I was getting worried…very worried. Last year we had more Monarch butterflies than usual, spotting some every few days at least, and I spotted one laying eggs and successfully raised one to adulthood – fascinating and rewarding to say the least. This year? Zip, zilch, nada – not a single visitor – until yesterday. Two separate sightings, with possibly two the first time (hard to say, they do move quickly). Whew, some at last. And today? Even better, because I saw a lady Monarch laying eggs again!! This time it wasn’t on our milkweed patch… Read Article →
I’ve been reading Barbara Kingsolver’s “Flight Behavior” and enjoyed it right from the start with her economical yet meaning-dense phrasing that imparts so much depth into the characters that I could just about sketch them. Imagine my delight when not far along the Monarch butterfly emerged as a central theme! I won’t spoil it for anyone and even though I’m only about a third of the way through I highly recommend it. I’ve been continuing to distribute seed packets at both our local Wild Birds Unlimited store but also at the New England Botanic Garden… Read Article →
I’ve been busily scattering seeds via my “seed bomb” delivery system. tossing these little compost-and-seed lumps into vacant lots, power line cuts, wild road medians and the like. But with the prolific crop I had this year I’ve got way too many seeds to deliver by this method with each bomb only having half a dozen or so seeds glued to them. So I’ve been making up little seed packets in some little zip seal plastic bags – a couple of dozen seeds with a printed insert with some guidance on how and where to… Read Article →
Last year I harvested and distributed about eight ounces of milkweed seeds. My goal for this year was one pound of seeds and the patch really delivered, yielding 17.45 ounces of seeds! This is a LARGE mixing bowl so the size is a bit deceiving. Volume-wise these seeds would nearly fill a gallon jug. This isn’t the full total as I have already distributed some seeds via compost bombs and there are still a few pods out there (I’ll let the wind distribute those) but this is the great bulk of the harvest. Couldn’t be… Read Article →
Last night the chrysalis was starting to get transparent, a clear sign of an upcoming emergence. Sure enough, around 8:00 AM the colors of the adult were visible through the now-clear chrysalis casing. Checked on it again 30 mins later after breakfast and it had already emerged! Within an hour the wings were fully expanded, though still “flopping” in the breeze a bit, stiffening slowly over the next couple of hours and finally flying off into the great unknown a bit after noon. Monarchs are of course beautiful, but those found “in the wild” will… Read Article →
I’m at a bit of a pause in the Monarch raising business: they’ve pupated! Well, the first one has and the second is hanging in the classic “J” shape in preparation for transforming into a chrysalis. The first caterpillar morphed overnight so I didn’t get to directly witness it but hopefully #2 will hold off until morning. They’re both in rather inaccessible corners of the cage so not easy to photograph (ideas in my head for cage improvements for next year) but the beautiful green chrysalis flecked with gold is unmistakable. As I wait for… Read Article →
The Monarch babies aren’t babies anymore, they’re in what looks to be the fourth instar (of five), growing significantly every day. It’s remarkable how much they grow every day, but that growth is apparent when you see how much they eat and how much…excrement…they produce: Raising Monarchs requires a good supply of milkweed plants. If you didn’t have some in your back yard like I do you’d be making a road trip daily to find some leaves to freshen up their larder. For me, there are enough new plants coming up where I don’t necessarily… Read Article →
Max and Arlene will be 7 days old in a few hours. Yes, I decided to name them — why not? I’m spending a fair amount of time with them. No idea if I have a male and a female but it’s as good a guess as any. And they’re starting to grow fast. Here’s a picture of Max: OK, so he’s pretty small still (but bigger than Arlene) but he has easily quadrupled in size since emerging. He was about the length of the date on the coin when he first emerged but is… Read Article →
Waddya know — turns out I do have two little Monarch caterpillars and not just one! Hopefully this doubles my chances of seeing one through to maturity. I’d be quite happy with one, but ecstatic if both make it across the finish line. They’re still tiny but have already nearly doubled in size. OK, when you go from the size of half a grain of rice to maybe two grains of rice, you’re still tiny, but they’ve already increased the size of the holes they’re eating in the milkweed leaves. When I take the platter… Read Article →
