Fools and Delights

On some long-ago April Fools' Day, my mom baked cookies with a piece of cardboard inside them on which she had written "April Fools!" At least, I think she did that, mainly because I kind of recall my older siblings commenting that they became suspicious as soon as they learned she had baked cookies on April 1, because she so rarely made them.  

And I'm pretty sure I read about how our local zoo reported that they would receive calls on April 1 from unsuspecting people who had been left a note telling them to return a call from Mr. Lyon, with the zoo's phone number. 

I am not a prankster, mainly because I am incapable of keeping a straight face. But I am always curious about the origins and history of folk traditions such as April Fools' Day, and have read quite a few explanations, all lacking any supporting evidence (maybe they were all pranks?). What can be known about the day is summed up very nicely in this overview from the Library of Congress.

My 100-Day Project This Week

In truth, I did very little in the way of actually working on my project or projects, except to finish my scarf (watercolor) painting early in the week. See the beginnings of that one in last week's blog post (scroll down a bit to find it). I'm comfortable saying I'm done with it now. 

Some things I learned from doing this:

It really helps to allow a few days to do a painting, even a small one like this. It is too tempting to feel that I must complete a drawing or painting in one sitting, but it is nearly always a mistake to actually try to do so. 

The practical reason is to stop myself from overworking it while it's wet, which I've done often enough; the result tends to be muddy and opaque. But I also need to stop from overthinking it, and for that it helps to step away and go do something else, then come back to look at it with refreshed eyes. When I'm in the midst of it, I can't tell if I've done enough or already too much—and if it does need something more, what that might be. 

I don't have a plan for it other than to keep it in the box I am currently using for all things related to my 100-Day Project. And move on to doing another painting. And another one after that.

Books written for artists emphasize how you're supposed to produce a lot of work without worrying about if it's "good" or not. That's the only way to truly develop your skills—and to learn to relax and enjoy the process. It's the central message that I got from Lynda Barry's graphic memoir and creative guidebook, What It Is. The climax of the first half of the book is when she is agonizing about whether her work is any good, or is it crap? The right answer turns out to be, "I don't know."

That message is also central to the book Art and Fear, by David Bayles and Ted Orland.  "You make good work by (among other things) making lots of work that isn't very good ... ," they write.

And that's really what my "project" is, and the reason I signed up for the 100-Day Project. To push myself to just make pictures: drawings, paintings, collages, with asemic writing and without. 

Random Delights

I make frequent use of the Online Etymology Dictionary, or Etymonline. Its creator, Douglas Harper, posts random short entries on his Patreon page that show up in my email inbox at irregular intervals, with links to entries in his dictionary that often seem like non sequiturs, yet curiously do relate somehow, though I would be hard pressed to explain it. He doesn't fuss over syntax with these, either, so they often read like little bursts of thought that spring spontaneously from his brain. Here's an example from last week:

"unburst ordnance: The goal is to sow the landscape thick with landmines of delight. Little things, unexpected crocus in the sidewalk crack, that sort of. Never where you'd look for them. Someplace no one goes, or you get there lost and bleary looking for something else. That's when you'll want it there."

This little paragraph is followed by links to two words, Thompson and thisness. 

It made me think of The Book of Delights, by Ross Gay, a collection of essays about noticing the delightful things one might easily overlook when we are too focused on, well, whatever we're too focused on. And that reminded me that I have always meant to buy the book but hadn't done so yet. Since it was published in 2019, it's easy to find a used copy nowadays. (In fact, I just ordered it after writing the foregoing.)

Meanwhile, Over at Wordsmith, the Solar Eclipse

Wordsmith sends a word of the day Monday through Friday, with a theme for the week, which is sometimes topical. This week it's all about the upcoming solar eclipse (April 8) that will briefly cloak a wide swath of the country in daytime darkness next Monday. This Monday's word was "umbra." 

Butterflies for the Useful Calendar -- some works in progress

I've been painting watercolor illustrations of butterflies for the 2019 Useful Calendar, and sharing pictures of some of them on my Facebook page. But as I always have something  to say about my artworks in progress (the back story, you could say), it occurred to me that this blog is better suited for that.

At the coffee shop, on a day suitable for bike riding, to proofread the calendar in progress.

Even though I settled on butterflies for my calendar illustrations several months ago, I'm a terrible procrastinator, so I started actually doing them about a month ago. Each one takes four to six hours to complete, so I really can't do more than one in a day; and I prefer to allow two or three days for the whole process: two days for sketches and studies and painting, then one day to set it aside before taking a fresh look and adding any finishing touches.

I've managed to condense the process into one day by making it my primary occupation (it's very difficult for me to make anything my primary occupation), and by being rather more disciplined about it than is my nature. It being cold and snowy and getting dark early does help, because I don't feel much temptation to get out on my bike in the afternoon these days.

A slightly later version of the calendar, with a few of the butterflies in place.

But a thaw is coming, and I have bulbs and roots (of butterfly-friendly native plants) still to plant, so I will have to muster a bit of extra resolve to finish the last two (yes, two left!) and get the calendar done and ready to go by the end of this weekend (which I am determined to do). Then I will make it available in my Etsy shop and, hopefully, at a couple of local consignment shops.

Now, here are the first few illustrations, with a bit of context and an explanation for why that butterfly for this month. I'll share more of them over the next week or so. 

