Backlit by the morning sun, the pink growth joints on these cactus paddles really glowed.

Working procedure for this study:

• Pick sage leaf from a bunch in refrigerator.
• Draw outline of sage leaf and paint in basic form on sketchbook page.
• Observe sage leaf and cogitate over the complex system of nooks and crannies on the underside of said leaf.
• Eat sage leaf. (Mmm, minty fresh, camphor, medicinal and green notes on the palate.)
• Notice Christmas cacti on windowsill, backlit by morning light.
• Paint several of the cactus paddles, noticing the pink tips and edges.

BTW, cactus paddles are actually stems and not leaves, botanically speaking. However, they perform the photosynthesizing function of leaves, so I am declaring them leaf-equivalents for the purpose of the series.

Beauty fades. The remnants of the cactus flower on my windowsill.

The cactus flower’s lifespan began June 23, when I first noticed the bud stalk sprouting on the cactus, and ended July 10, when its shriveled form fell off the plant, shortly after this picture was taken.

View of Corcovado from the Jardim Botânico, November 2009

This was taken on 7 November 2009. The view is not from the grand allées with the imperial palms at the front of and along the central axis of the garden. We were on one of the interior pathways when I shot this scene.

Scale: The American Museum of Natural History has created this video showing travel from the face of the Earth to the cosmic horizon, a journey of 13.7 billion years at the speed of light. Absolutely gorgeous.

Sally is Painting Today . . . is a blog of painter Sally Tharp’s photorealist works. She is often inspired by groups of objects lumped together on the shelves of thrift stores!

A girl can dream can’t she? Andalucian Adventures offers painting and photography holidays around Europe, Africa and India. Art directors and designers, this one’s for your coffee break on a gray winter’s day!

Dinosaurs were not only feathered, they were colorful. The question is, are the fossilized proteins actually the color structures that paleontologists think they are?

Just a selection of what I’ve been reading instead of painting!

Obituary: Bob Noorda, co-designer of the signage system used in the New York subways, dies at age 82. His corporate standards for Eni was pretty straightforward and an effective update of the odd, ought-to-be mythical-but-wasn’t Agip firedog.

Obituary: Earl A. Barthé, a master in the craft of decorative plasterwork, dies at age 92. It’s wonderful to read how he continued at his craft right until the end of his life, even after surviving Hurricane Katrina. Many folks that age might become very depressed and disoriented by the near-total loss of their home and business, but he was inspired to rebuild.

Ila Beka and Louise Lemoine’s short films about living with great architecture are profiled. It turns out that Louise Lemoine is the daughter of the man who hired Rem Koolhaas to create the adaptive home that is the centerpiece of the first film, Koolhaas Houselife. I remember seeing this house in an Architectural Digest magazine several years ago. The concept of the moving platform that permitted Mr. Lemoine to move through the mulit-level house despite being wheelchair bound struck me at that time as tremendously clever. Now I see that it was done to illustrate a point about the role of the father in the French household—a house is rather a lumpy medium to express postmodernist deconstructionism, I think. And quite offputting, apparently when the platform rose to the bedroom level at night, there was a giant void in the living room which must have been a real killjoy to any guests still enjoying late conversations with the hostess and grown children.

Schadenfreude: Shepherd Fairey is facing criminal charges for his stolen use of the AP’s Obama photo in his Hope poster. This reminds me of when Jeff Koons ripped off that greeting-cards photographer’s image of a couple with puppies to create his massively kitsch, painted-wood sculpture and was sued (successfully!) for copyright infringement. Koons’ defense was essentially, “Well, I’m a big-name artist, so if I want to call it fair use for parody, I can.” Fairey’s seems to be that he’s “just picking stuff up from the zeitgeist.” Whatever, dude. Just pay the licensing fee.

Ellen Handler Spitz reviews David Wiesner’s “hyperlinked” version of The Three Pigs over at The New Republic. I think she has a point in this case; that is, it is important for children to experience the full cycle of growing terror and redemption by staying within the narrative. On the other hand, I think it’s good generally for children’s book authors and illustrators to create different levels of manipulation and exploration within their books to engage children and the adults who read to them. Maybe this is something that is variable for each book!

Meanwhile, I’m turning off comments to keep from being overwhelmed by Russian drug spammers.

Happy New Year to all!