Tiny Finch Family in the Studio Nest!

About 10 days ago I started noticing a pair of teeny tiny birds perching and loudly discussing all sorts of important things upon a golden pothos house plant I had hanging on my porch for watering day. At the end of the day I noticed a few thoughtfully placed sticks tucked into my plant, which gave me a little inkling of what was to come.

Day one nest building

Beautiful and sturdy by day three!

photo not mine

Within just three days there was a beautiful and sturdy built little nest on my potted pothos. And now the treat of watching this little bird family grow has been one of the most exciting things to witness over this past week!

The dad has a lovey red shade to him (of course mama is brown - ugh, such is the animal kingdom XD ) and with a little online search I have discovered they are called House Finches and are well known for creating nests for their tiny blue eggs on porch plants (and being ridiculously cute!).

It’s hard for me to get a good pic, especially of both of them. Here’s dad on my plant with mom tucked in her nest and a better pic I found. online.

It was very interesting to see mama bird lay one egg every day for five eggs days. I had always assumed birds lay their eggs all in one day, but the comparison of her tiny size to these eggs makes a lot more sense that she could only form one at a time. I’ve done a little research and it looks like their eggs take around two weeks to hatch.

Stay tuned in my Instagram Stories to see all the little squawking babies soon!

5.20.2021

Black Lives Still Matter - Resources for Racism Education

Today I’m bringing you a wealth of knowledge on one of the most important, yet most difficult to discuss, topics plaguing the American dream - systematic racism. Until we not only learn from the past but learn to see the racism between the lines and just under the surface, we will never be able to succeed in banishing unfair and unjust treatment of Black people here in this county or in the rest of the world.

Perhaps you saw my post a few weeks ago about why I felt compelled to create this drawing of Duante Wright’s grandmother. Today while I demo this, and another easily recognizable fallen brother in the Black Lives Matter movement, I’m sharing a plethora of podcasts all about the Black experience both historically as well as contemporarily which you can enjoy enlightening yourself with while working in your own studio.

Here are the podcasts I mention in the video

1619 by The New York Times

‘Policing in America’ by Throughline

Louder Than a Riot

‘How Jacob Loud’s Land Was Lost’ by Planet Money

‘Rethinking Black Wealth’ by Planet Money

‘Reproducing Racism’ by Reveal

‘Tuskegee Syphilis Study’ by American Scandal

‘The Immortal Cells of Henrietta Lacks’ by Rebecca Skloot (book)

‘Henrietta Lacks’ by Black History Club

’Henrietta Lacks’ by Babes of Science

‘The Real Black Panthers’ by Throughline

‘Monumental Lies’ by Reveal

Nice White Parents by The New York Times

‘Black Parents Take Control, Teachers Strike Back’ by Codeswitch

Please let me know if you find this post useful and will be listening to a few of these recommendations. Also, if you have any great resources to add please do!!

5.11.2021

Shenandoah Campout Adventure

Last week I treated myself to six glorious nights camping out in Vaughn the Adventure Van including four night in Shenandoah National Park. My awesome adventure buddy Baila joined me for three days and nights of hiking, exploring, eating delicious food, and living it up with the most tame wildlife ever!

While Virginia is well known for its bears, we didn’t see any on this trip (although I have here before!). We did see lots of deer up close, a snake, some rabbits, and birds galore!!

Our favorite hike, called Bearfence Trail, actually turned out to be the most rock-scrambliest hike I’ve done since Hawai’i. It felt so wonderful to stretch to workout all those good climbing muscles again!

Venkman and Amaris also had a lot to catch up on, and really appreciated being included on a few adventures!

Those 360 views on the top of our hikes were truly spectacular! We also loved relaxing to the sun setting over the entire Shenandoah Valley, just sitting in the van like a cozy sofa.

And the wouldn’t you know it, but the two friends I met up with in Shenandoah were actually friends I made in Hawai’i! Baila was my neighbor and hiking buddy in Palolo, and my other friend Scott (who came out for one afternoon with his girl) was someone I actually got a job for at my beloved Coffee Talk. What a small world - I head over to Virginia to hang out with friends from da’ aina - ha!

