Busy, Busy

(This is the second time I've written this post, and I'm stuffed up and groggy, so it's going to be even shorter than the first time (damn you, Blogger for iOS, for dumping my post when I switched to Safari to look up a URL) (yes, I should have saved a draft first, but I really shouldn't have to) (also typing while annoyed) (and too many parentheticals) (I need more cold medication).)

What was I saying? Oh yeah. Busy with craft fair stuff, teaching, and sick, so not posting much until a few weeks hence. There was more detail and better sentence structure, but my ears are starting to ring, which means I need to rest, so I'll leave it at that. Here's a picture of some of what's keeping me busy:

Oh, and this is for the Halifax Crafters spring market, the first weekend of April, at the Olympic Centre. If you're in Halifax, stop by. There's no admission fee, but there is food and chocolate and cool crafts.

Crow Snow Angel and Ice Eagle

I start teaching my Introduction to Letterpress class today, so all I have for you this week is a couple more photos of bird-realted things. Maybe I'll remember to take some pictures of my class this time around, and share them here.

Here's a thing I call a "crow angel," which is a snow angel made by a crow landing. Other birds make them too, of course, but the crow ones are the easiest to photograph (not that this is the best photo). This was in my front yard, near where I put seeds out every morning.

And here's a very very blurry image shot out the window of a moving 18-wheeler on the Pictou causeway. In case you can't tell, it's a bald eagle on the ice. It was really far away, so I couldn't tell what it was doing. Eating, probably.

Birds

We get plenty of visitors to our house, year round, because I put out seeds every morning, and I try to keep a suet feeder filled in the winter (once the squirrels discover it, it empties fast). Here are a few of the most recent birds, from the past week.

A female Downy Woodpecker. These little birds are not shy about telling me when the feeder is empty or someone else is eating from it. They're quite talkative.

A couple of shots of Dark-Eyed Juncos. There are juncos where I lived in BC, too, but they had brown bodies and black heads, instead of the solid slate grey that NS birds have. Either way, they're terribly cute. These guys won't eat from a feeder, but are happy to take seeds from the ground, and really like it when the jays get into the suet, because they drop a lot on the ground.

For a few minutes, a male Hairy Woodpecker condescended to share the suet with a Blue Jay. It didn't last long, though, before the woodpecker chased the jay away. They're pretty close in size, but our jays tend to be a bit skittish, and even the Mourning Doves can chase them off.

Snowy Owl

Some folks have expressed interest in the processes I use for various things that I make, so I thought this week I'd go through how I made my latest die-cut card, step by step. If you follow me on Twitter (@anagramforink), or have friended me on Facebook, you may have already seen some of what's in this post.

Everything starts with an idea, naturally, and the snowy owl popped into my head as a result of the stories I keep seeing about how this winter snowy owls have been migrating farther south than usual, showing up even as far down as New Jersey. We have snowy owls here in Nova Scotia, but I've never seen one (nor even heard one, as they are not very vocal, unlike our other local owls).

So, with images of owls popping up in my social media feeds, I started to get ideas about how I could make an owl card. First, I looked at lots of pictures, trying to figure out pose and angle. Then, once I'd decided I wanted a flying bird, I found some more specific reference images, and started to draw. Since I knew I wanted the card to be more or less symmetrical, I concentrated on one half of the owl, because I could use Photoshop to create the other half. 

When I had a sketch I was happy with, I firmed up the lines with a black pen, and then erased most of the pencil lines.

Next, I scanned the image, copied, pasted and reversed the half I'd drawn to make a complete owl, and cleaned up the lines. I used the fill tool to fill in the outline, creating a solid black shape. This makes it easier for my cutter software to create a file to cut from.

I saved the image as a tiff, and imported it into the cutter software, traced, resized, and started test cuts. Sometimes I get a usable design on the first go -- usually if it's something simple. More complex designs require more tests, especially if there are lots of small pieces to cut out, as there are on this owl. Once something gets too small, the cutting blade can't pivot quickly enough. In the case of the owl, I had to make the bars on the feathers larger.

I also wanted to try a simple silhouette version.

None of the initial designs was quite right, so I tried again. I'd already decided on the black background, though I used the blue and green again in my tests, since I had already folded the card. The moon was a whim, added as a way to bring out the eyes by having something else yellow in the image.

A few more tweaks, and I have the final design. I could play with it some more, but I know myself well enough to know that sometimes I have to say "good enough" or I'll just keep fiddling forever.