Last Wednesday I got a repeat of last year’s first: witnessing a Monarch laying eggs! Our milkweed patch is thriving and so naturally I was delighted to see activity. Last year’s eggs unfortunately were eaten by something — ants, likely — so I’ve taken two steps to hopefully ensure success in having these little critters make it to adulthood: put out some ant block to keep that pestilence at bay, and brought in one small plant that I saw momma Monarch lay her eggs on. And yes, plural – three eggs on that small (6… Read Article →
This past summer saw our milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) come into their full potential: a 20 ft by 5 ft plot crammed full of of plants, and they blossomed like crazy, blessing our back yard with their terrific smell. And, while the Monarch butterfly egg laying I witnessed this past summer didn’t succeed (ants or some other predator nabbed the eggs) I was able to harvest nearly three cups of seeds — which is a lot of seeds! To put this bounty to use I’ve been making “seed bombs”: compost and clay (aka plain, unscented kitty… Read Article →
Here’s a short video with a couple of tips you may find useful when editing your flower scans — using “bookmarks” to keep track of where you’ve done fine editing, and using paint fill to find any areas that haven’t been painted fully pure black.
Three years ago I started some milkweed in one of our garden beds hoping to provide some help for the beleaguered monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus. I ended up with half a dozen plants but no little critters, even though I witnessed my first courtship dance by a pair of those caramel-colored beauties. (I won’t post a picture of their mating out of respect for their privacy 😉 Last year the patch had expanded to 20+plants — again, no action — but this year it has swelled to well over 200 plants in a 20ft x… Read Article →
it’s been several months since I’ve completed any new works, for a combination of reasons. I need some fresh material (which means a trip to the florist’s shop this time of year), but more critically my sketching tablet finally failed on me, my original Wacom bought in 2006 or 2007. I put a LOT of miles on that thing, wearing one pen nib completely down and a good chunk of a second. What failed wasn’t the tablet itself but the connector Too much bending back and forth when I stowed the pad when not in… Read Article →
Back in 2018 I started a flat of amaryllis seeds I was able harvest when two of my bulbs, a sparkly white and a rich crimson, bloomed simultaneously and I was able to cross-pollinate. It took four years but last spring I was blessed with several nice salmon colored flowers, the fruits of that patient growth. After starting the bulbs stashed from the prior summer around mid-February I was rewarded last year with more blooms than ever, taxing our limited window space but well worth a bit of pot crowding. After the blooms had faded… Read Article →
I imagine that people who has spent even just a moderate amount of time studying fine art will be able to say “Oh, that’s an Edward Hopper” or “That’s a Picasso” even if they’ve never seen the particular work in question. The blocked colors and city scenes of a Hopper or the seemingly-casual strokes in a Picasso are often emulated but not quite the same. This is largely true with scanographers as well. I can reasonably pick out from a lineup the works of at least three or four scanner photography artists, their subject matter… Read Article →
I was able to take a bit of time off this week for some camping in Maine and was able to include a visit to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. I was blown away. I hadn’t heard of the gardens before, just stumbled upon it in a “things to do” web search, and boy am I glad. I’ve had the good fortune to visit numerous botanical gardens such as Denver’s gem and the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill in Massachusetts and Coastal Maine holds it’s own very well, and quite possibly surpasses even… Read Article →
Back in March I reported that my 5-year experiment in growing Amaryllis from seeds was about to pay off – big time, with eleven bloom stalks coming up from my now sizeable bulb collection. Those 11 stalks on nine bulbs resulted in a whopping 42 flowers, some reaching seven inches across. Here’s the main collection: I would have been quite satisfied if I had gotten four or five of them to bloom, and even with two or three flowers per stalk that would have been quite a show, but the way they rewarded my patience… Read Article →
