Combination

This piece ended up being a combination of the two series I've had going – the "Album Series" has been my work with old maps, ledger paper, postcards, vintage photos, while the "High Plains Series" has featured mostly Montana landscapes. I took this photo last month of the Gallatin Range of mountains and crouched down so as to get lots of grass in the foreground. I ran filters on the photo to make it look more sketchy, adhered grasses I'd picked while in Montana, and also added some vintage things: a topo map of Yellowstone from 1904, a Montana map from 1903 and a Yellowstone postcard from 1914. (30" x 10" canvas; click on the image to enlarge it to see the grasses better.)

Birds

The topic for my next art workshop meeting is "birds", and I decided to work with some star charts and bird migration. I found some interesting illustrations in an article about indigo bunting migration and experiments (involving the use of planetariums and changing the constellations on the birds so they tried to migrate north instead of south--all in the service of confirming they use the stars for migration). I combined those circular illustrations with some vintage star charts and an illustration of an indigo bunting pair. It's different color palette than I've used before, but very fun imagery to work with.