Mongolia Monday: The Five Snouts, Part 1

July 21, 2008September 20, 2009 | foxstudio

My understanding is that, to this day, around half of Mongolian population of 2.9 million people still live as the Mongols always have, as herders. Their animals are, of course, central to their lives and provide income, food, clothing and shelter. There are five species: horses, goats, sheep, cattle and bactrian camels. Collectively the Mongolians refer to them as The Five Snouts or also Five Jewels.

I thought that I would post a few photos of each for the next five weeks, at which point I will be on my way to Mongolia (Aug. 24 departure).

Let’s start with two-humped bactrian camels, made famous by the movie The Story of the Weeping Camel. They provide wool and milk. I don’t think they are used for food very often:

I saw this pretty white camel by the road on my first trip in 2005.

This string of camels was at a ger we visited near a salt deposit in western Mongolia.

On our way back from Khomiin Tal, there was a large herd of animals along the north shore of Khar Us Nuur, including lots of camels.

And finally, I photographed this big guy on our way back to Ulaanbaatar from the Ikh Nartiin Chuluu Nature Reserve.

Friday Features

July 18, 2008July 18, 2008 | foxstudio

BACK YARD BIRD LIST

Red Crossbills showed up at the sunflower seed feeder yesterday and made a serious dent in it. A group came through last fall, but moved on after a couple of days. We’ll see how long these stay.

The goldfinches and sparrows are emptying out two thistle seed bags in less than 48 hours. They’re back within seconds of the refill. We live but to serve. We must have the fattest finches in the neighborhood.

Bonus photo with my new lens- an osprey diving toward the pond, at what we’re not sure since the goldfish pretty much stay under the branches we’ve laid around part of the edge.

All photos taken with my new Nikon D80 with the equally new AF-VR-Nikkor 80-400. I’m stoked, to say the least.

PLANET SAVER TIP OF THE DAY

Anyone with even a small yard can make it bird-friendly. Food, water and shelter are the requirements. We have the big pond, feeders, food plants, trees and brush piles. But a town backyard could have a bird bath (be sure to keep it clean), bird feeders and some small shrubs. If you can stand it and feel you have room, let a corner go “wild”. And consider not obsessively cleaning up in the fall. Leave some seed heads on the flowers and grass. Then sit back and see who shows up.

ART THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

“There’ll be moments when you get a spark, a gleam of light and BOOM!, you’re gone. It seems easy. But then it goes away, and it gets so incredibly hard. It’s like having sex in a wind tunnel.”

Robin Williams (who else?)

Drawings from live animals and new painting

July 16, 2008 | foxstudio

From the stats it looks like the post of my pet sketches was one of my most popular so far, so here’s more. These are done the way I usually work, with a fine tip gel pen. They’re done fast. Under five minutes, sometimes under two.

Niki, our tri-color rough collie

From the San Francisco Zoo. He really did hold still long enough for this head study.

These were ultra-quick, a minute or less, but I caught the gesture. Also San Francisco Zoo.

And, looking through my old sketchbooks, I came across the studies I did at Julie Chapman’s workshop in 2005. These are of Daisy, the badger, who alas, is no longer with us. Notice that I didn’t worry about eyes. I was trying to capture “badgerness”.

If you decide to try this, and I hope you do, keep in mind that every animal is an individual and look for what makes them them. If you like what I do, I think that’s a big part of it.

I’ll end with the bobcat painting, now called “Stepping Lightly”. I’m thinking of punching up the highlights on grass and maybe futzing (that’s the technical term, of course) with the logs some more, but that’s about it.

PLANET SAVER TIP OF THE DAY

This one’s easy. Start to become aware of how you use energy. You can save money and help slow down climate change by using less and using it more wisely. Just little stuff to start- turn lights off when you leave a room, don’t leave the tv on if no one is watching, turn your thermostat down a couple of degrees or up, depending on the temperature where you are.

Now, you must know that this kind of thing, while necessary and desirable, is the “low hanging fruit”. It requires simple changes of habit, not real sacrifice. If you’re already doing the above and are ready and able to take the next steps, consider updating your older appliances to new, energy-efficient models. Change your incandescent light bulbs to compact flourescents or LEDs.

For more information and actions you can take, check out www.motherearthnews.com and www.builditsolar.com

What ideas would you like to pass on to me and my readers? We’re all in this together, after all.

Mongolia Monday

July 14, 2008July 14, 2008 | foxstudio

I was given a bag of aruul on my last trip to Mongolia in the fall of 2006. I’ve kept it in the freezer and have been eating a little at a time to make it last. I’m now down to the final three or so pieces, plus some bits of dried cream. So, I’ve kind of had Mongolian food on the brain, thinking about the upcoming trip.

One of my first goals upon arrival is to snag a bag of aruul for snacking on the road. Aruul is essentially dried skim milk. It’s really hard and is definitely an acquired taste. My first encounter with it was when I was out in the early morning viewing the takhi at Khomiin Tal and the ranger offered me a piece for breakfast. I hadn’t even had a cup of coffee yet, so I started to chew away at it and figured I’d better make it through most of it to be polite. By the time I was done, I liked it just fine. It has a yogurty tang.

The humidity is so low in Mongolia that they can keep raw meat and dairy without refrigeration, although Westerns had better be careful what they try since we don’t have the resistance the Mongolians have built up. On the way back from Khomiin Tal, we stopped at a soum center (county seat) for lunch, which turned out to be what is almost the national dish, buuz, pronounced more like booooz, with a long “o”. Every culture, it seems, has some version of meat/veg in a dough pocket. Think Cornish pasties. So here’s the inside of the cookshop. I asked to take a picture and the reaction was along the lines of “Sure, if you want to photograph something so utterly ordinary and uninteresting it’s fine by us.”

