New Zealand...What?!

This week has been nutso in the most beautiful of ways. I had my first grad school interview, celebrated my 35th birthday, and was accepted to grad school. Wait, what?! Yeah its official, I’m totally going to grad school.

When I started selecting schools, I decided to choose one “reach for the stars” school. If someone handed me a plane ticket to go anywhere on the planet, where would I go? I immediately knew exactly the place I wanted to experience and began researching schools.

See the little orange swiggly sliver of land in the bottom right hand corner? That my friends is New Zealand. Massey University Wellington is located on that beautiful sliver of land and it will be my new home for the duration of Massey’s 2 year MFA program. And to think I have an entire two months to plan this move to a land so far away that it is already tomorrow there.

What’s on my to-do list? Passport renewal, sell truck (I am extremely sad to have to part with Baby), find NZ housing, pack stuff in storage, fine tune my MFA project idea, go back to Tejas to see and say adios to the fam, investigate unfun stuff like opening a NZ bank account, cell phone service, etc., and then I need to come up with a ridiculously large amount of cash to cover school, living, and getting my ass on the other side of the world.

There are other cool things to sprinkle in as well like learning the metric system, brushing up on currency exchange rates, and working full-time. Putting the sarcasm aside, there is truly nothing I’d rather be stressed out about. New Zealand, are you ready for this...cause I'm headin' your way.

Barn Owl III

So apparently barn owls are in this season. I have Barn Owl II in the Casa Grande Art Museum show (which sold - thank you baby jesus) and was commissioned to do a similar barn owl painting. Above is Barn Owl III. It's not a fully accurate depiction...the eyes are larger than they would be in reality but I'm going with it.

30 Sketches Project IV Is On!

LET'S DO THIS! Check it...30 SKETCHES PROJECT IV.

Landscape III Progress...

Landscape III stage 5

Making progress on Landscape numero 3. I darkened it a bit with a raw umber wash and added some tree-type things. I adore working on the rocks. Next step...sky. Below are some areas that I really enjoyed working on.

rock-like items

(They remind of little, wobbly thumbprints.)

tree-like items

These poor little guys were washed away a few times in a solvent rain shower. I just kept pulling them back out. All of the shadows were done with smudges of charcoal and I then painted liquin over them to make them permanent.

There is something about these 3 little dudes that I really like. They are totally friends.

Hoot!

Short-eared Owl

Barred Owl

Barn Owl

In Fives II Studies (in-progress)

Yesterday I hit the library up for some inspiration. I walked away with a fantastic book on owls - Intriguing Owls by Stan Tekiela, 2 books on modern wildlife painting, and Condors and Vultures by David Houston. As you can see I already dove into the owl book. The weather is fantastic so I sat on the back porch and sketched it up owl-style. Still working on the In Fives II Studies. I added the Superb Fairy Wren which is the little blue guy in the bottom left hand corner and yes that is his god-given name and for good reason. I just need to finish the Kea in the center and I can get started on sheet #3.