It did rain little bit, bet we were well prepared. And it did get pretty cold on out last night, but nothing our giggles couldn’t keep us warm in. All in all, it was a pretty epic way to spend a week!

5.12.2021

Attempting a 30 Day Figure Drawing Challenge

“Attempting” being the key word there - ha!

Totally on a whim on April 1st I decided to challenge myself to create a figure drawing every day for 30 days straight. I say on a whim because as of March 31 I had no plans to do a challenge, but when I enjoyed creating a figure drawing so much that very next day, I thought ‘why not?’ Just do it.

In the first couple of days I actually asked my Instagram followers if anyone had attempted any kind of 30 day art challenge in the past, and if so, what were the results. I honestly didn’t get a lot of positive responses, as in, most people either had been too intimidated to try, or they didn’t have much success when they did.

Which is kind of why I had never tried one myself!

This challenge wound up being pretty successful in my opinion. I only missed two days of drawing and I allowed myself a little wiggle room as far as doing two days of drawing at the Picasso exhibit, and three of the days were spent working on a figure painting I had previously started. I also had a little more time this month for drawing than I have in the past 6+ months so I wanted to seize that opportunity too.

Here’s a few pics from the beginning of the month, or you can see them all in order on my Instagram @caleighbirdart.

If you decided to try an art challenge too, either like mine with a personal challenge, or an official prompted one like Inktober, please let me know how it goes either here or in the video comments.

And last but not least, if you are interested in acquiring an original figure drawing I have them available at especially good rates this month to coincide with this challenge. Visit my Shop here.

5.2.2021

Picasso Figures Exhibit at the Frist Museum

I recently had the wonderful opportunity to see about 80 original Pablo Picasso figure works at an international traveling art exhibit here in Nashville, TN at the Frist Museum. It was a truly incredible collection dating from the late 1890s when Picasso was a teenager all the way up to 1970 just a few years before his death.

Combining this super special opportunity with even more knowledge I've picked up teaching my art history class made this an unusually inspiring and illuminating art show (that I actually couldn't help but visit twice!).

I hope you enjoy this visit, and my own personal anecdotal 'Favorite Picasso Ever' story! And I hope I can encourage you to go see original art in person whenever possible as well, whether by a big name like Picasso or by your own local artists:)

4.25.2021

First Semester Success Teaching at Nossi!

Squeeee my first teacher gift as an instructor at Nossi College of Art here in Nashville, Tennessee! We discussed the Fibonacci Sequence in my Design Composition class and one of my students told me she could not resist getting it for me when she saw it at a shop - how sweet!!

As the semester drew to a close, it was so meaningful to have a few students tell me I was their favorite teacher and that they wished they were taking more classes from me. (Literally bursting!) Having this dream come true of teaching higher education and getting such a meaningful response from students, has been surreal.

Such stunning talent!

One student especially told me that my art history class made history more understandable and exciting than any history class she’s ever taken. She told me she normally struggled with it but learning history through art, (which is personally my favorite way to do so!) helped bring alive the stories and events better than she had in any previous class. I can’t think of a more incredible ‘thank you’ at the end of the semester than hearing that as she gave me a shy hug after the final exam.

Swipe to see a few positively amazing paintings done by my Color Theory students. I seriously cannot believe some of these kids were in high school only a year ago!

I also organized my first class field trip to the Nashville Parthenon which was a big hit! I’ll definitely be back with more students in the future, what a fantastic local resource!

Sending a big ‘Thank You!’ to Nossi for allowing me this inspiring and enlightening opportunity to join this happy community of super knowledgeable teachers and incredibly enthusiastic students!Yay!

Yep, even teachers feel relief on the last day of class - ha!

