More about the warthog in a moment, but first some good Covid-19 news. As of this past Saturday there were no new cases in Humboldt County for four days in a row! I don’t think any of us expect this to last, but it suggests that by following the shelter in place order for the past three weeks, we’re at least flattening the curve. There was no update on Sunday but there should be one today after 4pm. I’ve seen estimates now of a five or fourteen day incubation period, so we’ll see. In the meantime we’ve got plenty to do around the house and property and it’s sunny!
Now on to the warthog. During an art workshop safari I went on in October 2004, with the late Simon Combes, one of the places we went to was Lewa Downs Conservancy. The lodge was on a hilltop with a great view. We were watching Simon do a plein air demo and then set up to do our own. This warthog walked right in front of us less than 20′ away and stopped. I got some great photos, including this one.
My model
This week’s Inktober52 prompt is “Red”. I don’t have any “red” ink as it turns out (that will be remedied, I hope, on Friday when my order of Dr. PH Martin’s Bombay inks arrive). But I did have a small sample container of Noodler’s Ink Burgundy and that’s what I used, as seen above. The nib this time was a Hunt 22, a good sturdy drawing nib. I started out by doing a graphite drawing. This solves all the drawing and value problems first so on the final drawing I can focus on the penwork.
Graphite on Strathmore 300 vellum bristol
I overlaid the drawing with a piece of Clearprint Heavy Vellum. It worked well but I prefer to do pen and ink work on paper so experimentation will continue.
In other news, I belong to a Facebook group called Sunday Paintout, which meets around 10am on, well, Sunday mornings every week. It’s not the best day for me but I participate when I can. Because of Covid-19, the paintouts are happening virtually. Members are going out on their own on Sunday morning and posting images of the art they’ve done and maybe the location they went to. Our ornamental cherry trees are in full bloom and I’ve had the itch to paint them so yesterday morning I got out my watercolors for the first time in ages and did this quick sketch. I used Winsor Newton watercolors on Saunders Waterford 140lb coldpress paper. It’s 8×8″.
Prompt: “Green”- hope we see at least one this year
Sheltering in place continues with no drama other than Peregrin, one of our rough collies, getting skunked right in the face a few evenings ago, so his temporary nickname is Stinky. I got the deskunker on him right away but here’s still a whiff of it up if we get close.
Peregrin, age 3, aka Stinky Dog
This afternoon I’ll start making a few masks for us to wear when we go out. Did a lot of research and dug through my fabrics for tight-weave cottons. We’ve got coffee filters and some old vacuum cleaner bags for filtration. The local grocery stores seem to be doing their part to keep carts and conveyers sanitized. We’ve also got almost an entire box of disposable gloves that my husband bought for his airplane modeling. There will be a trip to the store tomorrow.
We had one last corker of a wintry storm come through over the past couple of days with good, heavy rain. Nippy this morning, but yesterday afternoon really felt like spring has sprung. Which means plenty of exercise in the garden coming up. Daffodils are almost done. Roses are leafing out nicely. Apple trees have flower buds on them. Tulips are in full bloom.
Here’s an update on the international online art event I’m participating in called Inktober52. The original event called for doing a pen and ink drawing a day for the month of….October. This time it’s one a week for the whole year. So far I’ve had no problem doing my weekly piece. My intention had been to post them in one month batches here on the blog, but that kinda got lost in all the pandemic news and prep. Things have settled down into a routine now, so in this post I’ll get caught up. You can see the first batchhere. And I posted a few last timehere. The one at the top is the latest, just done yesterday and posted on Instagram and elsewhere this morning. If you want to follow me on Instagram I’m here. There’s a board for them on Pinterest here.
