Blog | Subalpine Design

July 14, 2020June 14, 2022

These are a few of my favorite things.

That’s the title of my latest completed watercolor, Favorite Things. I’m very pleased with how it turned out. I’ve been having fun using my masking fluid and entering an Alphonse Mucha inspired phase that started with revisiting Wolf Rules.

Wolf Rules

My first sketched idea for this was also the first sketch/illustration I shared on this blog back in January 2019. It’s a subject I think I might re-compose and paint a few times.

Finished Object: Starbird Shawl

I’ve been hitting my first creative blocks with creating textiles. They pass with a flash of inspiration. I have to learn how to rest through these cycles because the ideas will come again. Usually I would have a stack of ideas brewing for the next thing, but this time I was clueless, going a week or two at a time sifting through patterns and trying to match it up to my stash of yarn. Something new to try, something I knew I could use.

My first breakthrough was pairing up this lacy Gamayun Bird shawl with the precious cobalt blue yak down fiber I picked up in Crested Butte during my travels. I called it Chasing the Stellar Jade Buffalo. The pattern required quite a bit of concentration. Instead I chose to name it after my great-grandparents. More photos and details can be found on Ravelry.

WIP: Lily of the West

I then searched for a loooooong time for the next project. M.A.N.Y. P.A.T..T.E.R.N.S! and many designers. Tops and skirts and dresses. I was originally drawn to Knitting for Breakfast’s Dune pattern, but learned I didn’t have quite enough yardage to make it with what I have on hand—starting a shopping list for next time.

I definitely saw the potential in Fiori di Loto to use my big purchase from the shut down in March. I was designing my Frozen Tears sweater back then and was looking for more Wooly Wonka yarn. Mooncat Fiber in Taos didn’t have any of the weight I needed, but they had these luscious dk weight 50/50 wool/silk kits, and they were on sale! I bought all she had left. I believe the colorways were Talisman and Desert Sunset. I also got Chaco Love (if I heard right—not pictured), that’s what wasn’t quite enough for the Dune pattern.

I’ll post more of these works in progress eventually on Ravelry. I’ve added some mods including making the front longer and a colorwork pattern from Alterknit.

WIP: Fairy Tale Short Sleeved Sweater

Fairy Tale was the icing on the cake. I wanted to pair it with a color scheme of kid gloss mohair that I’d bought way back from YadaYada Yarn in Silver City: ecru — peach sherbet? — amethyst. I didn’t want to just use the mohair, I wanted a little more substantial top in this round. So I paired it with the leftover Unicorn I was afraid of running out of with Frozen Tears and leftover Blackberry from the same sweater and this Urth Oleaster that I had bought in Durango with socks in mind. I could have made two sweaters outta all that fiber! Thinking about looking for a bamboo or something lightweight and doing a more summery version with more positive ease since we have been in the 90s the last two days.

When I’m feeling sad,
I simply remember my favorite things,
And then I don’t feel so bad. —Rodgers & Hammerstein

June 25, 2020June 25, 2020

Natural Resources

Last year working for Audubon Rockies as a Seasonal Educator, I visited the second grade classrooms in Pagosa and taught students about insects in preparation for their visit to Four Mile Ranch for more in depth study. This year as the team of educators behind the program begins to think about making content virtual for the upcoming school year, I thought it would be a great opportunity to document a few of the critters around my home and some of the web resources I’ve found.

Community Naturalists

Did you know June is National Pollinators Month? Audubon Rockies Spring 2020 Community Naturalist Highlights features an in-depth article by our local Community Naturalist, Keith Bruno, about how to attract mason bees. Learn the difference between native bees and honeybees and watch as Keith shows you how to assemble your very own pollinator house. Read the full article here.

There are other ways you can play a role in your community as a citizen scientist. Here in the San Juans, Mountain Studies Institute has several projects you can participate in from weed mapping to big horn sheep monitoring.

Or visit iNaturalist, a joint initiative by the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society, where you can id plants and animals, record your observations, and share them with a global network of scientists and naturalists!

Insects Are Everywhere!