4.22.2021

Real Time Figure Drawing Demo

Aloha friends! Today I'm bringing you a real time figure drawing demo as part of my 30 Day Figure Drawing Challenge, which I tried to do live week before last but YT deleted it almost as soon as I was finished - I think because my drawing reference photo was viewable (even though I thought it was a 'safe' one!).

Anyway, this one is far more concise since I did edit out little things like erasing mistakes and swapping out materials, plus this figure is only a back so I won’t get flagged for sharing my reference photo.

As far as this 30 day challenge goes, I decided to do it to help get myself back in the groove of figure drawing. Since covid has shut down so many open studio figure drawing sessions I haven’t had the opportunity to draw from life in over a year and I’m missing it terribly! I can feel myself getting rusty so I wanted to get back on the saddle and slip back into my comfort zone.

If you would like more info on getting your own handmade-with-love toned (or white) paper sketchbook pop over here to be kept in the loop for my next sketchbook release.

Materials I use to draw (any purchase through my special links helps my channel at no cost to you so thank you!):

White Chalk Pencil

Parisian Blue Carbothello Pastel

Kneaded Eraser

Mono Zero Eraser

4.18.2021

30 Day Drawing Challenge

So this month I decided to do my first ever 30 Day art challenge for the month of April just to torture myself - ha!

No but seriously, I’ve never tried to do Inktober or any other challenge concerning making art every single day for a month, and I probably haven’t had such consistency since I was in grad school. My motive for pushing myself in this way is to help get myself back in the groove of figure drawing. Since covid has shut down so many open studio figure drawing sessions I haven’t had the opportunity to draw from life in over a year and I’m missing it terribly! I can feel myself getting rusty so I want to get back on the saddle and slip back into my comfort zone.

After only two days of posting I had someone ask if these sketches would be for sale so I decided to figure out some sort of fun/creative way to price them, rather than having one fixed rate price or having to come up with different prices every day even though they may be on the same size paper, but take drastically different times, so what I came up with was this….

For this month only, I am putting each figure drawing up for sale according to how long it’s taken me to create. $1 = 1 minute. I will probably wind up doing at least a few 20 to 40 minute figure drawings as well so anything that takes me less than 45 minutes, i.e. priced at $45, will add $6 for shipping; otherwise US shipping is included in the price.

I do not create prints of my figure drawings so when you purchase one you really do own the only copy.

I actually announced the challenge via a YouTube video two weeks ago where I did a real time live figure drawing demo, but it got taken down I think because my reference photo was visible. I thought it was PG-13 enough to show on YT but I guess I was wrong. Luckily I didn’t get a strike or anything, so I just decided to redo the video using a super safe reference photo as well as pre-recording it for conciseness. That comes out this Sunday if you’d like to see my actual pace at drawing figures.

Anyhoo, I would love for you to follow along on this challenge (and help me stay motivated to keep going!) over on my Instagram @caleighbirdart. I’m about halfway done so things are looking promising!

And on two of the days I counted painting Vedina’s body (I already had the portrait part done) in this tiny figure. Vedina is an awesome singer and performer I met through Instagram and we’re doing this collab art piece; she supplied the exclusive reference photo and I’m doing the painting. I’m still going to put in layers of her hair and gold leaf in her jewelry and a surprise staff with a lot of meaning behind it, and of course plenty of resined plants. I’m psyched!

4.15.2021

How to Deal with Procrastination as an Artist

...and not let it kill your productivity! Dealing with procrastination as an artist can feel really defeating. It's like, 'I love what I do, so why is it so hard to make myself do it?!'

Oftentimes we tend to procrastinate when the task at hand seems either really boring, or scarily daunting, so today I'm going to give you some real tips you can start applying to your own art and art biz practice to not only be more productive, but to give yourself a little self-care in the process.

Don’t let yourself live like this hilarious quote… get good at LIMITING your procrastination :)

“Do I struggle with procrastination? Nope I am really good at it.”