Prompt: Spider- a visitor to our backyard
Prompt: “Wave” – reference from local beaches
Prompt: “Elf”- the bole of a very old red alder tree on our property
Prompt: “Tower”- me in front of a redwood tree in Prairie Creek State Park, just north of us
Inktober52 drawing from last week. The prompt was “Joy”. A takhi/Przewalski’s foal I saw at Hustai National Park in Mongolia in 2018
This past Tuesday I flew solo and went to the local natural food store for needed groceries. It’s also senior discount day all day and what the heck. I was there around 9am and it was pretty crowded already. It was also pouring rain. A number of people were wearing masks and most were paying attention to social distancing and situational awareness in general. Except for the woman who worked her way up and down the bulk food bins multiple times looking for “barley” and the person she was with who had parked their cart in a way that blocked anyone else’s access to the rest of the corner bulk bin area. Sigh. Finally they left and I was able to grab my bag of whole wheat flour (we have a breadmaker which we actually do use every week ;0) ). Last item was ice cream. The aisle was blocked by a family of three and their cart. Impossible to move past them. Go to next aisle. Same problem. Of course the aisles were never designed for people needing to stay 6′ apart when passing. So it becomes an exercise in patience and hoping they’ll see you and move, which of course they eventually do in any case. We all need to be patient with each other to get through this, but twinges of exasperation will arise at times. But I came home feeling really, really stressed, the most so far since this started. OTOH, I now know how to cope successfully if I encounter that situation again. The store clerk told me they were suprised at how busy it was and that it wasn’t what they usually expect. They had someone at the door to stop people from bringing in their own bags and totes and another person sanitizing every cart before reuse. Unlike the last time there was now tape on the floors for distancing, but no one enforcing it. Management of the situation still seems lax.
Inktober52 drawing from a couple of weeks ago. Prompt was “Dinner”. My “model” was a young male lion I saw in the Masai Mara, Kenya, in 2004
My husband went out yesterday for two quick errands. One stop at the hardware store for a roll of Scott car wipes, which are being recommended as one good choice for making masks. They are non-fabric, tough and washable. It looks like the CDC may start recommending masks for the general public very soon. We all need to make our own or have them made for us because the real medical masks need to go to health care workers. However, his big mission was to A&L Feed for kitty litter, a particular brand that is biodegradable and not clay-based (the mining for kitty litter clay is environmentally sketchy at best). All the employees, including the guy running the forklift, were wearing gloves. The counter person was keeping the counter wiped down. Everyone was distance sensitive. They are clearly taking this seriously.
Inktober52 drawing from February. Prompt was “Hammerhead”. This is a hammerhead bat. It’s been one of my most popular ones so far.
We both agreed this morning that we’re feeling better, what passes for normal, sleeping ok and have made the psychological adjustment to a situation that will almost certainly go on for months. I think having to go out and it being manageable was a relief. The current number of cases in the county is 28 as of this morning, almost all either from one travel group that went overseas or people who’d been in contact with an infected person. Only a couple that might be community transmission. Only two hospitalizations so far, one at the very beginning and they’ve long been released. Compared to so many places we’re doing fine in Humboldt County so far.
About the drawings…all of them are being posted on Instagram, the official “base” for the event. You can see mine here. Search the hashtag #inktober52 and you can see what other artists are doing. It’s a flood of wonderful creativity in ink!
We’re in Day 10 now of sheltering in place and will probably be doing this at least until the end of April. We’re fine. It’s been raining and that’s good. I’ve gotten some early gardening in between storms, like finishing up the apple tree pruning. I thought I’d share photos of our garden as we go along, along with my art. We have a fully-fenced acre in a great rural residential neighborhood. We’ll be “staycationing” this year except for day trips around our area once it’s safe.
I was never a fan of grape hyacinth until I saw this tricolor variety in the top photo and now I have lots of them planted in the beds outside my studio door. Seeing them makes me smile every day.