They really are—especially this time of year! I captured this little video of a giant bumblebee visiting one of the hanging baskets on my front porch. Then I wondered if I could identify what kind of bee it was? There’s a website for that…

In this 5 Facts About Bumble Bees article from the National Wildlife Federation, I discovered bumblebeewatch.org where you can upload a photo, id the species and have that verified by an expert. I haven’t done that yet, but I think I may have a Bombus fervidus.

Here’s a gallery of some of the insects I’ve recorded in my yard over the years. The robber fly with yellow jacket is the only one that’s not from my home, but landed on me during a camping trip on the Middle Fork of the Piedra. Click on the photos below to view them larger.

Here’s an idea… Start a scavenger hunt! Try to find and document 3-5 insects in your yard or local park or open space. Don’t have a camera to record a photo? Take notes! Draw pictures! Then see if you can id or learn anything new about the insects you recorded using the internet or your local library to fuel your research. Try it again in another month or two. Did you see the same insects? Why or why not? Keep a journal and record the interesting critters you see around you. Get your friends involved, share and compare the insects you’ve recorded. It’s like Pokémon in real life. See how many insects you can observe and collect in your journal!

Who Can Be Found In My Habitat?

I was excited to stumble across the National Wildlife Federation’s website and learn that Ranger Rick is alive and well. It was like finding a long lost friend. Do you remember this raccoon character? I can remember reading Ranger Rick magazine as far back as second grade. It is probably one of the things that inspired my love for nature and wildlife. While it is a subscription based program, NWF’s site has free activities and resources and even more if your school is part of their Eco-Schools program.

While I was looking for insect photos on my computer, I decided I could post photos of some of the other animals that I’ve seen at my house. Most of the photos I have are of birds because we have a wide variety and many frequent our feeders and birdbath. If you’re a birder, you can record your sightings on ebird.

Some of the special new sightings we’ve seen this summer include an oriole and goldfinch, not to be confused with the grosbeaks or pine siskins. We have a lot of other birds, too that I haven’t taken photos of but can id such as towhees, jays, wrens and juncos. In my habitat, we have the neighborhood herd of mule deer who like to bed down on the hillside, red fox, rabbits, lizards and last year we spotted a gopher snake!

Our Impact

You can’t study the natural world for very long before you realize the role we as humans play in the web of life. For instance, I just read this article in Scientific American about micro-plastics. Our decisions have a much greater impact than many of us understand. It can be a heavy subject; but with continued education and research, we can begin to make personal choices that better impact our environment.

Food waste from someone’s 4th of July celebration. We found watermelon, hot dogs, pork bones, baked beans and untouched ears of corn in and around a creek bed.

Last summer I celebrated my 40th birthday by taking two weeks off to camp around southern Colorado. The joy of exploring the outdoors was overshadowed by people who left food waste in the campsites we visited. In one case, we gathered it all up and burned it in a campfire. In the other, we chose to bury it. If we’d had better resources, we would have packed it out. Not only does this show a blatant disregard for the value of food and thinking about the people that may come after you, but it is extremely dangerous for the local wildlife. If bears become habituated to finding human food, it’s only a matter of time before that bear will end up euthanized. Be Bear Aware.

Unfortunately, most people just don’t know any better. If you’d like to learn about the best ways to protect the outdoors and how to educate others, I’d like to introduce you to Leave No Trace principles. The LNT Center’s website also has an extensive library of activities and programs for young people to learn how to be responsible outdoor enthusiasts.

I hope you’ve found some of these online resources helpful. Next time, I’ll plan to focus more on plants and maybe provide my signature stories and specimens that I share with the students at Four Mile Ranch. Until then, happy trails…

May 27, 2020June 14, 2022

Practice Making Progress

Continuing to share my journey of discovery with watercolor, today’s post is meant to encourage you to find ways to advance your creative practice and for me to appreciate what I’ve accomplished.

As a creative, I know about the traps, obstacles or blocks from both inside and out that can make it challenging to follow through. They still litter my path. I’ve talked before about how it’s been difficult to get motivated and stick with finishing a piece of art. I haven’t encountered that often with my textile creations or when under contract to get a job done; but when it comes to putting something to paper via drawing or painting to feed my soul, everything else seems to take priority. The first thing I needed to do was to dedicate time to allow myself to paint.

