Daily Doodle # 12: Hyacinths

Hyacinths

Hyacinths

Hyacinths

Hyacinths, 52 Wreaths Project

Hyacinths, 52 Wreaths Project

 

Daily Doodle # 11: Feathers

Floating feather

Feather (I think it is from a mallard.)

Peacock feather

I saw some unusual and incredible feather art recently at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art.  Currently on exhibit is “Featherfolio” by Chris Maynard.  He uses optometry scalpels and instruments to cut intricate and detailed shapes from feathers and then mounts the feathers and cutouts to create a shadow box-like effect.  His work is amazing.  Here are some examples:

“Singing Bird 32” by Chris Maynard; uses parrot and parakeet feathers

“Pinecone Search” by Chris Maynard; uses turkey feathers

“Crane Dance” by Chris Maynard; uses crowned crane feathers

“Beauty on the Move” by Chris Maynard; uses peacock feathers

“Transcendence” by Chris Maynard; uses rose-breasted cockatoo feathers

 

Daily Doodle # 10: Redeeming Duds by Doodling

I attempted to rescue a dissatisfying watercolor painting by doodling over it.  It think I redeemed it!

Phase one, rough composition with color. It’s still okay at this stage.

Phase two: bringing out details. I think it got too muddy.

Phase three: Doodling. Voila!

 

 

Daily Doodle # 9: Camellia Bouquet

Camellia bouquet

Red camellias from my yard

 

 

Daily Doodle # 8: Daffo-doodles

It’s daffodil season!

Daffo-doodles

Watercolor painting of daffodils

Robin with daffodils

Daffodils

Daffodils, 52 Wreaths Project

 

 

Daily Doodle # 7: Moving Hands, Wandering Minds

Floating hand # 1

 

Floating hands # 2

“One of the great pleasures of doing anything repetitive by hand, whether it’s knitting, making bread, chopping onions or sowing seeds, is that they rhythm of the action allows your mind to wander.”
— Jane Brocket, The Gentle Art of Quiltmaking

Doodling — hand-drawing repetitive lines — fits the bill!

 

Daily Doodle # 6: Seeing Nature, Unfolding Landscapes

Seeing Nature

Doodling means time apart, a mental space empty of plans and expectations.  It feels good to have pauses like this in the day.

“Unknowing makes it possible for anything and everything to happen, to just pop up.  When we don’t know, when we have no expectations or fixed ideas about something, then everything that happens at any given moment is just what’s happening.”
— Bernie Glassman, Bearing Witness: A Zen Master’s Lessons in Making Peace

“As soon as we know something, we prevent something else from happening.  When we live in a state of knowing, rather than unknowing, we’re living in the fixed state of being where we can’t experience the endless unfolding of life, one thing after another.  Things happen anyway — nothing ever remains the same — but our notions of what should happen block us from seeing what actually does happen.”
— Bernie Glassman, Bearing Witness: A Zen Master’s Lessons in Making Peace

Daily Doodle # 5: Floating Stones

Floating rocks

Staying open to change, to new opportunities:

“I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently.”
— Donald Miller,  Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road

Daily Doodle # 4: Idleness Feeds the Imagination

Doodling fits those short empty time slots in the day.  No goals.  No accomplishments.  Just being in the moment with pen in hand.

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.”
— John Lubbock, The Uses of Life

Daily doodle: Hokusai’s Great Wave on the Plains

Daily Doodle # 3: Pine Tree in Lithia Park

Looking up; Pine tree in Lithia Park, Ashland, OR

Daily doodle, Pine tree in Lithia Park

Trees Need Not Walk the Earth
by David Rosenthal

Trees need not walk the earth
For beauty or for bread;
Beauty will come to them
Where they stand.
Here among the children of the sap
Is no pride of ancestry:
A birch may wear no less the morning
Than an oak.
Here are no heirlooms
Save those of loveliness,
In which each tree
Is kingly in its heritage of grace.
Here is but beauty’s wisdom
In which all trees are wise.
Trees need not walk the earth
For beauty or for bread;
Beauty will come to them
In the rainbow—
The sunlight—
And the lilac-haunted rain;
And bread will come to them
As beauty came:
In the rainbow—
In the sunlight—
In the rain.