Our mini apple “orchard”
We have four apple trees: Ashmead’s Kernel and Cox’s Orange Pippin, both famous English dessert apples, a Granny Smith and Newtown Pippin, both green which is what my husband prefers. On the espalier to the right there is grafting to be done to make it multi-variety again, but it produced a nice batch of Gravensteins last fall. In the background on the right below the power pole is our blueberry patch of about three dozen plants. I got them all pruned up as they started to bloom. They produce between five and six gallon bags of berries every year. Blueberries can happily grow in pots and are nice for casual “grazing”. They need acid soil and are generally low maintenance. Maybe consider adding one to your “family” this year!
Hellebore
This started as one sedate, as the British would say, bog standard pink-flowered variety that I can’t remember the name of and which, after some years, merrily started to self-seed into this nice big clump. It really is just about the first plant to bloom in late winter even here in our mild coastal climate.
“Potting Palace” west bed
This is the west end of what I call the Potting Palace since it’s 34′ long and divided into three sections. This is the greenhouse end, where we grow tomatoes and I keep seedlings growing on in pots. In the bed and blooming right now are three English wallflowers I grew from seed and some ‘Kingsblood’ tulips. The lilies are starting to emerge. There will be a clematis planted at the base of the trellis pretty soon.
Narcissus ‘Geranium’
I planted about ten of these lovely members of the daffodil family many years ago. They kind of got lost under a parahebe shrub that finally died and was removed. And, wow, in the meantime did they increase! Once they’re done I’ll dig them up and spread them around the garden front and back.
Tulip ‘Rococo’
Finally, we don’t live in prime tulip territory and some fade away after a year or two or three. I love parrot tulips, including ‘Estelle Rjinfeld’, which bloomed for two years in this spot then vanished, for their over the top colors and shapes. I’m trying a new one this year ‘Rococo’. They came right up and are blooming well.
It’s been an *interesting* six days. We both felt somewhat stressed with the adjustment to the new reality, but are otherwise safe and ok. We’re doing some of what we need to and some of what we want to, including just kicking back. The spa is getting used most evenings if it’s not raining.
The weather has been quite cold with rain on and off, but I’ve made progress in the garden. Finished the first round of planting out plants in pots, finished pruning the apple trees and the blueberries, also a ‘Hot Lips’ salvia that had over grown an agapanthus (Lily of the Nile). Coming up is rose pruning, vegetable garden prep and the weeding of a couple of borders.
We’ve not gone anywhere since our trip to the Arcata coop before the official Shelter in Place Order was issued, so yesterday morning we drove into Eureka and went to Costco to stock up on a few things. We wore disposable gloves in the store, which wasn’t busy at all until we were on our way out. They seemed to have everything in stock. We got ibuprophen, three flats of peaches, three flats of my favorite Kirkland sparkling water (morale purchase), the one bag of dog kibble each customer was allowed, two bags of doggy duck jerky treats, one bottle of olive oil and one package of prawns. At the checkout line they’d put white tape on the floor to keep people properly spread out and even then the employee keeping an eye on things had to ask someone to move back. We finished up, loaded it all in the car, pulled our gloves off inside out and put them in a baggie.
Looking southwest past old dock pilings to Tulawat Island, recently returned by the City of Eureka to the Wiyot tribe from whom it had been stolen.
Then it was off to have some fun at a big informal open space on Humboldt Bay, which is where the photos above and below were taken. Our two rough collies, as seen in the header image, Peregrin on the left and Hailey on the right, had their usual good time running around and sniffing.
Looking towards the north end of Humboldt Bay.
After this refreshing break we went back to McKinleyville for a quick stop at Eureka Natural Foods. They’d put some sensible policies in place and, as one went in, there was an employee making sure that customers got a sanitized cart but, as you read will below it’s still a bit of a work in progress. OTOH, it’s barely been a week, so no complaints from me.