As dr. e says, “Protect your time; . . . I know a fierce painter here in the Rockies who hangs this sign on the chain that closes off the road to her house when she is in a painting or thinking mode: ‘I am working today and am not receiving visitors. I know you think this doesn’t mean you because you are my banker, agent or best friend. But it does.’

“Another sculptor I know hangs this sign on her gate: ‘Do not disturb unless I’ve won the lottery or Jesus has been sighted on the Old Taos Highway.'”

Since I’ve worked from home for over a decade, the distractions here aren’t as hard to ignore as the obligation I feel towards my clients to make myself available. This required establishing a mental boundary. A few years ago, I turned off the alerts on my phone and continue to generously use the do not disturb feature. The true test is not checking it during or before painting, remaining present to the process.

When the pandemic cancelled the class I intended to take this month, I set aside the time that would have been spent there. During the first session, I nearly completed the Flagstaff Beetle. After the initial sequestered 3 hours, I checked the phone and learned no one had any urgent requests for my time, gifting me with the luxury of painting the rest of the day.

Finishing that painting over the following weekend, I added a quickie California poppy on a Zentangle® tile. And then I was stuck. What to paint next? Should I move onto the larger sized paper? I’d been working on 5″ x 7″ canvases and the 12″ x 17″ block of Arches paper bought for the class was intimidating. Gently pushing myself through the block by doing google image searches, I ended up with more ideas than hours in the day. With more demands on my time, most of the second class session was spent sketching and setting up for painting the next week.

Spending a little time one afternoon with my camera, trying to capture a suitable image of one of the hummingbirds that frequent our feeder this time of year, rewarded me with my next muse.

Until recently, I didn’t understand the desire to record a time lapse of one’s drawing as can be done in Adobe Sketch unless you were trying to create a tutorial. I’ve taken several pictures of this one in progress and there are a number of things I love about it. Obviously, I can turn those images into these fun animated gifs, but it also helps me see values or other details from a different perspective. Like recording myself playing the mandolin, I like to look back and see how I decided to approach a section of the canvas.

The last observation I’d like to share is that despite having limited workspace, I’ve been able to keep my painting supplies set up as I’ve worked on Large and In Charge and that has helped to motivate. This reminds me of another parallel to playing the mandolin. My good friend and musician, Mark Dudrow suggested if I wanted to get serious about practicing, I needed to keep my mandolin out of the case. “Put it in your way, where you’ll see it every day,” he said. Make it easy to pick up.

That’s the real beauty with watercolor. The paints can dry out, and be reconstituted with just a drop or spray of water. I find myself eyeing the composition throughout the day; or even picking up the brush for a quick stroke, while I wait for something to heat up in the kitchen. It also reminds me of something I learned from Zentangle’s creators, “Anything is possible, one stroke at a time.”

April 23, 2020April 23, 2020

Pardon Me, I Arted

I’m sure you’ve noticed. The boundaries of the world have changed.

Yesterday, the watercolor workshop I signed up for before the pandemic that was supposed to start in May, officially cancelled. So I’ve decided I’ll still set aside the time I would have spent in class, practicing and learning more about the medium on my own because I haven’t picked up my brush since that last post. My work in progress is exactly as I left it.

It’s not necessarily for the reasons you might think. Fortunately our lives and routines haven’t changed that much in the wake of a pandemic and this economic downturn; yet I can list the postponements, cancellations and the things that don’t meet what we used to call normal expectations. I’m not trying to gloss over the loss of life or pain. I’m looking for ways to express those feelings. I’m learning how to see obstacles as opportunity.

Choosing not to dwell on negativity or fear, I don’t want to talk about how uncertain everything is because nothing is really ever certain. I believe the control we think we have over our lives is mostly an illusion. We should always expect the unexpected and be willing to learn. Always be prepared. And even when you think you have it all figured out, then something will surprise you.

I want to know what I can do for the highest good right in this moment. Looking forward, I want to start taking the baby steps towards whatever our new normal might be with caution and wisdom. Observe. Orientate. Decide. Act. I’d like to share some of what Lights up my days.

If we want to talk hoarding, I reacted by adding to my yarn stash and ordered official Zentangle® supplies:

I finished up these socks I started for my mom back in December.

And made this infant set in anticipation of welcoming my niece.