In a day or so, I'll cut out a whole bunch of these, and then start assembly. They're sized to fit a standard (#10) business sized envelope, and I'm out of plastic sleeves that size, so I'll have to order more before I can sell these. I'll have to get more envelopes, too.

(Apologies for the terrible photos. The first and last were shot just now, with my iPad, and the Blogger app doesn't work very well with the iPad's camera. Some really weird things happening with framing. The other two images I took earlier, still using the iPad camera, but from within the native camera app, so at least they're framed better.)

Natural History Sketches: Pheasant

It seems it's been a while since I posted. I guess I'm not doing so well on my New Year's resolutions. Oh well. Here are some of the sketches from my big giant natural history notebook (which I also haven't been keeping up with as much as I'd like).

Pheasants (Ring-necked or Common Pheasant, Phasianus colchicus)

These lovely, big birds aren't native to Nova Scotia, and were actually introduced a number of times by people wanting to establish them as game birds. They're still relatively uncommon over a lot of the province, but somewhat common where I live. I've actually seen six or more birds, male and female, foraging together in the same field, but more often I'll see one on its own -- usually a male, as the females are much better camouflaged and therefore harder to spot.

There used to be one male that regularly came for the seeds we put out every day, but he hasn't been around for a year or two (or else he waits until no one's looking). Here he is in 2010.

All images © Niko Silvester. Please don't use them without permission. Thanks.

Corvus corax Sketch

Yesterday's entry in my new, giant natural history journal was the usual weather report and list of beasties in the yard. We had a new visitor, though: a raven.

Although we have a lot of ravens in the area, the closest they usually get to the yard is flying high overhead. For a few weeks in the fall they would gather in the evening in the woods just beyond out property line -- I could hear them gossiping and saw them fly over, but that was it.

But yesterday one stopped by to check out the seeds I put out and stayed long enough to pick some of them out of the snow with her enormous beak. She didn't stay long, though, because our resident crows, which are much, much more skittish than city crows, saw me watching from the window and flew off in a flurry of wings. That made the raven nervous enough to fly away, though she hadn't seemed concerned herself that I was watching.

This sketch isn't from life. I ran to get my camera, but when I came back was when the crows decided to cause a fuss, so I didn't manage a photo. Instead, I found a picture online that matched more or less the raven I saw. It's a pretty rough, quick sketch, but I think I succeeded in capturing, at least a little bit, the range of textures in the bird's feathers.

And, as promised, here's what the book looked like in its original  installation. Not very good photographs, I'm afraid, but I hope you get the idea.

October Giveaway: Quoth the Raven

I didn't get this month's giveaway up right away, because I was trying to decide what the prize should be. But now I've decided.

The winner gets:

• A matching set of "Quoth the Raven" and "Nevermore" lithographs. Before you get too excited, these are proofs on Mayfair paper, not final prints on heavy rag, so they're not as archival, though they still look nice. I'd love to give away a set of editioned prints, but I only have three sets, and they're all earmarked for an artist's book. They're about 8 by 10.5 inches.
• An ebook copy of a Nic Silver spooky Hallowe'en story I haven't written yet. It may be called "A Pearl Beyond Price." Or it might not.
• Some other little goodies that may or may not include letterpress postcards, magnets with art on, little books, etc.

So leave a comment and get your name in. You have until Hallowe'en, but don't leave it too late.

Also, there's a new coupon code for a free short story on my Facebook page. This time it's "Sealskin," a selkie story.

4 Seasons Cards (Well, Two of Them): Summer and Winter

Here are some digital proofs for cards I've been working on lately. You may recognize one of them, though I've changed the colours (they're not quite right yet, but I'll work them out when I actually print them).

Summer:

And Winter (the raven may be a little smaller in the final version):

Of course, I still have Spring and Autumn to go, but it's taking longer than anticipated to do the foliage images. I also realized that I'm not happy with the oak trees I drew for spring, so I'll have another go at it later--hopefully in time to send the files when I send the one for the papermaking/printing job I have coming up in late October.

Then I just have to find time to print them all (Summer is 1/3 done, at least).

Sneak Peek

A little something I've been thinking about for a while and finally got some time to work on this weekend: copper jewellery made from recycled intaglio printing plates. These will appear in one of my online shops later in the week when I've had time to take better photographs.

For the first few, I simply cut out shapes and let the original etching from the business side of the plate serve as decoration. Alas, not all my old plates are going to be as nice, so in future I'll use intaglio platemaking processes to make new designs. I also plan to experiment with patinas. But I think I made a good start, and ended the weekend with four finished pendants, and one that needs soldering (because I didn't want the hanging apparatus to be visible from the front).

