I couldn't stand the squash floating on the middle of the page, so I washed in the surface shadows where the dishtowel will be to anchor them.

Tuesday was the second day of painting on this project, and I added quite a bit of detail to the “cap” of the Turk’s cap squash.

I found that straight yellow ochre came in handy for some of the shading on the yellow Delicata squash and the Little Gem. Shadows on the Turk’s “cap” are sepia with yellow ochre, and sepia, yellow ochre and ultramarine blue.

I believe this is a maple leaf of an adapted or Texas-native species. If you can identify it, please leave a comment!

Autumn doesn’t really get going in Houston until after Thanksgiving. Although delayed, our Gulf Coast autumn had a nice little display of colorful leaves—before much-needed rains pelted them to the ground and turned them brown.

I found this leaf shortly after New Year’s Day while walking around my neighborhood. My guess is this is some type of a maple, or Acer, species. I observed something interesting during my walks: The leaves of post and pin oaks don’t fall from the tree until they are fully brown and dry, unlike some of the other trees here.

Painting the shadow under the leaf gives it a little more dimensionality.

The challenge for this painting was painting red shadows on the leaf. The palette included quinacridone pink and rhodonite genuine, both by Daniel Smith. The shadow under the leaf was made with lapis blue, sepia, and a bit of potter’s pink as a reflection of the red leaf onto the white paper.

The first day's wet-into-wet washes.

This painting will really stretch and develop my skills in botanical painting because:

• The palette includes cadmium yellow, orange and red. Semi-opaque, heavy colors on the warm side of the red and yellow families, “the cads” easily create mud when blended with other colors.
• Wet-into-wet technique will be the basis of the rendering.
• This will have a still life element with a striped dishcloth serving as background.

Stay tuned for more updates!

Clare Mackie is a Scottish illustrator who lives and works in Brighton, England. She renders her rollicking cast of whimsical animals, vegetables and quirky humans in a bright, cheery palette of watercolors with some pen and ink. Her style is in the venerable British tradition of Quentin Blake and Ronald Searle.

Her online portfolio is easy to explore online and she offers an encouraging page of FAQs for young readers who are inspired by her work. Mackie’s blog offers monthly updates to her professional activities.

Check out Clare Mackie’s site anytime you need a day brightener!

The Alvin Synchro-Tilt stool actually tilts backward, which is obviously risky, as there is almost no back support, and all weight rests on the single leg with attached star base.

This is one of a series of articles I’ve prepared for readers while I’m offline this month. Comments have been turned off January 1-31.

Ergonomics is an important part of a studio work space, especially if an artist has back or other orthopedic problems. A comfortable, supportive chair or stool is one of the key components of an orthopedically sound working environment.

I normally work standing up, but like to have the ability to sit for short periods of time while working, so a good, adjustable stool has been on my search list for a while. This fall, I researched the reviews and ordered the Alvin Synchro-Tilt stool. This adjustable drafting stool is described as, “Great to use while working on large easel paintings, canvas projects, framing, drafting, filing, and much more,” on Alvin’s website. Online reviews at both Amazon and Dick Blick are overwhelmingly positive, especially by customers with back problems. As a result of my research, I thought I would be getting a good buy.

The stool is well-built and simple to assemble. It has a small back-stop, making it a hybrid between a flat stool and a properly backed chair. One design flaw is that the chair base is set on a slight forward tilt, but the active spring-tilt mechanism only allows backward tilting motion, not a greater degree of forward tilt. In my opinion, this could create a safety hazard, as a sitter could possibly lean backwards and lose their balance.

Unfortunately, after 2 weeks of daily use, I realized it was aggravating my sciatic problems. The hard ridges across the seat and the fact that the stool does not tilt forward, but backward were 2 probable causes. Another likely problem is that when I work standing, my desk is about 39″ high, so the stool set to its full height caused me to hyperextend my legs, as there is no adjustable foot ring or support. I called Dick Blick to get a return authorization number, which was sent promptly via email.

And there my real problem began. Disassembling the chair is basically impossible. The metal box-shaped base component of the chair assembles by a pressure fit onto the stool’s central support pole. Once on, it would not come off. I’m of average weight, and not a rambunctious, bouncy sitter, but after 2 weeks, it was stuck on for good. The Wrenaissance Man, who is very fit and very mechanically inclined, could not pull the two pieces apart, and declared that it was clearly manufactured to stay assembled once assembled.

So returning this chair is not an option. I have slightly adapted it by reversing the seat on the seat-base box with longer bolts so that it will tilt forward, and by lowering my desk when I use it. Eventually, we’ll probably sell it in a garage or moving sale.

The lesson here is that back and orthopedic conditions are individual problems requiring individual solutions. This chair clearly works for a lot of artists and crafters who are back patients. I recommend that you borrow this chair from a friend or lease it from an office-furniture store for a week or two before you splash out the cash. Once you’ve decided on purchasing this chair, Dick Blick offers the best price on both the chair and shipping. It is also available through Daniel Smith via website and catalog and Texas Art Supply by special order.

