found me out along our Sonoma Coast.

A lot of our coastline in California looks like this.  

After all, we're on the edge of a continent slipping off into the waters you know.

It was to be in the 90's (32c) at home an hour's drive inland. 

I had to wear a light jacket at the coast which had gray skies and no sunshine.

Looks like someone dumped a big box of laundry detergent in the water.  I've never seen foam like this before in the ocean and it makes me wonder if something not good is going on here.

With some imagination it looks like clouds don't you think?

One Way Street in San Francisco

I enjoyed doing the Chicago Alley drawing I showed last month and thought I would try something else along the same theme but in a slightly different technique.  

Lines are fun.

Last Train Leaving Imaginary World

All of the locomotive shots in this series, the train was moving but you wouldn't know it.

This is the only one that gives a sense of motion.

This was my favorite diorama.  People on holiday.

Click on the image and you can see the people better.  See the Jeep towing the trailer, the couple on the bench, the sunbathers, the girl falling out of the canoe, the bear?  Lots going on here.

Kids today love their Legos.  Not me.  I had an Erector set but hardly played with it.

If I were a kid give me the materials to create a world like this and I'd be entertained forever. 

Because in my imaginary world you can have your home right next to the train tracks 

and that is okay.  Notice the boy washing the car.

This concludes the train show series.  Back to reality now.