Parliament of Owls. Vote for your favorite!

I've been drawing an owl a day for a little over a week. I've been using different styles; sometimes they are realistic, sometimes they are goofy. The realistic ones are my favorites. I'm now posting them as I draw them each day on my Tumblr.

Vote for your favorite! Is there any kind of owl you'd like to see?

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Songs:

Songbird - Fleetwood Mac


And Your Bird Can Sing - The Beatles


One Last "Whoo-hoo!" For The Pullman - Sufjan Stevens

In Tall Buildings.

My brother came to visit Chicago & I took him to the Skydeck of the Willis (formerly Sears) Tower. It's 103 stories above the ground. I highly recommend it; the view is breathtaking. Looking through the glass floors straight down to the city below is... quite the experience.

Reminds me of the views from another fabulous city.

 It's the Empire State Building!

Songs & Videos:

Such Great Heights - The Postal Service


A Lion's Heart - The Tallest Man On Earth


The Tallest Man, The Broadest Shoulders - Sufjan Stevens


The Way To A Monster's Lair - In Tall Buildings

All Things Go, All Things Go.

A Playlist for Chicago: My Top 10.

Taste of Chicago.

The Bean. (Cloud Gate.)

Willis Tower.

In the Loop.

Seurat at the Art Institute.

Chicago - Sufjan Stevens


Lake Michigan - Rogue Wave


Twist & Shout - The Beatles (From Ferris Bueller)


The Giant of Illinois - Andrew Bird


Slow Down Chicago - Canasta (Thank you to the fine folks of CHIRP Radio for introducing me to this.)


Chicago - Lucy Wainwright Roche


Chicago Falcon - Budos Band


Chicago - Frank Sinatra


We Both Reached for the Gun - Chicago (The Musical)


Whole Lotta Losin' - Monsters of Folk

Owl Be Back

This weekend I went to the Renegade Craft Fair in Chicago, which is a huge festival of artists & vendors selling handmade goods. The whole extravaganza had a fantastic owl theme running. It was a hoot.

 

And now I present to you, without further ado, A Curated Collection of "Who Cooks for You All?"

I loved this cartoon when I was little. "I Love to Singa," featuring Owl Jolsen.

Here is one of my favorite lights from my Lamp Design class at Alfred, 2007.

T-Shirt Design, 2007.

Sketch, 2007.

My Owl Collection. It includes glass, LEDs, 4 watt bulbs, wood, metal, alabaster, plastic, leather, & cloth.

And of course, Owl Songs (All on YouTube):

The Owl & the Tanager - Sufjan Stevens

The Owl Of Love - Clogs

Sensing Owls - José González

Barnowl - Caribou

I Like Birds - Eels

Nature in Sepia Tones - Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison

"Burn Season."

            Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison are a married couple who create photographs about man interacting with nature. Their work is very environmentally-conscious. They often intertwine humans with nature, using sticks, dirt, water and even animals themselves.

            In the Architect’s Brother series, there are men pulling up the earth as though is stadium turf, a man with a sort of a lightening rod and wood suit gazing at distant lightning, a man with a cage and flying birds tied to his arms, and a man marching towards a fiery path armed with water balloons. There are men lighting bulbs planted in the earth, blowing and planting flower seeds across the earth, and surveying their future conquest: the Earth.

            In the Gray Dawn series, at first glance the viewer sees wallpaper with a butterfly pattern, but upon closer inspection, the butterflies are actually all nailed to the wall, as evidenced by the lower right corner’s blurry arms and hammer. The butterflies, normally a beautiful and peaceful creature, become gruesome with their dripping blood. Another photo in this series, a man is sitting across from a bird, which although not caged, is tethered to him. There is a fan between the two of them, and in the dim, dingy lighting, I can only think of an interrogation room. Does the man expect the bird to speak, or to attempt to fly in the feeble wind? Perhaps the ParkeHarrison’s are making a statement on domesticating exotic animals.

            Their newer work is no less environmentally adamant. This set seems to seal man and nature together, for better or for worse. There are people feeding bees honey, sprouts growing from a man’s arms, humans spreading pollen, and a flowers growing from a planter of a human arm.

            Some are much creepier than others. There is a photo of a man with his ear pressed to the ground and eyes glancing downward. The image is a cut-away of the earth, so we see him listening, and two feet below, we see the same man, but paler, glaring directly at the camera. Is this a prediction of his future dead self? Although buried among dirt, he does not look peaceful or at all content with his surroundings. And why does his alive self simply listen, and not attempt to connect with his dead self?

            The ParkeHarrison’s also deal with a lot of technical aspects. They make beautiful photogravure prints. They have an amazing sense of natural and studio lighting. They pay great amounts of attention to the composition of their lines. They frequently blur their figures, but it successfully conveys the mood they intended. I think their Architect’s Brother series is the most successful. The pictures are very uniform with each other with the stylistic sepia-toned photogravures, yet each one is very different by the subject and the subject matter. With their gray lighting and vast expanses surrounding each of the characters and scenes, it makes the environment look very grim and hopeless, which is precisely their point.

            With all of their warnings about human-abuse on the environment, and the rising popularity of the green movement, I wonder what their future work will show. 

"Night Garden."

Songs & Videos:

Prairie Fires that Wander About - Sufjan Stevens (YouTube)

Big Yellow Taxi - Joni Mitchell (YouTube)

Streets of Fire - The New Pornographers (HypeMachine)

Paisley Punctuation Pattern

This week's Illustration Friday topic was "Paisley." I can never pass up the opportunity to pour over patterns, whether in book form, web form, or book-on-web (via drawn) form. And I like ampersands. Hence, the Paisley Punctuation Pattern. In (Peacock Blue) Pen.

You can also purchase a print of this on my Etsy!

Movement V: Self-Organizing Emergent Patterns - Sufjan Stevens (Last.fm)

I Know the Pattern - The Thermals (YouTube)

Triphallus, To Punctuate! - of Montreal (iLike)

I Hear the Bells - Mike Doughty (iLike)