Five years, to be precise. I had received three different amaryllis bulbs as gifts over two different years and a pair of them bloomed at the same time in 2018, a nice white and a glorious crimson red. Hey, why don’t I cross-pollinate them and see what happens? Well, I successfully sprouted a dozen or more seedlings in two different trays. Here they are back in July, 2018: They had to be carefully nursed being so small, and wasn’t until 2020 I was able to repot them and give them full summer sun after carefully… Read Article →
Back in 2018 I started the “Great Amaryllis Experiment” — well, that may have been a bit over the top but I was partly spoofing myself because, truthfully, I didn’t think it would pan out. I had been fortunate to have a couple of amaryllis bloom at the same time, a white with some lovely pink striations and a deep, rich silky red. What the heck, I’ll try cross-pollinating them. Got some seeds, planted them, and about 9 or 10 sprouted! And man were they tiny, especially in light of the 3 to 4 inch… Read Article →
We have several clusters of brilliant crimson monarda plants in our garden beds, and in addition to their weeks long show of blossom heads throughout July they are a magnet for ruby-throated hummingbirds in our area. Every evening they challenge each other for possession of this obviously desirable nectar source, with chases zooming around and up into the surrounding trees. How they don’t skewer themselves into a branch is amazing. I’ve been noticing a lot of sneaky behavior this year. There’s one obviously dominant male who stakes his claim sitting up on the nearby clothesline… Read Article →
Hosta and astilbe are beautiful in their own right and their colors complement each other nicely, but when I captured this scan several years ago I put it aside and didn’t do the fine editing until just recently. Why? Astilbe, like hairy fern fiddleheads or the impossibly fuzzy lamb’s ears leaves or even just a “simple” fern leaf require an investment in time that I wasn’t certain this one was worth. Decent form, colors relaxing, but nothing called out to me particularly strongly, at least not enough to prioritize it over other images. But I’ve… Read Article →
“At Last” and “Serenity” have both been included in the Norfolk Annual Juried Art Show, on exhibit now at the Norfolk Public Library through April 27th, 2019, with an artists reception and awards ceremony on Saturday, April 20th, 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM. See “Serenity” and other botanical scanner photography work at https://www.bitsofnature.biz.
A forum on the WetCanvas site is discussing art sales – up, down, and if so why? No simple, single answer of course, with different artists, media and location obviously factoring heavily in sales success. However, a fairly consistent opinion was there was less recognition and appreciation for fine craftsmanship and high quality. We’ve been the “throw away” society for quite some time, with almost a resigned expectation that a purchase won’t last. Now toss in the digital media revolution on top of that mix. That latest iPhone in your back pocket does a right… Read Article →
The Great Amaryllis Experiment continues happily so far, albeit very slowly. In the last week several of the seedlings have produced a second leaf, surely a good sign that they are healthy. They’re getting plenty of sun for now, spending several hours most days out on our deck in the bright sunlight. I started slowly getting them used to the direct sun but they are certainly tough little sprouts – unlike most seedlings it seems they can take all I can give them in the sun department. It is making me worry a bit… Read Article →
OK, so that subject may be a bit over the top, clickbait. But I am a bit excited, and that too needs to be tempered because the fruits of this experiment could be as far as five years away. What am I talking about? Earlier I posted that we had great success with our two amaryllis bulbs, one with four huge blooms and the other rewarding us with two stalks sporting four blossoms on one and three on the second! They were a delightful sight in our dining room in April. Since both varieties were… Read Article →
Lovers of flowers are usually lovers of butterflies as well — count me in! If you’re in that camp, check out the videos on YouTube by Henrik Bloch. There are several out there, such as West Africa: There are others spotlighting lepidoptera from Thailand, Bolivia and more. Definitely worth checking out!
