Crow's Feet

By artist Jill Alo, Tornado with Crows

Well, and the rest of him too. I pulled from my stash of unfinished work and finally made a dent in this piece. It's mixed-media on gessoed paper (colored pencils, acrylics) with some stitching. To sew on something like this, you either do it carefully by hand, or just roll up your paper to feed it through your machine and hope for the best--which is what I did. (The photo shows off my messy workbench, but no matter how clean my studio gets, my desk is always a mess.)

The background of the crow changed drastically from my first attempt. It was darker and so the bird wasn't popping out. I was looking at the Jill Alo painting on my wall, and so thought, hey, that a lighter green would be nice! And so I tried it, and I'm much happier.




I've been in my studio quite a bit over the last several days--mostly tidying up, but some doodling too. For this doodle I was inspired by the hat Cosimo de 'Medici was wearing in PBS special on the Medici family. It's my latest Netflix play it now, and after one episode, I must say thumbs up!