old picture/new picture

[painting from 1982 (old picture), photo taken this week (new picture)]

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Back in 1982, I was in high school. I enjoyed art quite a bit, painting murals, and participating in the school's art club. The murals were directed by my art teacher, who was Artist-in-Residence for the city of Chicago at that time. We did Trompe l-oeil on the sides of buildings, the tallest of which five stories. That's a lot of scaffolding!

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For my own pleasure, I liked painting surrealistic images with acrylics. One Saturday afternoon I painted this picture while talking to my next door neighbor, window-to-window.

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She was sitting at the bottom of a staircase in her house, and I was in my own room. Chicago gangways are so narrow, you can stand in between and almost touch both houses at the same time. I don't remember how long it took to complete it, but the whole time, the neighbor girl sat very still, at the bottom of the stairs next door.

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I can't say for sure, but judging by how still she sat for me, I wonder if she thought I was painting a portrait of her. She was a pretty girl, and that might have made a good picture. But no, this is just your regular o'l run-of-the-mill flower pitcher with eyeballs.

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f.y.i.

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hasta la vista, Bug Lady

[click on any picture to enlarge]

You meet interesting folks in the blogosphere. One recent find was Joan from South Africa. She called herself "Bug Lady." She took lots of remarkable photos, and I loved to visit her blog. The macro shots of bugs were astounding, and this lady had a great sense of humor.

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She has stopped blogging now, and I miss her. That reminded me of how I have learned to numb myself from the pain of losing people. Yesterday, a dear family moved out of the country. One person moves away or changes jobs. Another passes away. In Joan's case, she closed her blog.

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We need to make sure that we make the most of it when people are here, because you never know when they may be taken away by any set of circumstances. Who knows, but that it may even be us, who are shuttled off to who-knows-where.

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About the bee... Those two pics are of a yellow-jacket. One of my sons found a dead bee and brought it to me. (You can see the clear tape that I used to hold it in place.) I was thrilled to have this opportunity, because I had been so eager to photograph ocelli. Those are a bug's tiny simple eyes, located in the middle of the forehead. Most of the time, we only see their large, compound eyes, but some bugs have more than two... and it's not just spiders.

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Anyway, it means a lot to me that we can "visit" by blogging. Hasta la vista, Bug Lady. (sigh) I think I'm gonna need a mug of hot cocoa.

grasshopper

Yumpin' yimminee! Look at how this little grasshopper is content to sun himself in a patch of mulch. He was only about an inch (2 cm) long. I took another macro of him, where I tried to get a detailed look at his face. I wanted to show you his simple eyes (ocelli). The facial macro did not come out as clear as I had hoped, but I'll add it below anyway. You'll need to enlarge the photo to see the details.

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Since I wanted to zoom in on a still shot of the face, I asked if I could pick him up, and he did not say no. ;-) Then, I held him close to my mailbox, which has a blue post. That's why the background is a funny shade of blue. He didn't seem to mind being held, which is weird. The picture in the mulch was only a few short hops after the closeup at the mailbox.

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I really like Picasa's option to add text. It is handy for naming species of bug or flowers and identifying sites and landmarks.