Final Spoonbill/Duckbill Plus Envelope Plus in-the-pocket

Spoonbill, Hornbill and Duckbill
Acrylic, by Mary Stebbins Taitt
Click on this or any image to view all of them larger

Spoonbill and Duckbill
with their friend Hornbill
Rode a red wagon downhill
with glorious freewill
past the sawmill
and came to a standstill
at Frankie's doorsill.

 Frankie is my grandson.  One of four.

I can't find the paper with the "poem" on it, and I'm not sure I'm remembering it right.

I forgot to mention that my over-enthusiastic painting damaged the thin paper and I had to apply two patches.  If you click on the upper picture to make it bigger, you can see the patches at the top left on a smaller patch just left of center at the top--sorry about that.  :-(

I am working on removing the gutter between the pages
for my book for Frankie.
and tweaking it
(not quite done yet.)

Roseate Spoonbills envelope
acrylic, Mary Stebbins Taitt

Pumice Fish
Acrylic, Mary Stebbins Taitt

I never went to art school, so I have to learn everything by experimenting.  I bought some pumice medium and played with it on the envelope for the first time ever (dumb, I know).  It was so rough, like sandpaper,only worse, so, worried about the mail carriers and postal employees injuring their fingers, I put a couple layers of matte medium over it, but that made it look dull.   :-(  It has lots of texture!  But less than before. (I also used a tiny but of the pumice medium on the rocks and on the road in the Spoonbill hornbill duckbill painting.)

In the Pocket:

Twin Poppies
oil on Graham Cracker box treated with acrylics
Mary Stebbisn Taitt

Flute Practice
oil and Arches Oil Paper
Mary Stebbins Taitt

Flute practice, side view
showing topography of oils

Mike, take the oils out and let them dry some more.  I hope they survive the journey to your house!!!

Cassandra Elise Lapwing revisited yet again (I'm probably still working on this):

For Willie and Balookey: Yellow Lady's Slipper Orchid

I did this "painting" with Sketchpad Pro (by Autodesk) on my iPad and am making prints of it for Willie for his pocket and for Ballookey because she helped me get started on the iPad. I did NOT touch it up on photoshop, this is straight off the iPad--I wanted it to be an untouched iPad picture. I spent several weeks working on it because Sketchpad pro is very slow (for me; I'm a newbie.) Sometimes, I used a pogo stylus, but mostly, I used my finger. I "painted" it from scratch, no photo was used. I did however, use a photo as a reference. The photo I used is one I took myself many years ago in the pouring rain. My mother stood over me with an umbrella. I did not paint all the droplets that were in the photo--that would have taken literally years to do. I just put a few representative ones in. Willie will receive his with his sketchbook. I will mail Ballookey her under separate cover to save for the pocket of her sketchbook. See that floating leaf at the bottom? I tried and tried and it would not write there. So--too bad. The floating leaf is now part of the picture. C'est la vie!

garden spot

Joan's Magnolia (Last one in Ash's Mole)

The magnolias are in full flower in Detroit, but going by soon. We stopped to enjoy Sam and Joan's magnolias when we visited them yesterday and I was inspired to paint them.

This was done with three "colors," Windsor Red deep (wc), Hooker's Green Dark (wc) and white (gouache). No other paint.

This is the last one, so Ash's mole will be packed up and mailed to Mike as soon as I can possibly do it. Hopefully tomorrow--I apologize for being a little late.

By the way, having had three semesters of dendro and looking at trees very closely, I know that normally, branches get smaller and don't wind into each other--but this tree was sort of knobby and had fat places and weird circular places.

New Piece in Hennie's Mole: Paradise

I did this this morning as a sort of "worship" of beauty, done entirely with Faber Castell PITT artist pens ("Indian Ink" pigment markers) (except two lines with a Micron Pigma brush pen.) I took a picture last weekend at the Belle Isle Conservatory that I based this on--but it is not very much like the original. I think I will post the original on my process blog, "Half-Formed," so anyone who is interested can see it there. If you click the image, you can see it larger.

In Flander's Fields, for Ander's Mole

Watercolor, wet into wet. On watercolor paper and pasted in.

Click to enbiggen.