While waiting for our order to be prepared, we wandered around the busy central “plaza”. Over in the shade were three women setting up a table with their wares, a dismembered carcass of some kind. They saw me taking the picture and we made eye contact. I went over, gestured with my camera and thanked them. Then I summoned up my very minimal Mongolian and told them that I was an artist from California. That elicited all kinds of smiles. This kind of experience is a big reason Why I Don’t Take Packaged Tours.

The soum center. I’m not sure of the name. It’s on the north shore of Khar Us Nur and I have maps with two different names. Someone help me out here.

News Flash!

July 11, 2008July 14, 2008 | foxstudio

“Autumn” has been accepted into the 16th Annual Juried Art Competition Show and Sale at the Breckenridge Fine Arts Center! It will be there from August 25 through September 28.

Friday Features

July 11, 2008July 16, 2008 | foxstudio

IN OUR OWN BACKYARD

Last night my husband and I were sitting in our spa at dusk and what should we see ambling along the edge of one of the flower borders but a mom skunk with one baby. Niki the collie, who got thoroughly skunked a month or so ago, immediately went to the other side of the spa and gazed with great interest toward the pond. Good dog.

The skunks went right onto the patio and then under the engawa (Japanese style veranda), at which point we called it a night.

BACKYARD BIRD LIST

Same as last week, except one of the first hummingbirds, an Allen’s I think, found the verbascum and lavender, which are starting to bloom. There was an article in the news today here about the songbird die-off. Pretty depressing. The only local bird named that we have seen here is the Rufous Hummingbird. Time to plant more hummingbird friendly plants.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

You think you know your pets, but sometimes………..

Niki and Eowyn, en flagrante something or other. Got another one that I’m going to upload to www.icanhascheezburger.com. If you haven’t been there and you have a sense of the ridiculous, highly recommended.

ART THOUGHT(S) FOR THE DAY

Two Views on Art:

Artists can color the sky red because they know it’s blue. Those of us who aren’t artists must color things the way they really are or people might think we’re stupid.

Jules Pfeiffer, famous artist

Anyone who sees and paints the sky green and pastures blue ought to be sterilized.

Adolf Hitler, failed artist

Paintings in Progress

July 8, 2008 | foxstudio

A few of you may remember that I was posting images of an elk painting in progress. I’m sure the suspense has been killing you. As it happens, it was a bust. Too many problems with the drawing of the elk that I saw after I’d let it sit awhile. Win some, lose some.

But here are two that are well on the way-

First is a bobcat I photographed at the Triple D Game Ranch and transferred to a more interesting setting that I shot on the Firehole River in Yellowstone. The trick, of course, is to make the light match when the reference is from two different locations, like Montana vs. Wyoming. However, both are morning light.

The second is Mt. Moran at Grand Tetons National Park with the famous Oxbow of the Snake River in the foreground. I’ve got three pieces of reference up for this one. One is overexposed for the mountains, but has the compositional angle I want and great reflections. The other two have rich color and show more detail of the mountain. For this subject, as I learned from a workshop I took a few years ago with Jim Wilcox, one has to introduce some atmospheric perspective in order for the painting to “read” correctly. The air is soooo clear that the Tetons look to be a few hundred yards away, but actually they are around 10-12 miles from the major vantage points along the road. So, getting the value relationships right is critical. And so is being decisive and accurate in the drawing of the mountain. It’s really a portrait in rock. Stay tuned.

ART THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

I see a flower. It gives me the sensation of the beautiful. I wish to paint it. And as soon as I wish to paint it I see the whole subject-flower-changed. It is now an art problem to resolve.

Georges Vantongerloo

Mongolia Monday

July 7, 2008July 7, 2008 | foxstudio

Particularly since Mongolia made one of its rare appearances in international news last week, I thought I would start to post a photo or two of my travels there on Monday mornings, along with new paintings and drawings with Mongolian subjects. My husband and I and another artist are currently set to go back ( my third trip, his first) on August 24. My hope is to blog while on the trip when I can.

In the meantime, I know that Mongolia is still a mysterious, exotic place to most Americans who only know the country from stories about Chinggis Khan (the more correct spelling of Genghis Khan). I think the riot caught everyone off-guard and, I would venture to guess, that most Mongolians did not approve of, and are quite possibly embarrassed by, what happened.

Alcohol abuse (coupled with poverty and hardship) has been a problem in the country for a long time, partly due to the introduction of vodka by the Russians many years ago when Mongolia was tied very closely to the Soviet Union. I have read that the younger generation is moving away from hard liquor and choosing beer instead, but, in any case, booze appears to be a factor in what happened, as at least one news report I read stated that 600 mostly young men had been taken away to the Mongolian equivalent of a “drunk tank”.

Mongolia is sitting on huge deposits of valuable mineral resources like copper and uranium. How the income is handled from the mining, which involves foreign companies, appears to be a point of serious internal political disagreement. This is a young democracy, less than twenty years old, but the citizens have expressed their views forcefully and in public many times before now. This time, for whatever reason, it got completely out of hand.

So, here are some photos of Ulaanbaatar that are typical of the city and the people, who go about their business day to day just like the rest of us. They catch the bus, talk on cell phones, go grocery shopping and vacation in the countryside. They can eat out in restaurants serving a variety of cuisines, including American, Korean, German, Japanese, Italian, Chinese and, of course, Mongolian (I adore buuz, the steamed meat turnovers), although many can’t afford that yet. And an increasing number speak at least a little English. I did love the fact that one often sees people dressed in “del”, the national garment.

(There are lots more photos from both my trips on my website)

Street Scene on Peace Avenue

The famous State Department Store, which has an entire floor dedicated to Mongolian crafts, music, art, books, etc. A must-go if you’re in Ulaanbaatar for the first time