Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Edgar update



Edgar made it through the night, and after giving him a little breakfast I took him to the Sonoma county bird rescue center, where he is now in very capable hands. The best part is that they got another baby crow in yesterday who is about the same age, so he'll have company while he's there. You can really see his blue eyes in this photo, and that stuff on his beak is the baby bird food I was feeding him with an eyedropper.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Edgar Allen Crow




We have lots of crows in my neighborhood, and there are several nests in trees in the neighbors yards. Little Edgar here must have fallen out and ended up in our back yard. With all the dogs and cats here it's amazing that he is unharmed. He's got feathers but can't fly yet, and the nests are too high up to put him back, so I brought him inside. He just sat in my hand and let me feed him some baby bird food that we had left over from when the budgies had babies. I was a wildlife rescue volunteer years ago so I've fed more than a few baby birds. The parents were frantically calling and flying around, but now that it's dark they've quieted down. It's heartbreaking to hear them, but I will be taking Edgar to the Sonoma County Bird Rescue Center first thing in the morning, where he will get taken care of and released.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

New stuff!

Here's some of the pieces from the latest batch of etching shown on the last post.

Friday, June 25, 2010

Etch-o-rama

Art work in Adobe Illustrator ready to be printed on to PNP paper and transferred to brass sheets

The etched brass plates

This last couple of months have been crazy busy for me, but I'm finally starting to get caught up on my very long to do list. Yesterday I went wild the etching, and did plates for 5 new designs in 2 sizes each, as well as a couple of custom pet pieces. The first photo shows my illustrations, all sized and ready to print on to to the PNP transfer paper. Thanks to my spiffy "professional" clothes iron, which does not have automatic shut-off, I was able to get all my images transferred to prepared brass plates without much trouble. This used to be the worst part of the whole procedure - having an iron that shut itself off every 5 minutes made it very difficult to do the transfer process more than one at a time. I was forever waiting for the iron to heat up again. I should have some finished pieces to show in the next day or two.