Monarchs wintering on eucalyptus 

I wanted each month's butterfly to relate somehow to its month, so, being a Minnesotan, I wondered what I should do with the winter months. That led me to think about monarchs migrating. It's widely known that our monarchs fly to Mexico for the winter, but I learned a couple of years ago that those west of the Rockies winter in coastal California, in eucalyptus groves. So my January butterflies are monarchs on eucalyptus. 

I like to think these are in Pacific Grove, a charming city adjacent to Monterey. We stayed in Pacific Grove when our son graduated from the Defense Language Institute a couple of years ago, at a motel called the Butterfly Grove Inn, so named because it is next to a butterfly sanctuary. It was June, so there were no monarchs at the time, but it was a new discovery for me that monarchs wintered there. We hope to go back some winter.

Pacific Grove has a very nice natural history museum, too. I highly recommend it.

A pig and tiger swallowtails enjoying some mud

The Year of the Pig begins February 5, 2019, and I have made it a tradition to feature the lunar new year animal in my calendars, so I contemplated how to combine the two. What do they have in common? Well, as it happens: an affinity for mud! Several species of butterflies, including the tiger swallowtails depicted here, will gather in mud puddles to extract vital minerals from the wet soil, a practice known as puddling.

Question mark butterfly, left (November); zebra longwing, right (December)

I've not been painting them in any particular order, and since I am showing you winter butterflies (well, the swallowtails aren't a winter butterfly, I just put them in February because they "go" with the pig), here are some more of those.

The December butterfly is a zebra longwing (right), which flies year round in the far south including Florida, southern Texas, Mexico and Central America. It is the state butterfly of Florida, and one of its nectar plants is the firebush, on which I placed it to add a little splash of color.  

The question mark, shown perched head down on a spruce branch, could still be active in November in a milder region than Minnesota. Some of them will migrate to southern states, and some will hibernate in the north. Hibernating butterflies tuck themselves into a crevice in a tree or structure, or crawl into the midst of a brush pile, and spend the winter in a dormant state.  This nature museum in Chicago offers a nice succinct explanation of butterfly hibernation.

Butterflies may hibernate at any stage in their life cycle, depending on species. Those that hibernate as adults emerge fairly early in the spring, likely before there are any flowers to provide nectar. Luckily, flower nectar is not their preferred food; rather, they feed on tree sap, rotting fruit, and animal waste. 

That includes the mourning cloak, my March butterfly and another one that hibernates in adult form. I have seen these flying when there is still some snow on the ground — they'll even land on a snow pile to sip a little moisture, and probably get some nutrients from the dirt that's mixed in.

Hibernating butterflies, in whatever life stage they do it, need shelter in the form of leaf litter, brush piles and wood piles, as well as mature trees with gaps and crevices they can crawl into. You can help them out by not tidying up your yard too much in the fall.

Art, inspiration, pigs, and butterflies

I've been pondering and playing around with design ideas and a theme for the next edition of the Useful Calendar, which I start working on shortly after the current year begins. It comes in two formats: a set of cards for desk or purse, and a year-at-a-glance poster. I focus on the cards first, making the poster only after all refinements and corrections are completed on the cards to save duplicated effort.

Most years I take the Lunar New Year animal as my theme, and for 2018, which is Year of the Dog, I even modified the layout to allow more room for illustrations—because dogs, right?

For most years prior to this I did one illustration for the cover card and put more text on the individual months, as in 2017, the Year of the Rooster:

But in 2016, feeling uninspired by the Year of the Monkey, I decided to change the theme to bees. Specifically, 12 wild (native) bees from around the world. But I didn't have any ideas about how to make more room for the illustrations, so the cards were still quite text heavy and the bees were kind of small—the original watercolors are about 4 x 6 inches; the calendar cards are 2.75" by 4.25".

I did take the bee illustrations and the research I did about them and make it into a zine, which is available in my Etsy shop, and locally at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts.

Which brings us to 2019—Year of the Pig. I wanted to continue with the new layout allowing more room for art, which means coming up with 12 unique illustrations of pigs. I  had started to gather some ideas, trivia, and inspiration about pigs to inform the artwork, including looking for folktales about pigs and bookmarking sites with curious pig trivia, like this one about Pigcasso, a painting pig in South Africa, and another about a spot in the Bahamas called Pig Beach.

But, as fun as those discoveries might be, none of it was inspiring me to start doing illustrations of pigs. I mean, even with the added room for artwork, it's still got to be quite small, and a picture of a swimming or painting pig kind of needs some context, and I still needed to come up with 10 more unique ways to depict pigs. It just wasn't working for me.

So I asked myself, what would I like to illustrate the 2019 calendar with? 

When I am pondering ideas I tend to stare out the window. And when I look out the window I see a foot of snow in the middle of April. So, naturally, I think about my garden, and summer ... and butterflies.

Question mark butterfly, perched on the wood frame of my kitchen garden last summer.

And it just so happens that I've already got a lot of butterfly photos that I've taken in my own garden.

A slightly tattered tiger swallowtail visiting hydrangea in an alley near Minnehaha Falls park

 I'll also do illustrations by referencing a variety of photos on the web to put together a generic composite image, such as for this watercolor of a nonspecific azure butterfly:

So now that I've settled on a theme, the next step is choosing colors (one of them will certainly be butterfly blue) and fonts. See my next post about my design inspirations and ideas here.

Some of my illustrations end up on note cards, book plates, and stickers, which you can see in my Etsy shop, also called Sharon's Compendium.