The store (which is often referred to as ENF) was also not busy so social distancing was easy. I had our own clean veg bags for the bulk buys of whole wheat flour (we have a breadmaker and know how to use it) and peanuts. Distance courtesy is clearly and quickly becoming the norm. Except for the few people like “That Guy” when I was checking out. Here’s the account I wrote for a Facebook post after we got home: “Then on to ENF in McK. Definitely room for improvement. No signage with their quite good policies, no enforcement of their checkout line policy. Big, well-dressed dude got in line behind me as I was checking out, barely 4′ away. I asked him to step back. His response was to push the mini-cart into me, lean forward and flip me off with some smart-ass talk. Clerk did nothing. In one of those, ‘darn it I wish I’d done “x” moments back home, I now wish I’d flipped him a peace sign and smiled.”
When we got home we put on another set of gloves and unloaded everything except perishables either onto the luggage rack on the back of David’s Jensen Healey or on the big recycle bin on the breezeway. Then those gloves went into the same baggie. It’s getting quite cold at night, low 40s predicting 37F tonight so everything should be ok by tomorrow for sure since the virus is estimated to only live 24 hours on cardboard and 2-3 days on plastic. But we need to reorganize the food storage shelves in the garage anyway and will do that over the weekend.
Last night’s dinner
I made this tofu-veggy stirfry last night: Peanut oil, cashew bits, chopped onion and garlic, sliced brown mushrooms, carrots, broccoli, and pineapple, seasoned with a bit of salt, cayenne and finally Vietnamese coriander from the herb border. Garnished at the table with Thai chili paste. Washed down with Eureka Natural Food’s “house beer”.
“Takhi Foal” downloadable pdf coloring page
Finally, I am also actually getting work done. I’ve recently uploaded three new coloring pages to myFox Studio Etsy shop, along with three original pen and in drawings of corvids and my first tutorial! It’s an introduction to sketching for beginners, perfect for anyone who is now home a lot, maybe most of the time, and is interested in learning to sketch but didn’t know where to begin. Art is for everyone and sketching is fun!
“Raven” 8×11″ original oil on paper
That’s it for now. Next post will have some spring garden photos! I hope you, your family and friends are well and safe.
Late yesterday afternoon at the north end of our pond…a great blue heron.
Yesterday at 2pm the Humboldt County Department of Human Health and Services held a press conference and announced an official Sheltering In Place Order to begin as of midnight last night. A few hours later Gavin Newsome, the governor of California, announced a statewide version, pretty much the same as the county one. So, here we are for probably at least a year, maybe longer. It depends on when a vaccine becomes available. All travel cancelled which means no trip to Mongolia for me this year.
It is important to note that this is not a “lockdown” as has been put in place in countries like Italy and which means no one can leave their home, period. We can go out for “essential” reasons as defined in the Order. People who work in “essential” jobs can also continue on as normal. The important part in terms of “flattening the curve” (a whole new vocabulary we didn’t have even a few days ago) is “social distancing” which means keeping a distance of 6 feet between ourselves and others, the exception being family members, non-relative household members and those who are caring for sick or elderly relatives. We are encouraged to get outside and walk, hike, bike with social distancing. Shopping for groceries, going to the hardware store, going to medical appointments or taking a pet to the vet, are some of the allowed outings. Since we work at home and rarely go out more than one or two days a week anyway and are not recreational shoppers, this isn’t a hardship for us. We know of a number of places we can take ourselves and the dogs to go for safe walks.
New work! “Want to Play?” oil on canvasboard 12×16″ (price on request)- Siberian ibex I saw at Ikh Nartiin Chuluu Nature Reserve, Mongolia
I think native Californians have a bit of a leg up with all these changes because we KNOW a major earthquake is coming, just not when, so we’re psychologically, mentally and emotionally always prepared For Something To Happen and a lot of us keep up to a few weeks worth of food and other supplies on hand at all times so we can….shelter in place if necessary.
Our county and state officials are doing a great job addressing the emergency in a calm, rational way. I was sad to see on one news site this morning that six states aren’t doing anything yet, which is a real disservice to the citizens who elected the officials and pay the salaries of the state workers.