I’ve made progress on the poncho and started a whole new sweater!

I’ve started cataloging my projects on Ravelry…

The garden is starting out great with a bunch of volunteers of lettuce and the reliable return of old friends like rhubarb and strawberries. The daffodils have just started blooming since Easter.

Lou’s been making stew.

There’s even been some time for mandolin practice. With the new year, I started occasionally recording my practices. Pretending to have an audience helps me play through hiccups and critique my technique. I’d like to share some of the better ones on youtube but I don’t know enough about music licensing issues when practicing popular songs. So I’ll spare you the audio for now…

When I shared a difficult time with one of my teachers a few years ago, she suggested:

“…it is good to find a book such as Pema Chodron’s, When Things Fall Apart to read during times like this.

When the mind obsesses about what we ultimately can do nothing about, but care so much for a good outcome, it helps to replace the overwhelming thoughts with thoughts of what is, and what we must do to remain balanced in times like this. It also helps to set the mind in a place to meditate and refuel our energy to carry on.”—Kat Katsos

I’ve picked it up to read again.

March 15, 2020February 13, 2023

Playing with Water

I can’t say I’m a complete novice when it comes to watercolor.

I used a simple Crayola set to create this logo for a client…

…and layered washes of color under the colored pencils in this poster for Habitat for Humanity’s Recycled Arts Show.

When my grandfather passed, I created this scene as part of a card for my mom.

Using photoshop to ‘photocopy’ this photo my husband took, I turned it into outlines, printed and re-applied the color using watercolor.

Like knitting and crochet, watercolor may be one of those talents that has somehow been transmitted to me from my ancestors even though I never saw how they executed the skill or viewed much of their handicraft. Grandpa practiced watercolor. Or it could just be something that can be learned with careful observation and practice.

I’ve been working in colored pencil and feel like it has taught me some valuable skills about shading and the use of white space, but I wanted to move into paint.

Paint is naturally more fluid. I feel like the pigments could be more vibrant than pencil, and it just flows, laying down the color much faster. I used to own some acrylics, and have played with enamels, but watercolor has been calling.

Some of my old acrylic paintings from 20+ years ago.

A flower pot decorated in enamel paints, inspired by the seashells we picked up on a visit to Florida in 2017.

The first thing I did was sit down and research recommendations on supplies. There is so much out there! I didn’t know where to start. As I found artists whose artwork I admired, Winsor & Newton was frequently mentioned. Anticipating that I would want a small kit that I could easily take with me, I wanted to keep it all small and compact. For less than $50 on Amazon, I purchased the following:

Winsor & Newton (W&N) Cotman Water Color Paint Sketchers’ Pocket Box
W&N Cotman short handle brush 7pack of assorted styles
W&N Professional Watercolor paper journal, cold pressed 140lb. 5×7

I also bought some masking fluid, but I haven’t used it yet.

Added since my initial order:

some fun washi masking tape for holding down the paper while I paint on a clipboard
Staedtler Pigment Liners, set of 6 in assorted sizes – I thought I wanted a pen that was waterproof, but I have yet to use these with my paints. So far I’ve been sketching very lightly in pencil and using the paint to outline. I’ve been using the pens with my tangling practice.

Since then, I’ve signed up for a watercolor class at my local studio that starts in May. There’s a material list for the class and per the instructor’s recommendation, I bought them all through Cheap Joe’s Art Supplies. So now I have tubes of paint, a palette, and a big block of watercolor paper. My favorite brushes so far are the no. 6 round Princeton Neptune I bought for the class and the no 1 round from the W&N pack for detail.

I’d been reading many artist recommendations and saw that a repetitive theme is to buy larger paper and cut it down to the size you want. I don’t plan on doing that with this block. I would like to try something large before the class but haven’t decided what yet. I like the small sketchbook size because it doesn’t take too long to complete something. Surprisingly, I’ve still been able to achieve a high level of detail, yet I know when I scale up it will open up a whole new world and style. I will probably order another sketchpad for the portability.

Camping on the Chama, featured at the beginning of this post, was my first piece with just my initial W&N supplies. For these succulents—the latest completed artwork, I used some of my new tubes of paint with the palette and new brush and the W&N pans. Here’s a little peek into the process: