Wider view

a young student taking a break along the clifftop promenade in Antalya.

young student, originally uploaded by Sophie_vf.

Since I live in a mostly homogeneously WASP town, I really liked seeing the diversity of people while we were in Turkey.

this one is a bit artificial, I suppose, being at a pilgrimage/tourist site, but I did like the juxtaposition between the security guard and the friar.

written in stone

turkey-33, originally uploaded by Sophie_vf.

I really love these old letter forms - I hesitate to call them a "font", and they're certainly not a "hand", since they were carved with a chisel. But running your fingers over them, you can't help but marvel at the skill of the long-gone artisan that carved them.

April experiments from Daisy Yellow

Time to check in with how things went with the April Creative Experiments suggested by Tammy of Daisy Yellow!

April is usually a pretty crazy month at the best of times, and this year in particular I knew my schedule was going to be really tight. So I kept my goals from the list trimmed down to the ones I really wanted to try, and keep them achievable. Here's what I managed to do out of the ones I chose:

Document one day of your life in 5 photographs
Write the blurb for the back of a book about your last vacation
Follow an art lesson or tutorial from a blog, video or book
Sketch something from a photograph
Adjust the artistic process. If you doodle with a pencil, try markers or calligraphy pen. If you shoot digital, transform to BW using editing software.
Practice drawing using product packaging as inspiration (ex: Line Practice: More Ideas)
Create art focused on a book, inspired by the story, characters or location or just climb into the book
Write morning pages (ala Julia Cameron); 3 stream-of-concious pages first thing in the morning on 3 days this month.


Looks like it was a good thing I kept the list short! However, I really enjoyed what I did do, and made good use of my camera.  I documented the day of  Snowmaggedon for my five pictures, experimented with free lensing, photographed some of the buildings on campus for drawing practice.





The prompt I think I enjoyed most was starting the morning pages. I had started reading the Artist's Way about a month ago, and though not all of it seemed a good fit for me, the morning pages alone seemed as though they'd do me some good. And then, coincidentally, one of the women in my project mentioned having worked through the book and having written her pages that morning. That was just enough of a gentle push to get started. Even if I never do anything else from Cameron's book, this practice - and it is a practice - seems to be worth continuing.

Tammy has posted her list of the May Creative Experiments and as always, they look really great - check them out! However, I'm going to take a break from them this month just due to my schedule - except perhaps for the Create-your-own-Experiment joker card, as she calls it. I'm musing on how I can perhaps merge that with Leah's Creative Every Day theme for May: Intuition.  I'm sure there's something that can come out of that.

I wandered lonely as a cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud, originally uploaded by Sophie_vf.

Before the storm

big nest, originally uploaded by Sophie_vf.

I thought I had posted this earlier, but I guess not. This is how the nest looked before the storm. I am not sure how much was built this year, and how much is leftover from the previous year.

I'm really amazed anything is left at all. They must have been sitting right on it and clinging for dear life. The wind was dreadful and there's very little shelter here.

Actually, now that I look at it again, maybe that stuff to the right isn't really the functioning nest at all any more. Maybe it's like renovation debris - if you view it large, you can see that there's all kinds of feathers and pellets and crap embedded in the twigs.

hold fast

hold fast, originally uploaded by Sophie_vf.

I really wanted to see how the owls were doing after the snow/rain/windstorm of the last few days. They're there, and the little guy looks strong and hefty, but wow, there isn't much left of their nest. I hope he'll be able to fly soon, because there sure isn't much space to sit.