I have been trying to cultivate a relationship with critters in my yard so that I might at least be able to take pictures of them.
For the last year in the morning I put out peanuts and peanut butter filled pretzels along with fresh water.
So far, if I am late they make noise and let me know. But they are still really skiddish.
It's fun to watch them decide which treat they want.
#MyPhoto #Critters #Birds
Last autumn I purchased three warty gourds with fins to display on a side table and to photograph.
After Thanksgiving, I put them out in the yard, past the the bird feeder pole, near the butterfly garden.
The local critters have been gnawing at them since then. There isn't much left of them.
#gourds #critters
Yesterday I didn't get to do any work because my daughter found some unwanted critters in a couple of cardboard boxes under her bed. They are called long tailed silverfish - bearded critter in Danish - and came here from Norway where they wreaked havoc in archives and libraries. They are paper eaters! and this place is filled with books and drawings and graphic prints. It wasn't like millions of them, but it will be if nothing is done... Thursday the poison man will come to make an end to this rouge creature and its family.
So apart from cleaning the whole place with my eldest daughter, I also had to take care of a large pile of very old drawings, dating back from when I was 21 years old. At that time I was doing a lot of croquis and portrait training. Most of it I threw out - all the portraits which looked like the ones you can have made on Montmartre or on some of the squares in Rome or Madrid. But I put some of the nude studies, the still life and other stuff aside as it somehow represented a lot of honest work, and also some hilarious self-portraits so my girls could have a laugh.
So I took some fast photos of it all in case I later decide to throw it out. Always good to have a reminder of all the work that goes into becoming an artist. In the end there's more than 300 pieces and I know that I have thrown away even more. All of it was made in one year. Miracle I didn't go crazy :)
Nude studies tend to look very much the same, but here's a sample of how I spent my time when I was 21.
#pest #critters #art #croquis #nudes #nude #drawing #work #mywork
a little jewel bug! and a closer shot of its beetle bum.
#photo #happysnaps #bugs #beetles #critters #iridescence #myphoto #mywork
