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🔥 Pyrography Experiments: Hum Hill & Junco Grove 🌲 🐦

This past month I've been experimenting a bit with woodburning—AKA pyrography—and it's been an interesting learning curve so far. Basically, it's drawing on wood with a heat-pen. I was drawn to it because I was looking for more environmentally friendly ways to make signage.

The ironic thing is that I had to wait to start until the smoke from the wildfires cleared before I could open the windows & doors for air circulation while burning... 🔥💨💨

The first woodburned sign I made is a SENĆOŦEN translation of Hummingbird Hill. He had help translating it to SENĆOŦEN in the early 80s; Seán found the translation and pronunciation guides in his grandfather's notes.

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  Artistic Inspiration: Kristyna Baczynski  

Over the past several months, we've been greatly inspired and delighted by the work of UK-based artist Kristyna Baczynski — whose Patreon we both subscribe to, where we're rewarded with in-depth explanations of her creative / business process which has been masterfully honed over many years of making beautiful comics, zines, prints, and more. She's also been incredibly generous in offering advice as we've been developing our own creative practice together as Hummingcrow & Co.

A few weeks ago, we were overjoyed to receive her gorgeous Wild Year zine set highlighting wild plants growing in her region of Europe each season – and thought this would be a great opportunity to highlight her work! One of our biggest hopes and dreams is to eventually create our own zine series about the various goings-on around Hummingbird Hill over the seasons, and if we're able to manifest something half as magical as Kristyna's creations, we'll be very happy indeed.

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  Little Paintings: A Bumble Bee Rests in the Sun

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  Little Paintings: Robin in the Bath

Seán and I have recently been scheming new ways to creatively capture scenes around the Hill, so I halved some card-paper offcuts I got from an art store. Now we have a nice stack of 3x3.5'' pieces that we're gradually making into tiny paintings.

One of my first attempts is a common sight around here: a fluffed-up, staring robin soaking in the bath:

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  Pollinator Portraits: Skip and Sweat  

Due to the current heat-spells in our region, we haven't been able to spend as much time as we'd like observing who's been buzzing and fluttering around our flowers during this year's Pollinator Week. Instead, we took to the shade and comfort of our workshop to continue our Little Paintings series. We each chose a species that caught our fancy and spent some quality time interpreting their likenesses and doing some deeper research into their lives & habits.

Here's a peek at our colour-testing sheets for the portraits— read on to see the results... 🌼 🐝- – -

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  Bewick's Bird Card + Farewell-to-Spring  

Wren by Seán, environment by Kate

We're so happy and honoured to have had the opportunity to join a community of artists and naturalists from around our region once again in highlighting 36 of our avian neighbors for the latest set of Art Bird Cards. This was a great opportunity for us to continue honing our digital art skills and we learned a lot in the process of collaborating on this illustration of a Bewick's wren (Thryomanes bewickii)—a year-round resident here atop Humm Hill.

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  Artistic Inspiration: Drift Body

My friend Scott recently started publishing a beautiful quarterly zine series called Drift Body filled with wholesome, enchanting original poetry & prose alongside inscriptions from ancient Orphic tablets. I recently received the first issue and carried it with me down to the water below one of my favourite nearby wandering spots, Fort Rodd Hill, to read alongside a couple of old birthday cards & writings that my grandfather sent me two decades ago.

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  A Morning Surprise

Early one morning, while making my way back up the Hill after weeding and watering, I realized that I hadn't quite completely emptied my watering can—so I began sprinkling the remnants on a few thirsty-looking shrubs.

As I shook the last clinging drops from the container, I was startled to notice a curious pair of eyes peering up at me from a few feet away behind a rock:

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  Accrowdion

This was my first attempt at making a sculpture using Sculpey (Original) polymer clay. I made it for the Metchosin Art Pod's Bird and Song art show.

There were a few learning curves in the making of this musical bird, all of which I write about & provide pictures of in the original post, as well as the painting process of the sculpture, which is described in Part II!

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  Pysanky a Plenty  

Colourful eggs among the spring gold

Back when I lived in Halifax, my neighbours had a tradition of inviting friends over every Easter to eat snacks and make pysanky, or Ukrainian Easter-eggs. It was always such a lovely time, creating designs by candlelight with friends.

After moving to BC, I missed it so much that I bought myself a kit at the cute Ukrainian Canadian Cultural Centre gift shop and taught Seán & his mom how to make them, to try to recreate those warm feelings and have fun playing with dyes and wax.