Artists and illustrators specializing in botanical, natural history or wildlife subjects often enter competitions to garner a laurel in their career. There are several important competitions in 2012 that may be of interest if your artwork fits the competition requirements.

The Margaret Flockton Award is an international annual botanical illustration competition with a deadline of Monday, February 6, 2012. It is sponsored by The Friends of the Botanic Gardens, a major supporter of the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust of Sydney, Australia.

The competition is open to artists world wide. First and second place prizes are AU$5,000 and AU$2,000, respectively. All artists retain all rights to their work, although usage must be granted for the purposes of promoting the competition. This competition has stringent requirements for entries: All work must be in black and white and ready for pre-press, and be an exactingly correct illustration in all details.

The Birds in Art competition is a very famous annual competition sponsored by the Leigh Yawkey Woodson museum in Wausau, Wisconsin. All mediums and techniques are permitted, as long as the subject matter is birds. The competition includes some of the greatest contemporary wildlife artists working today. The postmark deadline is on April 15, 2012 and the arrival deadline is April 26, 2012.

The Annual IAA Wildlife Art Show is a nationwide competition held annually by the Irving Art Association in Irving, Texas. The association has not yet posted the entry deadline, but work was due on August 15 for the 2011 edition. All traditional mediums are accepted. Subject matter is restricted to wild animals, no images of domestic pets will be accepted.

The Fifteenth Annual ASBA/HSNY International Juried Exhibition is held by the American Society of Botanical Artists in conjunction with the Horticultural Society of New York. The entry deadline is on March 23, 2012. Entry is open to all members of ASBA, worldwide. Submissions must be in traditional mediums, no photography or digital work allowed.

If you prefer to paint with a goal or deadline looming, maybe one of these juried events will provide you with extra motivation!

January has been designated National Glaucoma Awareness Month. Glaucoma is one of the leading preventable causes of blindness, according to the Glaucoma Foundation.

The basic mechanism of glaucoma is high intra-optic pressure. The eye is filled with a viscous fluid, which maintains the spherical volume and shape of the eye. The amount of fluid is regulated by drainage via the Canal of Schlemm. When drainage is inadequate, internal optic pressure increases, and eventually causes nerve cells in the optic nerve to die off. Vision is lost from the periphery into the central field of vision as the optic nerve slowly dies, causing a narrowed “tunnel vision.”

The main types of glaucoma are open-angle glaucoma, where the drainage canal meets the front of the eye at a normal angle, but drainage is inadequate; closed-angle, where the drainage area is narrowed where the eye and canal meet; normal-pressure glaucoma, when nerve death occurs even though eye pressures are well within the normal range; and congenital glaucoma, found in newborns and requiring immediate emergency surgery to save whatever optic nerve function remains.

There are 70 million people with glaucoma worldwide, 4 million of them in the US. 120,000 Americans are already blind due to the disease. High risk factors include extreme near-sightedness, old age (>60 years of age), immediate family members with the disease, diabetes, and having African American or Hispanic ethnic heritage.

Annual eye exams with eye pressure measurements are recommended for these risk groups and for everyone over the age of 40. Treatment initially consists of a daily regimen of one or more types of eye drops that reduce the internal pressure. As the disease progresses, various types of surgery, including drainage stents, are recommended. The Glaucoma Research Foundation provides more information and resources on its website.

Here is another link for people with an interest helping others improve their vision and eye health. The Lions Club International is a volunteer organization founded in Chicago in 1917 by local businessmen. Today the Lions Clubs spearhead a wide range of locally based initiatives to improve communities. They are best known for organizing and running programs that provide eye health care to the needy worldwide.

If you have an old pair of prescription eyeglasses that no longer fit your eyes, why not consider donating them to the Lions’ eyeglass donation program? It’s so easy to dramatically improve the vision and life of a needy person.

The party's over, and 2012 has begun.

I’ve decided to go offline this month, except for emails. But fear not! I’ve prepared a few amuse l’oeils to entertain and inform while I’m away from the digital world. To prevent an overflow of spam, comments on the blog will be turned off January 1-31. Happy New Year, and I look forward to returning to the blog in February.

Once again the immense, empty calendar space of a new year stretches before us. And once again, if you’re like me, you have a long list of all the amazing things you want to achieve this year, yeah, this year for sure.

Researcher Heidi Grant Halvorson offers handy advice on how to set and achieve goals. While she repeats the time-honored tips we’ve all heard from our mothers, fourth-grade teachers and business gurus, she does offer some new, inspiring angles on the classic rules.

Heidi Grant Halvorson wrote “Nine Things Successful People Do Differently” for the Harvard Business Review. She also gives strategic advice on fulfilling goals on her blog, The Science of Success. Halvorson points out that even the most passive underachiever makes good on some commitments, while even the most successful and driven people have their own nagging bête noir. Just think of President Obama and his on-again, off-again smoking habit.

Halvorson differs from many other self-improvement gurus in her bluntness about the degree of effort required to change a habit and reach a milestone. In fact, she explicitly lauds grit and willpower as the the two most necessary virtues that anyone must develop in order to attain one’s dreams.

