The creatures in my life

 The creatures that we share the planet with have always fascinated me, even when I was very young. As well as taking lots of photographs of them, at various times in my life I've also been attracted to painting and drawing images of them. In my life as a maker of jewels their forms have popped up from time to time in
the form of pins and pendants.

To the left is an image of a colored pencil drawing I did of a young giraffe that I took a photo of at the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco on a visit there with my grand kids. Part of me was horrified by the thought of this creature being killed so it could be stuffed and displayed in a museum and part of me was entranced by it's beauty and the opportunity to see it up close. Size of drawing is 8x12 inches.

 Lots of people that I meet have negative feelings about insects but they have always interested me. In my jewel maker persona I sometimes think of them as beautiful, little jeweled robots. This is an example of an intricate kind of pen drawing I have spent a lot of time with at various times in my life, there's is something calming and meditative to me about putting each little line on paper one at a time. Of course, some people look at that and think that I must be crazy. Well, perhaps. I can identify with this Bug on a Bubble, I've felt like that before.
Size of drawing is 8 1/2 x 11 inches.

 I have a jewelry customer in the bay area that has iguanas and has several times shown me photographs of them. This is a colored pencil drawing of a fantasized hybrid version of one in a ambiguous landscape. The abstract rock forms on which it sits I developed after a visit to Joshua Tree National Park many years ago when I became fascinated by the rock forms there and could not stop doing drawings inspired by them for about 6 weeks. Size of original is 18 x 24 inches.

 I did a series of black and with drawings combining intricate patterns with insect forms back in the early 1990's. This is the grasshopper version. Size is 6 x 9 inches.

I'm entranced with this photographic image. A week and a half ago my wife Carlie and I walked north of Ft. Bragg along the ocean to see if there were any harbor seal babies. We didn't see any but some of the 30 or so adults we saw looked pregnant so I think soon there will be young ones. I couldn't get too close to the seals because they are skittish, so I took a lot of shots using telephoto capabilities on my camera. I didn't actually see this wonderful smiling one until I looked at the images blown up on my computer later. I laughed out loud when I first saw it and it still brings a smile to my face as well as to the faces of friends to whom I've shown it and sent it in emails.