The Lesser Spotted Woodpecker is the smallest and least common of the UK's three species of woodpecker. It is most often found in the tops of trees where it creeps along branches in search of insects. Found in England, but rare in the north. Absent from Scotland and Ireland. Its 'drumming' is much quieter and less vigorous than that of the Great Spotted Woodpecker; its presence is often only given away by this or their call.
The lesser spotted woodpecker is small in size, being not much bigger than a house sparrow. Males are black and white, with a red crown cap, and females are plain black and white. They both have a distinctive white ladder marking down their black back.
**Did you know?**
There are now believed to be less than 3,000 pairs breeding annually in the UK compared to nearly 45,000 greater spotted woodpeckers.
A pair of Ukrainian Easter eggs I've made. My designs are not especially traditional and are instead inspired by old wood cut art. The first egg features a musician playing a bandura and the second has 4 pictures, fish, forest, wheat and mountains. The eggs are made using beeswax applied with a metal tool called a Kistka (heated via a candle or electricity) you draw on the egg wherever you want to preserve its current colour before putting it into a dye bath working from the lightest colours to the darkest. When you have finished you remove the wax using a candle a paper towel and a little patience. heating and wiping away. then you can blow out your egg by making a hole in its top and bottom, smashing the yolk with a needle and blowing. These eggs are a couple of years old but we've pulled them out for easter last weekend.
Painted as my final project for my Painting Environments course. I was super nervous about tackling this one, but learned a ton taking this course. I'm happy to move on to the next one. :-)
Ironwood Forest
Project parameters:
- Forest full of massive trees
- Implied path
- River rambling through tree roots
- Waterfall
A vibrant, hand-drawn marker illustration featuring a rustic wooden cabin perched on the edge of a tranquil lake. The foreground is filled with glowing green lily pads, leading the eye toward rolling green mountains under a bright, cloudy sky. This piece captures the essence of a peaceful summer escape and the beauty of lakeside living.
In fact, she [Mummy] said after a while, we have gone into hibernation. Nobody can get in any longer and no one can get out!
I looked carefully at her and understood that we were saved. At last we were absolutely safe and protected.
This menacing snow had hidden us inside in the warm for ever and we didn't have to worry a bit about what went on there outside. I was filled with enormous relief, and I shouted, I love you I LOVE YOU, and took all the cushions and threw them at her and laughed and shouted and Mummy threw them all back and in the end we were lying on the floor just laughing.
Then we began our underground life. We walked around in our nighties and did nothing. Mummy didn't draw. We were bears with pine needles in our stomachs and anyone who dared come near our winter lair was torn to pieces. We were lavish with the wood, and threw log after log on to the fire until it roared.
Sometimes we growled. We let the dangerous world outside look after itself, it had died, it had fallen out into space. Only Mummy and I were left.
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
#dailydrawing #tovejansson
Grandfather was a clergyman and used to preach to the King. Once, before his children and his children's children and his children's children's children covered the face of the earth, Grandfather came to a long field which was surrounded by forests and hills so that it looked like Paradise. At one end it opened out into a bay for his descendants to bathe in.
Then Grandfather thought, here will I dwell and multiply, for verily this is the Land of Canaan.
Then Grandfather and Grandmother built a big two-storey house with a sloping roof and lots of rooms and steps and terraces and a huge veranda and placed plain wooden furniture everywhere inside and outside the house and when it was ready Grandfather began to plant things until the field became a Garden of Eden where he walked around in his big black beard. All he had to do was to point at a plant and it was blessed and grew until it groaned under its own weight.
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
#dailydrawing #tovejansson
This new Bikes of Amsterdam painting is of this wooden bike I saw (no pun intended) a while back. I thought it was probably owned by a lumberjack although it’s more likely some city hipster type. Either way cool bike. Guess you would need to varnish it every year.
The materials that Meir uses in her works are not of the refined and so she is called an “arte povere” artist. At times she describes her work as someone dealing in alchemy - work develops as in a trial laboratory with different techniques and materials. She says, “ at times the artistic work process is a sort of puzzle demanding the filling in of all the empty squares “.
Some of her work focuses on women, and they incorporate criticism and cultural protest.
Meir has strong opinions about recycling and environmental protection that is represented in her works by use of materials and shapes. In her work she reacts to contemporary art that communicates with the eco system, waste, and she also searches for different worlds. Her works are made up of layers upon colorful layers that when we look at them it becomes clear that the mound of waste she chose is not coincidental. It actually becomes a colorful kaleidoscope of utopia.
Jaffa Meir is a multifaceted, autodidact artist working in painting, sculpture, photography, product design, carpets and furniture, painting on textile, and computer graphics.
The structural composition of some of the works is influenced also by her many years of working in the architects’ office.
Meir also worked in the developing of ideas within the field of ecosystems and recycling for factories such as Coca Cola, and during this process came up with ideas for designing parks and public game spaces using industrial waste products.
Charcoal and graphite. I drew this while standing in the woods for over an hour. The light kept changing as the sun was going down. Fortunately, I was able to capture some dramatic shadows!
Acrylic on wood 36x19 Laugh and the world laughs with you,
Weep, and you weep alone;
The good old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own. (Ella Wheeler Wilcox)