“Emergence” was honored with first place in the photography division at the Franklin Art Association’s Spring Show. It’s a good thing I captured this image last year. This spring has been so cold and deferred that even these miniature iris haven’t poked their heads out of the ground much at all. Usually their carpet of lavender (yes, they form a solid mat where they grow) is out right on the heels of the daffodils, and for our flower beds – north facing- there are hardly buds up yet much less blossoms. We have several days… Read Article →
When I started my first tentative floral scans (yikes! 11 years ago now!) I really had no idea about dpi, resolution, file formats or any of the technical aspect of scanner photography. Yes, I have a computer background and so bits and bytes and similar technology was familiar to me, but best practices with regards to scanning and manipulating the resulting images was new to me and I could easily have lost many early works to bad practices or trial and error. Fortunately I was given a copy of Wayne Fulton’s “A Few Scanning Tips”… Read Article →
Earlier this month I was able to spend two weeks in the Colorado Rockies – aspen turning gold, an early snow had frosted the peaks (and some of the valleys), and, while there were some overcast and occasionally damp days, there were enough stellar blue ones to make the visit quite memorable. One such memory was visiting the Denver Botanic Gardens. If you’re in the area and the weather cooperates, definitely check it out. There are a few dozen different biomes and specialty gardens, with a different one around each corner, making exploring the paths… Read Article →
You may not have heard about metal prints before — i know I hadn’t until a few years ago. They are a glossy print on an aluminum base, What’s the appeal? Super bright colors to start with, shiny but not a lot of glare, and deep rich blacks that make floral scans really stand out. I’ve had a couple printed up and love the result, the most recent “acquisition” being Banquet. The price initially may cause hesitation, but they come (from the FineArtAmerica site I use) ready to hang: there is a wood rectangular frame… Read Article →
It’s hard for me not to get carried away with superlatives when discussing Marcello Barenghi’s hyper-realistic art — images of soda bottles or candy packages that you’d swear you could pick up, bees ready to fly off the canvas or snakes ready to strike. While you can see the images at his web site at http://www.marcellobarenghi.com, watching the time-lapse videos of him creating these amazing works on YouTube is the really special treat. Highly recommended that you check it out!
I’m a member of the Franklin Art Association and every month a guest artist does a demonstration at the group meeting. Not being a painter and thus knowing little more than there is a brush and paint involved (and canvas?) many of the demos go over my head. Tonight’s session was different, featuring the lively, vibrant work of Adam O’Day. He did not start with a blank canvas, but instead with a rich orange underpainting. Wait, I thought this was supposed to be a Boston night scene! What’s this splash of color doing? Sit back… Read Article →
Scanography is one of those pursuits that sound easier than it is. It took me quite a while to get the hang of it and “plan out” my inspiration. I had some successes early on but they were often accidental, with some of my best happening by circumstance versus any specific planning on my part. Shibumi is one such happenstance, where a storm-dropped flower had just a touch of a curve to the top that adds a nice visual interest but was nothing I did consciously. (Shibumi was just honored with 3rd place at the… Read Article →
Marketing must be a frustrating job. The number of advertising channels is exploding: YouTube, sponsored ads on targeted sites, general search engine placement ads, Twitter, Facebook, even Pandora radio with ads catering to the tastes of listeners of particular music genres. With so many channels and campaigns running simultaneously and competing for attention, understanding the impact of a given campaign must be a challenge. Ooh, sales bumped up a fraction — was that because of a tweak to the keywords in a campaign, or just because the weather is warmer/colder/drier/wetter and impacted buyers’ moods? Why… Read Article →
It is easy to downplay the learning curve required with scanner photography. Certainly there are the the mechanics of the process, starting witht he scan itself: getting the scanner set up properly, adjusting any color profiles and capture settings, and even an occasional driver conflict. Once captured there’s another batch of expertise that needs to be developed for editing the images: how to Spot Heal, clone, mastering opacity when painting around the edges of the flowers to make the background black. Lots of pieces that need to come together. Those elements can be learned through… Read Article →