Three Pretty Peacocks

I managed to stay up into the wee hours of the morning again last night, which is becoming a habit I'm going to have to break soon, as I'll be teaching in Halifax and will need to get up in the wee hours of the morning, instead. As soon as teaching is over mid-August, I'll no doubt return to my nocturnal ways, though.

But I've digressed already and I only just started. Right, peacocks. One of the things I did while staying up late was finish the peacock ATCs. The one above is (rather obviously) "Blue Peacock," and the one below is (also rather obviously) "White Peacock."

And finally, here is "Green Peacock." I have a tendency to put all my energy and attention into the central figures, and then end up at a loss about what to do for the background. Of course, when your size is 2.5 by 3.5 inches, a quick wash of a few colours is probably perfectly acceptable. I'm planning to move to some larger sizes, soon, and then I'm gonna have to give more thought to backgrounds.

I also finished three Creatures of Myth and Fantasy cards, and the Asian dragon for the pen/ink and watercolour swap. I'll post some pics of those tomorrow. Next I need to draw some lights, more pen/ink + watercolour, and some historical heroines (no avoiding drawing people for that one!).

Peacocks and Satyrs

Here are some quick in-progress shots of my latest ATC illustrations. First, some peacocks:

I had a fourth one, but I didn't like how the sketch turned out, and it was an extra anyway, so I decided to leave it out. Besides, as usual I've left them to the last minute and need to mail them by the end of the week, so I don't have time to do a better one. I'll probably include one of Leonardo's Clockwork Scarabs as a swap host gift, instead.

And, then, some creatures of myth and fantasy:

The dragon is the odd card out, being Asian instead of Greek like the rest, so I'll probably put him aside for another upcoming swap (theme: pen and ink with watercolour), which will actually put me ahead a little.

The yellowish shiny stuff on the hippocampus is masking fluid (aka liquid frisket), which is basically latex suspended in water. I'm going to see what it looks like with the rest of the card painted and the mane left seafoam-white. Also, with this set, I discovered two things: one, I need more horse reference images and two, I really like drawing satyrs (even though this guy's head turned out a little too big). I knew I liked drawing satyrs--it's one reason there are satyr characters in Fey--but I had sort of forgotten. There may be a lot more satyrs in my illustrative future. Steampunk satyrs, anyone?

Drawing Norse Myth, Or The Animals, Anyway

So for my latest set of illustrations, I've been drawing cards for a Norse myth swap. I'm fascinated by the pairs of animals associated with the various gods in Norse myth.

Huginn and Muninn

Huginn and Muninn are Odin's ravens, whose names translate as "Thought" and "Memory." They fly out into the world and bring back news, so if you find yourself under observation by a raven or two, you might want to think about whether you've done anything to anger the gods.

Geri and Freki

Odin's wolves Geri and Freki both have names that translate as "Greedy," though the root of "freki" is "ravenous," so I like to call them Greedy and Ravenous.

Bygul and Trjgul

Norse literature has this very cool device called a "kenning" which is a sort of synonym or poetic word or phrase. "Ken" means something like "knowledge" or "understanding," so kennings are about naming some aspect of a thing. An example is "whale road," referring to the sea. Well, the cats that pull Frejya's chariot have names that are kennings. Bygul or "Bee-gold" and Trjgul or "Tree-gold" are kennings for "honey" and "amber." Coolest cat names ever.

Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjostr

Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjostr (Tooth-grinder and Tooth-gnasher) are Thor's chariot-pulling goats (Norse gods seems to enjoy the grandeur of chariots, or maybe it's a military power thing). I wanted to make them look a little crazy, like their names.

At some point I'm going to have to stop avoiding drawing people. Drawing people is not one of my strengths, which means I should be drawing *more* people to improve my skills.

Hey Diddle Diddle

Here are my latest tiny illustrations, finished and about to be sent off for swapping.

Hey diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle

The cow jumped over the moon

The little dog laughed to see such sport

And the dish ran away with the spoon.

Though apparently what I have painted is not a dish, but a bowl. I never really thought about it until now, but I suppose that a dish and a bowl really are two different things. Similar, yes, but a dish is shallower. But not quite as shallow as a saucer.

Also, it looks like I really need to figure out how to shade things that have no texture, like ceramic dishes and spoons. My quick, messy hatching is just not looking good.