She describes willpower as a mental muscle. Just like a bicep, willpower gets stronger when forced to work at slightly more than its current capacity. She points out that this high degree of effort can only be maintained for a short period of time, but that strengthening this mental muscle requires frequent repetitions of  training, with a bit more load added each time.

Grit is another mental muscle that must be trained with increasing difficulty levels. She defines grit as perseverance when confronted with setbacks. Halvorson acknowledges the discouragement and even momentary failure that await anyone who is trying to achieve a lofty goal. In fact, she argues that one of the criteria of a worthy goal is that it must challenge you beyond your current skill level, although it should not be unattainable.

Finally, Halvorson suggests that you should look at a goal as a process of doing and learning new skills, rather than achieving a new state of being. In other words, when you set a goal, you should focus on a dynamic process, rather than a static existence.

Halvorson’s essay is not only useful now when writing up those 2012 resolutions: You might want to re-read it in early April when you need a pep talk after you’ve derailed your diet with yet another tiramisu or torpedoed your triathlon training by sleeping in three weekends in a row.

My visual inspiration research included a schematic map of the constellation, an amateur photograph of the star (which is actually a triple star!), and the next set of roughs will be based on a cross-section diagram of the star from a scientific paper. Of course, none of the images I develop will be copies of, or even recognizably connected to the original source material.

Once the final design has been approved, I’ll post an image.

Sponsored by the National Geographic Society, Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs features artifacts from all dynastic periods that have been discovered in the last 25 or 30 years. A bit less than half of the exhibit is devoted to these new findings, while the curators have chosen to focus on recent discoveries about the DNA heritage and physical status of Tutankhamun in the final four rooms devoted to his tomb proper.

The newly uncovered artifacts are indeed stunning. There are many statuettes that have retained their surface paint and inlaid obsidian/quartz eyes. Highlighted are the small statuettes of a man named Inty Shetu, which were found in his burial chambers. Inty Shetu was a construction overseer for the pharaohonic tombs, and his own tomb is the first one found of an individual who was a mere commoner and not a member of either the royal dynasties or the clerk/priesthood mandarinate. The portrait sculptures are also unique because they depict this man at varying points in his life, from adolescent youth to portly middle age.

Another beautiful find was the sarcophagus made for the cat of Prince Thutmose. The lively and sensitive engravings portray a real animal, and the front and back panels are slightly asymmetrical in the details depicted.

There are also statues portraying Queen Hatshepshut, who was the only known female pharaoh, with all the male insignia of the royal role, including the ceremonial, artificial, braided beard and woven headdress. A coffer intricately patterned in enamelled, turquoise-blue smalt and gold inlay and about the size of a modern end table was once a gift from a pharaoh to his (well-born) commoner in-laws, and exemplifies the level of quality and preservation of the artifacts on display.

The exhibit’s curators have chosen different objects from Tutankhamun’s tomb than the items that were displayed in the last great exhibit. The extraordinary funerary mask of Tut is not included in the current tour, as the decision was made at the end of the last tour to keep this treasure at home in Egypt. The young king’s bed and throne, used during his lifetime and buried with him, form part of the list of newly exhibited objects from the burial chambers. Also included are the golden sandals placed on Tut’s mummy and the special sarcophagus made for his stomach, one of a set created for the royal offal. Exquisitely rendered shabtis, or miniature servant statues, are a just a few of the more than 400 such magical figures buried with the king to ensure that he would never have to lift a finger in labor in his afterlife. A massive colossus of Tut is another of the artifacts debuting in this exhibit.

The curators have focused on explaining the full history of the pharaohs and their dynasties, and Tutankhamun’s position within this lineage. Wall plaques, timelines, video screens and an audio tour flesh out the details of ancient Egypt’s story. For the most part, the multi-media infoblitz is unobtrusive and complementary to the objects on display. The curators do indulge in a small bit of cheesy showbusiness in the portentous video announcements (accompanied by dramatic stage lighting!) at the main entry to the exhibit and the secondary doorway leading to the display of Tut’s burial chambers.

We chose to rent the audio tour when we bought tickets. Having grown up in an anti-audio-tour home, I was somewhat leery whether the tape would provide useful information, or simply disturb my ability to observe and absorb the qualities of the items exhibited. Renting the audio package is well worth the extra $6 expense. The information on the recording is different from the graphic materials and wall texts, and the various narrators provide interesting insights into the specific highlighted artifacts as well as about Egyptian culture and burial techniques. The audio tour is housed in a sleek case about the size of a tv remote. It’s simple to shift between tracks, and the sound quality is very clear.

The exhibit, Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs, runs until April 15, 2012 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Its final US venue will be at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, WA, from May 24, 2012 to January 6, 2013. MFAH members may purchase tickets through the museum, while non-members may buy tickets through the official King Tut/National Geographic website. All tickets are timed entries on the half-hour. Once you enter the exhibit, you may take as long as you like to view it; however, exiting is final and no re-entry is permitted. The crowds in 2011 are not nearly as oppressive as the 1970s tour. You can easily spend some time poring over the details of a display without too much jostling from other tour visitors.