New Work! “Meet Up” oil on cavasboard 22×28″ (price on request)- Gobi argali I saw at Ikh Nartiin Nature Reserve, Mongolia
In studio news, you’re invited to follow along as I participate in Inktober52, an event in which artists all over the world create pen and ink drawing a week for a year. We get a prompt on via email on Thursdays. I’m trying to get mine done and posted to Instagram on Fridays *checks watch*, but sometimes early the following week.
The two paintings have been entered in a juried art competition. Maybe they get in, maybe they don’t. I’ve been doing this for a long time with my first acceptance in 2003. I don’t sweat it or take it personally if I don’t get in. Stay tuned….
Yesterday was “officially” Day 1 of sheltering in place, but first we needed to stock up on some groceries. We drove the fifteen minutes to our local food coop first thing in the morning. One thing we didn’t need was TP since we have an unopened pack of it from Costco on a shelf in the garage, about 40 rolls worth. We’d also just gotten an order of our favorite almond butter. But we were low on vegies. I thought it would make sense to buy decent quantities of our favorites, cut them up, bag them and store them in the extra freezer and that will be Task 1 this weekend. I used a food guide from the CNN website for reminders and ideas. You can find it here. We bought broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, green beans and asparagus (very good price on the latter). Also some more canned mackerel to go with the canned sardines. And lasagna ingredients, something I haven’t made in years. Their stock was low for some things and the rice bins were empty, but that was only because the distributor had been delayed. The national food distribution chain is apparently working just fine at this point.
We have five 5gal. ziploc bags of our own blueberries in the freezer and plenty of meat since we bought half a local lamb last fall and keep two whole chickens in the freezer. Our earthquake prep is paying off for the current situation. Speaking of which we got shaken a bit a couple of times in the last few days, a 5.2 and a 5.6.
What was interesting at the coop is some new policies. One sign in a window said that the store, which opens at 6am seven days a week, will be open to seniors only from 7-8am every day, which is very good. Also, no personal paper, plastic or cloth bags allowed in the store. We had to use their paper bags or boxes. I had no idea why they were doing this. I posed the question on a *rational* Facebook thread and someone suggested that the virus could survive on fabric for five days. I’ve just researched it and, in a case of no news is good news, no one seems to be even testing for soft surfaces at this point. Here’s an article from Mirror in England which addresses that. The closest comparison is cardboard, on which it may last up to 24 hours. But it’s an airborne contagion so infection from simply touching a surface is somewhat limited. Still, handwashing is critical and also keeping surfaces wiped down and clean (current info. as per what I know today, subject to change).
Our pond in winter
In other news concerning our neighborhood…we’re near the end of a dead end private road in a rural residential area. There is a road association that everyone contributes $100 a year to, as per the official notification on a buyer’s title report. This goes for, well, road upkeep. When we moved into our place in 2005, communication was awkward for announcing the yearly meeting, much less anything else that might come up, so my husband, an IT professional, set up a private email list with all the road association members on it. It’s been used for all kinds of things like planning multi-family yard sales to party invitations, queries about people who haven’t been seen on the street before, when one neighbor’s chickens are laying again and, in the last three days, two neighbors offering to make store runs for everyone in the higher age/risk category, which includes us. Which is wonderful! There are still no confirmed cases in the county but to know that if necessary we have back up for groceries really brings peace of mind.
Last fall we planted six varieties of garlic
I find that I’m rejiggering my work plan for the year. There are juried shows that I planned to enter in which the accepted work is shipped to the venue, sometimes a museum. Well, all the museums are closing and the whole situation is unsettled, so I may enter a few online shows and otherwise catch up on tasks like a half dozen videos I’ve been meaning to make from some of my Mongolia trips. I’ve also got a number of sketching and drawing tutorials in progress which I’ll be selling through my Etsy shop. New coloring pages coming around the first of next month, also dip pen nib sets for pen and ink drawing. Stay tuned!
Susan Fox, American Artist 