Anyway, tomorrow I'll post the Norse myth illos, and after that I hope to get back to some book binding projects.

Spring Cards: Design 1 Complete

I don't know if I'll get any more of these done by the time the Halifax Crafters Spring Market happens (which is April 17-18), but at least I'll have this one done: The Bluejay (Cyanocitta cristata).

I'm planning to do a whole "Birds of Nova Scotia" series eventually (collect them all!). Next I'll probably do a downy (or maybe hairy) woodpecker, and then chickadee. Mostly because they're some of the most common visitors around here, and I know I can do them in two colours. I'd like to do pheasant, too, but he'd take at least three (black, red-brown and green).


If you're curious about the process of designing letterpress cards (or at least the process I used in this particular instance), you can see my posts on the preliminary design and the digital proof for this same card.

Actually, just for fun, here are the three images in sequence:

It's a Coming

Spring, that is. Bill spotted a couple of new visitors to the birdseed in the past couple of days, one of which was a grackle, and grackles are spring/summer birds around these parts.

If that's not enough evidence, I found a couple of dandelions (or dandelion-like weeds) flowering next to the house. I'd take a photo, but I keep forgetting until it's shady where they are and they've closed up their flowers for the night. But they're there and I've seen them.

The pheasant has continued to come back almost every day, strutting up the driveway with his long tail at a 45-degree angle. And yesterday we saw a big brown hawk chasing another bird in our yard. It happened so fast there was no chance to identify either bird except brown hawk with pale head and something vaguely falcon-shaped. Maybe. Of course I didn't have my glasses on, but I was at least outside or I might not have seen them at all.

And most evenings (and even some surprisingly early afternoons) we hear an owl hoo-hooing in the nearby woods. Plus there was that skunk last week that woke me up with his delightful smell at 5:30 am. So spring is definitely on its way, though the weirdness that is Nova Scotia weather could still mean cold and wet, or even snow again, before the winter gives up.

Addendum: So those dandelion-like weeds I mentioned are in fact coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara), and according to my one book on NS plantlife (Edible Wild Plants of Nova Scotia by Heather MacLeod and Barbara MacDonald), they shouldn't be blooming for another two months. Hmm. At any rate, they weren't in shade yet when I popped outside (and I discovered many more of them), so I took a few photos of which this is one:


I'm going to need a good general book on NS plants (that includes the non-edible variety) before this season gets too far advanced.

Monday Multiples: Swan Monotype

Technically, a monotype isn't a multiple, so this week the feature's title is a misnomer, but it's still a print, so I'm including it. So this week's featured print is "Swan," a monotype print by Lori Dean Dyment of Dean Dyment Studios.



You'll find Dean Dyment Studios on Etsy, where there's a shop full of wonderful monotypes, linocuts and other prints. Lori Dean Dyment also has a blog, So I was thinking ..., where you can read about her work and find out what some of her favorite art on the web is.

New Neighbour

This rather dashing fellow stopped by for lunch earlier today.


I'm not sure if he's new to the neigbourhood, or has just been shy.

Spring Cards: Proof

I don't have much else to show on the spring cards. I had planned to have them printed by now, but I got sick, then it snowed, and then it snowed some more. I'm hoping now to get in to print them on Monday, along with a reprint of a self-published poetry book cover for a local aspiring writer, and some ink tests for an upcoming wedding invite job. But it all depends on the crazy Nova Scotia weather.

Anyway, here's a digital proof of the bluejay card. Keep in mind that it will look much better as a letterpress card. Sometime soon I'm going to put together a sample book that shows letterpress vs digital printing with the same images side-by-side. I might use the bluejay card as one of my examples.

Spring Cards: Preliminary Design

I started working on my spring card designs today. I need to pick up some stuff in Halifax next week, and I want to be able to send at least one new card to film while I'm there. Ideally I'd like to send as many as I can fit on an 11 x 17 inch film, but we'll see how much I can get done.

My plan is to do a series of cards featuring Nova Scotia wildlife. I'm starting with birds, since they're around me every day, and they're a popular subject. Despite the fact that it's the middle of winter and my bird feeders are crowded, birds still evoke spring. Anyway, I hope to eventually do four different birds, four plants, and four animals, and maybe expand from there. I originally thought six was a good number, but I have these plastic card sleeves that allow for the customer to see four different designs without having to remove any of them, so four seems to make more sense to start with. Maybe, come to think of it, I should try to do one each of bird, plant (or berry, or flower), tree and animal, to begin with. Or maybe I can do colour themes: bluejay, blueberry, bluebell (are those local?), blue . . . spruce? Heh.

Anyway. Bluejay is the first design I'm tackling, because I have some good photos of my own neighbours to work from. I'll do each card as two plates: one black, and one colour. It limits the design somewhat, but it's not cost effective to do more than two colours for most cards. Obviously, I'll print the bluejay in black and blue.


Here I'm working out where each colour will go. The bluejay is the perfect bird for a two colour print, because they're blue and black and white. Well, OK, and grey, but I can represent that as the white of the paper with some cross-hatching. The branch, being less important, will just be in black.

Next, I'll make two separate drawings from this design and scan them. I'll write more about that later, as I finish each stage and have something to show. I think I'll keep the images fairly lose and sketchy. I have a tendency to try to be too perfect, but I think in this case less formal will be more interesting. Maybe. We shall see.

I've been thinking hard about what other birds to do. If I base them on my own surroundings, I'll probably choose either downy or hairy woodpecker (they're so similar that there's no point in doing both) in black and red, and chickadee in black and beige. But I should probably also remind myself that spring will bring other birds, some of them perhaps more iconic of the province. Which reminds me, I really ought to see what the provincial bird is.

Ah! Osprey. That's cool. I can do him in black and brown. Now, I need to tweak that jay's tail a little bit, and maybe give him more of a standy-uppy crest.

We Had The Neighbours Over for Lunch

I've been meaning to post more about the house, but somehow other things kept taking precedence. Today was such a good day for avian neighbours, though, that I was finally prompted to blog.


With the exception of bald eagles and ravens, who tend to fly overhead but not stop in, I saw every kind of bird today that I had seen at the the house so far, plus a couple of new visitors.


We have two suet feeders, which are frequented by black-capped chickadees, bluejays and downy woodpeckers. We've had large flocks of chickadees, who are entirely fearless and cheerful little birds. I can't say how many have visited at once, because they don't stay still long enough to count. As for bluejays--who like both the suet and the loose seeds--we usually get five or six at a time, but I've seen as many as twelve flitting about the yard at once.


The downys tend to stop by singly, but there are at least two of them; we've spotted a male and a female (the males have a red spot on the back of their head). There is a flock of mourning doves who visit the loose seed (and who will even chase off the bluejays, if they get too obnoxious). The number varies, but I think there may be six or seven altogether.


There are also at least two crows who visit regularly, but unlike city birds, they're quite shy and keep their distance from the house. They fly into the trees if anyone goes outside, but I think they're beginning to figure out that a person outside often means tasty things to eat. One of them is a relatively small bird, and the other is so large I keep checking the shape of his (or her) tail to make sure it is actually a big crow, and not a small raven.


Today, I glanced out the window and saw--to my surprise and delight--that the black and white, red head-spotted woodpecker clinging to the nearest suet feeder was much larger than our usual downy visitors. It was a shyer bird, a hairy woodpecker. He sat and ate off one feeder while the little female downy had her lunch on the other. I ran upstairs to get my camera, but he flew off just as I was adjusting the focus (which is what also happened with the crow photo, except I managed to snap a poorly exposed pic of him flying away).

The other new visitors were three (or maybe more) tree sparrows. They look much like house sparrows, except they have very reddish brown heads and eye-stripes. According to my bird book, they're winter visitors. They didn't pay any attention to the suet, but instead hopped around pecking at the remnants of the seeds left by the jays.

I also experimented with some leftover bacon grease from this morning's breakfast. I always hate to just throw it away, as it seems like something the local wildlife would enjoy. So this afternoon I mixed a bunch of bird seed into it and made it into a sort of mushy cake on a scrap of wood, then put it out on the picnic table to see what would happen. The bluejays loved it. They don't always like to get so close to the window when we're right inside watching, but there were as many as five at a time pecking at the bacon seedcake. So now I have a use for bacon grease.


Photos, from top to bottom (all by Niko):

• Bluejay on a suet feeder.
  
• Black-capped chickadee on one of the suet feeders, on the table because too many bluejays at once broke the hanging chain.
  
• Female downy woodpecker on suet feeder
  
• Male downy woodpecker on suet feeder, restored to its hanging position with the help of some twine
  
• A bluejay and a mourning dove (look close, she's brown and hard to spot)
  
• Crow, who decided he didn't like the look of my camera and flew away as I was pressing the shutter release
  
• A bluejay laying claim to the bacon seedcake.