What the heck have I been doing for the past 4 months? Good question! Not nearly enough art. On top of working 5 days a week, I've been volunteering 1 day a week for the Raptor Free Flight Program at the The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum as a bird handler. I love the birds, dearly! I have learned so much and have a new love and deep respect for raptors. I have been getting some amazing photo reference as well - Yes I will be drawing a lot of birds in the near future!!
The Raptor Free Fight Program has , a Ferruginous Hawk, 2 Barn owls, a Great Horned Owl, a Grey Hawk, a Prairie Falcon, and a whole family of Harris Hawks, as well as 2 Chihuahuan Ravens, and a Greater Roadrunner. I volunteer all day on Fridays from 8:00am to 2:30pm. There are about 4-5 volunteers per day and we feed and handle the birds, clean and do odd jobs, help with training and help put on the demonstration twice a day. I've made some great friends who I'm sure I will keep for a life time, and it is honestly the best day of the week for me. They asked me to do an illustration for the t-shirts this season and I was honored, and more than happy to. I couldn't decide between a hawk and an owl, so I did both. Then they couldn't decide which one to print, so they did both! I did them in pen and ink, which was a first for me. I loved doing them and I may do more with pen and ink at some point. It was much much faster than pencil. They wanted me to show a connection between the handlers and the birds so I thought it only fitting to show the bird on a handlers glove. The shirts should be coming in this week and I'm very excited to see them!!
Ferruginous Hawk
Barn Owl
I got a wood burner quite some time ago and had never done anything with it. Because I was so broke this Christmas, I decided to make everyone something. For the girls I made wood burned pendants and for the guys I turned them into keychains. I had a blast making them and several people asked me to make them one. Of course I started playing around with other items and it has sort of taken on a life of its own. I am going to open an etsy shop soon with limited edition giclee prints of my drawings as well as some of the wood and leather burned accessories I've been making. My plan is to hopefully start selling things so I can cut back on my days at work. I would much rather be creating than working : ) Here a few of the items I have been burning!
Pendants:
Pendants wrapped with silver:
Belt buckles:
And last but not least, I've actually started a new drawing! It is just going to take some time to complete. I have several reference photos and plans for new drawings ready to go - I am working on a harris' hawk now, next will be a barn own, a horse and a coopers hawk, not necessarily in that order : ) I may actually do a work in progress on my next drawing and show a bit of my working process and how I plan out a drawing. Hopefully it won't be so long between posts for me, I was feeling a bit guilty for not posting in such a long time : (
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