The heron continues, First Friday art and watchers at the window

I continue work on the heron, building up the wings.
I turn the whole bird on the armature so I can get to the underside. This is an important view as the sculpture will be above eye level and the underside will be easily seen.
I fill out the neck and body of the bird and start refining the face.
I use a knife to define the the beak. I have also used it to begin shaping areas of the head. It leaves a subtle pattern.
I have blocked in the wings and am determining the patterns of the feathers.
This is one of the blades of grass which will be behind the heron. I use a wooden dowel as a support.

Don and I went to First Friday in Louisville to see Bob Lockhart's and Mike McCarthy's new work. Bob has a number of really great 2D works. Each one has a humorous (sometimes disturbing) description with the work. It's really worth seeing, we were glad to make the 3 hour round trip to see the show.

Mike McCarthy is doing quite well and has a natural flair for stone. 8 of 10 pieces in the show had sold - he is well on his way and someone to watch.
Speaking of watching - this little deer was watching me as I took his photograph.
And a watcher on the window

Studio Move and birds

I am moving the studio from one space to another (but the batteries are dead in the camera). I'll post pics in the next blog. In the meantime, I'm posting some of my photos that I find interesting.
After the dedication of the Home of the Innocents sculptures, we walked around Cave Hill Cemetery. I was amazed to see a Woodcock there. I didn't think they would be in the city.

I feed birds on the window sill of the studio, and so I have a lot of birds that come up to eat. This is, of course, a Blue Jay.

The other day, I opened the window of the studio to let out a huge number of ladybugs (should have taken a photo of that, ah well). I left the window open for several hours as it was a nice day, and this wren came in the window. It was really checking out the room, looking all over the place. It perched in front of the mirror, started singing, then attacked it's reflection -twice. It eventually left the room and I shut the window.

I took a walk down to the creek in the evening. I managed to catch this shot of a heron flying past at sunset.

While I was walking by the creek I took this photo of the moon and trees. It may look a little odd, actually it's a reflection. I have flipped the image horizontally to make it appear an actual shot of the trees...

I accompanied Don to Victor Oolitic when he went up to pick out some stone. While he looked around for something, I took photos of the stone blocks. Here I am looking through a stack of blocks at the sky.

I found this guy on one of the blocks, no idea what kid of beetle it is, but I thought he was pretty cool...

I found this miniature landscape on one of the blocks in the quarry. This formation in limestone is called Stylolite.


As we head towards winter there's not a lot of interesting things to photograph close-up. But this plant gone to seed looked interesting, with the sun behind it...