The contentious election brought into focus again the tremendous power of the internet for connecting people to ideas – good or bad, right or wrong. The information available is both amazing and overwhelming at the same time, though unfortunately largely unfiltered and truly the “drinking from the fire hose” metaphor applies. The internet can only deliver, it can’t help one gauge whether the information is right or wrong, up or down, helping or hurting — that remains left to each of us. I have to hope that the good in this ever-growing information flood outweighs the… Read Article →
Usually at this time of year the brilliant red and orange maple leaves are scrambling over each other to climb onto the scanner glass for a chance to be captured like in Fall Leaf Collage II or Seasonings. OK, maybe I help them a little bit. This year hasn’t been the case. Walking through our front lawn this morning I couldn’t find a single leaf that wasn’t at least partially shredded — not by wind or a long summer’s wear and tear but from this year’s gypsy moth and winter moth infestations. Most of the… Read Article →
Buying a new car that is a bit uncommon can make lots of that model suddenly appear on the road. Well, not really – it is just that they catch your eye because you have one and are more familiar with the look and style of your new wheels. Your frame of reference shapes your view of the world and helps capture your attention. The same is true with scanography. Whenever I see an interesting new flower I’m immediately thinking of how to capture it on the scanner glass – solo, or in a collage? What… Read Article →
Two weeks ago I headed out to western Massachusetts to visit my daughter and her husband and head out to the Paradise City art show being held in her area. I had been to the show in Marlborough earlier and many (most?) of the exhibitors were the same but still was enjoyable to see the generally very high quality offerings found in the show. The skill and creativity far surpasses what can be found in most local “arts and crafts” shows and did command higher prices accordingly, but as I looked at the works I… Read Article →
One of the joys and frustrations of gardening the dealing with the vagaries of nature — both weather and pests. The vegetable garden this year was decimated by critters, with nearly all of the peas lopped off by a lop-eared rabbit (sorry, couldn’t resist) who snuck behind the wire barricade I had in place. Corn crop will be at most 1/3 of normal from a combination of seed eaters and poor germination (bad seed?) Flower gardens on the other hand are doing wonderfully. The daylilies are scrumptious – we have a full palette range of… Read Article →
I’ve been a canoeist and kayaker since my Boy Scout days. Our pack leader usually had some sort of outing planned every month: hiking, camping, and numerous canoe trips down Michigan rivers: the Manistee, Au Sable and several others. Today I enjoy the lakes of Massachusetts and an occasional junket to the Rhode Island and Maine coasts as well as Boston Harbor. But my favorite place has to be Lake Whitehall. For starters it is close, only 15 minutes away, making it possible to sneak an hour’s paddle in after work. Even though close to… Read Article →
At the recent Paradise City art show we encountered the inlay work of Matti Laaninen, doing business as Hudson River Inlay (http:/www.hudsonriverinlay.com/). To call his work wonderful is too cliched and insufficient to describe not just the precise craftsmanship but the artistry of his designs. Some of my images can take 25 to 30 hours or more to edit — a tiny sliver of the weeks.it must take him for some of his larger pieces.. The figured maple glows in the light, simulating water ripples in some of his works, and coupled with numerous other woods (more than… Read Article →
This past weekend we went to a Paradise City art show/sale. I’ve been to numerous arts and crafts shows and have exhibited in a few but have nearly always been disappointed because they were way more crafts than arts — booth after booth of bead jewelry with only a smattering of photographers or painters. This show was clearly a cut above. My initial skepticism was fueled by the admission fee. Really? Paying $13 to shop? That fee, though still annoying, was fairly quickly relegated to the back of my mind by the quality and variety… Read Article →
I frequent an artists’ community called WetCanvas, which, despite it’s name, has areas for not just for painters but pastel artists, photographers and more. In additional to loads of posts on tips and techniques you can ask questions about the business side of art. But what most attracts me to the site is seeing such a wide variety of art and the talent that is out there. Here’s an example I stumbled on recently by Keith Murray: http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1399330 I’ve always been attracted to the realism school and this work certainly has that aspect pegged —… Read Article →