The Queen of the Faeries

Long ago I was enchanted by the Queen of the Faeries...

Amber Grey Photography

Daffodils in Mythic March

We have daffodils gallor, all around the mailbox, the storm cellar, the bird bath, and along the fence. No crocuses, sadly, but that's to be expected, since the squirrels think we plant them just for them eat. Little blighters.

But to compensate for the lack of real crocuses, I found an excuse to draw myself some; I worked them into the project I'm doing for my Senior Show this semester, which is to illustrate the Volsung Saga. Crocuses grow in Norway, where that ancient myth originates, so I decided to do a landscape scene with the crocuses and one bumble bee. Grace over at Domythic Bliss is conducting Mythic March, so this is my contribution to that for the week.

 In case you're wondering, these are Prismacolor pencil drawings on vellum over a painting on watercolor. The vellum gives the watercolor scenes a wonderful misty, mysterious feel.

As an extra bonus, here is another piece I'm working on that's also part of this project. It's of the tree Branstock, which is a whole other post itself. It's not finished, and the picture doesn't nearly capture the glow coming from behind the tree, but it'll do.

I suppose since it's spring I should turn off the snow and change to a new background, but I'm still a bit reluctant to let go of winter. Ah well, I must do it sometime.

To Bad Beginnings and Happy Endings

Yesterday morning started out badly for me. Despite having aced algebra in college, I still cannot, it seems, correctly calculate the width of a matt when it comes to framing my art. Consequently, I ordered half the matting space I needed for the frames for my BFA show coming up this month, and yesterday morning I had to call the framing company bright and early hoping they hadn't already cut my frames and I could cancel my order without the restocking fee. But they had cut them. And I did have to throw a decent bit of perfectly good money out the window to cancel my order, and then reorder my frames in the correct dimensions.

Being a very frugal person, I wasn't one bit happy with myself. So I had a few sniffles, reordered my frames, and then had a few more sniffles. Until my husband called around lunch to see how my ordeal had gone, and upon hearing about it, notified me that, as it was a lovely, sunny day, we were going on a picnic to a wonderful park he had discovered along the Arkansas River. Somehow, he had hit upon the only thing that could really take my mind off my misery: a picnic in a gorgeous park on an early spring day, along the a river no less.

So I packed some soup and sandwiches and a thermos of tea, and off we went. And it was such a beautiful park! It wasn't the usual sort of park, the sort with swing sets and picnic tables in the middle of some trees. It was a little ways out of town in some steep hills covered in woods, with the river flowing lazily past. The trails were wild and rambling, and there were rocky bluffs to sit on top of and look at the river below. But best of all was the abundance of ferns and moss and lichen growing all over.

We rambled all afternoon, and then watched the sunset, which was simply exquisite. No painting can ever capture the flaming glory of a sunset. No colors are gaudy enough, vibrant enough, thrilling enough! It was just perfect. A lovely end to a bad beginning.