Black Jersey Giants Getting Bigger

I thought the black Jersey giants were big a couple of weeks ago when they first arrived in the chicken yard, but now they are enormous.  The two roosters are as big as turkeys and stalk around like they own the yard.  They are already as big as the biggest of the old roosters.

This afternoon the brown hens were taking dust baths and then racing to the top of a split-open hay bale where they would peck a bit at the top hay, then race down the side to join everyone else.  The blacks are still sitting in a pile for the most part, but the black roosters are parading around.

And then there's this pretty little rooster, with his fancy black head and tail feathers draping gracefully down his white sides.  We had a fine time watching the chickens and discussing their chicken society before we headed off down the trail to the ponds.

Fierce Armored Insect, Contours, and Teenie

Today's drawings are not that great to look at but they were enjoyable to draw.  The enormous insect on the right below, shown just under life size, was on the front door at F's house today.  I've never seen this insect before.  Its body had plates that looked like armor.  It had a serious looking proboscis that you can see in the left side drawing, with a hook on the end of it.  Just as I was finishing the second view, it leap and landed several feet down the wall.  I was so close I could make out facial features!

 After the insect adventure I sat down and did the two contour drawings below.  To me these are super relaxing-- eyes moving slowly but steadily, hand following eyes on the trip around the horizon of each fig.  No visual clues as to form except the very abstract tracing, a line that isn't even there in real life.

Then F's ancient sweet kitty Teenie ambled over and parked herself at my feet and posed for long enough for two drawings and a bad start at a profile.  Later at E's house for Book Club I drew the front and back of an exquisite cheese knife handle, sculpted in silver by E's friend C. Boyes.

Night Game Drawings

These four drawings are actually four panels from the front of the book. I'm counting these, which took almost all day, as drawings 5819, 5820, 5821, and 5822.  At the bottom is the complete joined panels that form the front of the book.

Dregs of the Pomegranate for All Saints

We were happy to discover how densely packed our pomegranate was when we peeled away the white papery membranes that hold the seeds with their pulp in place.  Tonight while chowing down on the remaining quarter of the thing, I experimented with drawing the seed clumps in pen with a quick wash of two reds and NO white gouache.  Down at the bottom is a wash of pomegranate juice, which stains a sort of purplish color.  The seeds themselves are five-sides, and the clusters of seeds are arranged in six-sided clusters around a central seed, more or less.  Definitely patterned.
Now that we've moved into the dark of the year with the abrupt change back to standard time, it's time to move on from pomegranates!

Pomegranates for Halloween

Pomegranates figure in many myths and stories from ancient times and from all around the world.  In the ancient Greek story of Demeter and Persephone,  Persephone was kidnapped by Hades and taken to live in the underworld as his wife.  Her mother, Goddess of the Harvest Demeter, was so sad that she allowed all the green things on earth to die during those six months.  Zeus didn't want the earth to die, which it would have done without plants, so he told Hades to return Persephone.  The rule of the underworld, however, was that if anyone ate or drank anything in the underworld, that person would have to remain there for eternity.

Hades had tricked Persephone, who had been careful to not eat or drink anything, into eating six pomegranate seeds while she was in the underworld; so she was condemned to spend six months of the year there.  During those six months Demeter  mourns and withholds fertility from the earth.  This was the ancient Greek explanation for the seasons.  Halloween falls midway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice, and was considered the beginning of winter.  Opposite Halloween on the calendar and midway between the spring equinox and the summer solstice is Beltane on May 1, considered by the ancient Greeks to be the beginning of summer (May Day).

This year we return to the what seems to be increased dark on November 1, when daylight savings time ends.  I've been at rituals where pomegranates were paired with apples, the fruit of immortality in some traditions.  Pomegranate seeds in their luminous gel are completely edible and excellent for you, supplying you with great amounts of vitamin C as well as numerous antioxidants, fiber, etc.

Pomegranates for Halloween Eve

 In 2007 I spent the summer living in a small village in Tuscany and sometimes used to take a ferry out to a little island in the middle of a largish lake.  There was nothing much on the island -- a few ruins and overgrown olive groves-- but pomegranate trees were in full crimson bloom among the ruins; and I still wonder why that shade of red between vermillion and crimson isn't called called 'pomegranate.'  If lemon yellow is a color, pomegranate deserves to be one too.  Please pass the pomegranate crayon.

These first two drawings are from my journal from that summer, and I can feel the sun and hear the bees and the lapping of the water against the little beaches and smell a sweet undetermined floral smell when I look at these rough sketches.

I like the sketches because they show the structure of the flowers and explain the structure of the fruit.

 You can see in the fruit at the bottom the odd six-sided opening at the top of the fruit, with its minute stamen threads and curled anthers.  Look at the six-sided flower top to the left and you can see the same opening during the time when the flower is open for pollination, only at that time the anthers and stamens are waving about and sticking out past the folded-back petals.

In the drawing at the top left you can see the swollen base of the flower, which is the multiple ovary container and turns into the vaguely six-sided fruit that's filled with all those seeds in their glossy gel.

Tomorrow:  inside the pomegranate for Halloween!

Seeds Like Jewels

Too bad these pickerel seeds don't taste as good as they look!  Tomorrow:  pomegranate seeds for Halloween Eve.