Tips for dealing with procrastination as an artist include:

• Listen to your body and give yourself permission for a little downtime before getting right to work. Sometimes we can procrastinate because we are tired and our brains just don’t feel like functioning at full throttle so it will make us lethargic and prone to watching or scrolling because those are sedentary, mind-numbing activities. If you really need to, take a 20-30 minute nap first and then you’ll feel refreshed to work.

• Conversely, maybe a 20-30 walk will help you wake up a bit more. Getting your blood flowing and your body moving with some deep breaths of fresh air is an excellent way to wake up - and don’t miss this opportunity for brainstorming! You’re much better off saving the music for later to use this refreshing time at hand to think about, plan, and get inspired for your next project.

• Get rid of visual distractions. Put away anything like games or toys, or even laundry or other chores that make it too easy to walk away from some of the more boring tasks we have to do for our small businesses. Sometimes even leaving your house with your laptop to sit at a coffee shop or park bench is a fantastic way to give yourself only the one task at hand to deal with - this is a trick I use often to help me concentrate on writing for blogs, newsletters, and emails.

• Learn to tell the difference between educating yourself and procrastinating. It can be easy to watch a million YouTube videos or take a million classes, but at a certain point you need to go ahead and get your hands dirty. The best way to learn is by hands-on practice, so in life, in general, you should never stop learning. However don’t let instruction take the place of actual application.

• Write a list! Have a list of what you need to get done, then break it into smaller, more manageable tasks that you list out on your daily planner. (Check out the video for tips on how I use a list to turn ginormous daunting projects into bite-size pieces that are far less intimidating to complete.

• Do the easy small tasks that you can first. The momentum of checking things off the list will encourage you to keep going. Always realize that any big task can be broken down into much smaller steps

• Break your work time into small manageable chunks. Sometimes I set a timer for only 45 minutes and give myself a 20 minute break after that much work. Surprisingly two or three sessions like this in a day will yield far greater work than you could have imagined!

• Sometimes it helps to have a goal written up someplace where you will see it all of the time. Attaching something to your cork board or a piece of painters tape across the top of your laptop reminding you of your biggest goal can be a huge inspiration in the fight against procrastination.

Let me know in the comments here or on YouTube if you would be interested in a video about how to effectively write and manage your ‘To Do’ list!

Resources:

How to Paint a Skull in Oil

Yes, this Puma Skull 3D oil painting is for sale here.

4.11.2021

In Heaven at the Picasso Exhibit

I got to do a few figure drawings from actual PICASSO’s todayyy!!! 🤩🤩🤩

This wonderful local museum, the Frist, has an exhibit currently featuring about 80 figures by Picasso. They’re all on loan from the Picasso museum in Paris and it’s truly an incredible collection; Nashville is the only city in the US that it’s even visiting!

I’ve actually seen just about this entire collection already from when I visited Paris and went to the Picasso museum, but visiting a beautiful masterwork is like seeing an old friend, some thing I try to do time and time again. I spent four hours in the museum today really sitting with many pieces. I had my headphones on playing some Chopin and later on some cello music, just vibing out with the paintings, taking in each and every brushstroke, and indulging on a few sketches before I left.

If you’re not someone who normally goes out to see local original art in person, much less masterworks like this when they come to your area, I would highly recommend you begin to make that a hobby. Seeing my favorite paintings in life makes me more of a fan girl than any celebrity ever could. Inspecting their strokes, admiring the luminosity, seeing every little nook and cranny purely the way your favorite artist created it... nothing in between you and their hand but the movement of paint they left behind. It’s such an ethereal experience....

I can honestly say I Learned so much from Picasso‘s brushstrokes today, even having seen a lot of these paintings before. Because I’m in a different place in my life I saw them in a different light and I actually got inspired for a few of my own works. Check out a few of these incredible works, more will be coming along with a few more sketches. I just got home a few minutes ago and I’m literally on an art high 💜🤤🎨

And, lucky me, I’m actually going back to visit these works again next week! My mom is coming to town for her first visit to my new spot (yay!) and I’ve already got us tickets to see Picasso together!

4.9.2021