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.