…awaiting pricing and packing for Gifts for Nature, this Friday and Saturday, 11-12 Dec 2009, at the Cattle Track Compound in Scottsdale, AZ (more details here). There seem to be a lot of snouts and tails waving in the air… Hope you can come and see what they’re attached to!
The Friday evening event is a festive preview and advance sale, with music, hors d’oevres, wine and hot cider. It’s $25 per person (call for reservations, 602-468-6470 ext. 103). The Saturday public sale goes from 10 am – 4 pm, and has a recommended donation of $4.
There will be lots of local artists and their nature-related artwork – it’s a great place to do your holiday shopping. Plus, proceeds plus a portion of the artist’s profits go to supporting environmental education and conservation in Arizona. Hope you can make it! (And, keep your fingers crossed for fine weather!)
The next Three Star Owl event will be after the New Year, at Wings Over Willcox, January 13-17, 2010.
…for those of us who decide to enter the Fray, this is the kind of thing you’ll be up against:
Yes, the Holidays must be upon us, it’s the traditional Santa Hat-Wearing Wiener Dog on a Bun with Lettuce and Mustard Effigy Vessel (featuring removable lid), now appearing at your local discount department store. Oh, Why didn’t I buy this when I saw it?
(cell phone photo A.Shock)
Spotting coatis in Sabino canyon was fortunate in many ways. Not only is it always amazing to see a coati, but it was artistically inspiring, too. Before the Tucson visit I had already begun a 
small coati effigy bowl, so on returning home I was all fired up to finish it and start another bigger one, images of live animals fresh in my head to draw from.
(left: pair of coati effigy bowls in various states of completion; photo A.Shock)
The little one is sculpted, textured, and burnished — bone-dry and awaiting bisque-firing. The bigger one is still wet, with sponges propping up a tail that wants to slump forward, and a plastic bag over the head to keep the snout workable for a little longer. (Our cool fall weather is keeping things drying at a snail’s pace, frustrating when you’re trying to get things through the studio rapidly, with the holidays coming up).
Sometimes clay places practical limitations on forms, and there’s no way to make tails as gloriously long and sinuous as real coati tails. But the snouty-shoulderyness of the climbing-digging critters is do-able, as is the higher-in back posture 
that makes them look like they’re always trundling downhill. These pieces are destined for sawdust-firing, I think, so the smoky coloration of the twilight-colored desert animals should be suitably earthy, but I’m still thinking about how to get the spectacles and the rings to be visible but not too contrasty.
The little one is apparently a male. Be sure to click to enlarge.
(All photos A.Shock)
…and we spent the day near Sedona in the Red Rocks and Wet Beaver Creek visiting Palatki and V-V (a ranch brand pronounced Vee-Bar-Vee), both quite spectacular rock art venues.
These are fairly easily accessible sites maintained by the Forest Service for public viewing, and well worth the trip (around 2 1/2 hours from Phoenix, much less from Flagstaff), if indigenous works of art are your thing. Palatki is primarily pictographs — images applied to the rock faces with mixtures of charcoal or mineral pigments and natural binders like animal fat. There’s also a well-preserved “cliff dwelling” perched comfortably in the delightfully red Supai Sandstone formation. V-V is primarily petroglyphs, figures pecked or incised into the sandstone with hard tools. Both sites feature an abundance of animal images, anthropomorphic figures including ones 
referred to as “shamanic”, plus geometric and astronomical symbols. These two locations have been used successively by a variety of inhabitants, from the Archaic people to Sinagua, Hohokam, Yavapai, Apache, and early Anglo and Hispanic homesteaders: in places the images are many layers thick, representing thousands of years of expression.
Interpretation of parietal art seems largely subjective, and despite folksy presentations by earnest volunteers nothing we were presented with was entirely convincing, so I won’t inflict anyone with any of it here. But the art is impressive, both in technique and aesthetics, so I’ll satisfy myself with admiration, and leave others to struggle with meaning.
It’s a fascinating struggle, and teeters a little antagonistically between local experts, eddycated archeologists, and Native American Interpreters, all of whom seem to have strong opinions and, often, little tolerance for each other’s views. Oddly, more than once we heard a little bashing of the two extremes of scholarly and indigenous input, with the hero being the guy who wasn’t an expert — who didn’t have the “in” of either academia or ancestry — figuring it all out. This left the impression of a tale arising from the Mystery of the Lost Symbols that seems just as rooted in folkloric tradition as the images themselves.
If you’d like to visit these sites, and nearby Honanki, be sure to check out the links above for details, since advanced reservations are necessary for Palatki, and hours are quite limited for V-V.
(Photos: Top, Palatki, “Red House” ruins, A.Shock; middle: black herd, Palatki, A.Shock; bottom: overview of one of the V-V petroglyph panels, possibly a calendar overlaid with clan symbols)
The answer is all of the above. Long a mainstay of Three Star Owl sculptural subjects, this pointy-ended, feisty-looking, toothy mammal has been called all of them. And that would be correct — called a “rαtdog” 
for convenience — it stands for Every Mammal, including us human ones. Rαtdogs represent the Mammalian experience, and are intended to repulse and appeal simultaneously. My hope is that people will want to pick one up, even though it looks like it might bite, or transmit a disease.
Above is the latest rαtdog piece, “FishDog Stack”, fresh from its smoky firing. Like the related piece Toadstack, it’s mainly about heterotrophy: eating other organisms, but only because rαtdogs haven’t figured out how to synthesize cholorophyll yet. FishDog Stack just trundled off to its new home this afternoon, which always makes me happy.
(Photo A.Shock. Currently there’s a detail of FishDog Stack on my Homepage. Also check out an image of an earlier rαtdog piece “Acorn Competition” in the Gallery — click on the third thumbnail at the bottom.)
It looks a lot like a toad, with a stumpy physique and warty skin, but it’s a Canyon Tree Frog (Hyla arenicolor). How to tell it’s a frog? One way: no parotoid glands — instead you can see the round flat areas of its tympani (hearing structures) behind and slightly below the eye.
Also, this frog has large adhesive pads on the ends of its toes to aid in climbing (after all it is a tree frog), which most toads don’t do. Canyon tree frogs are variable in color and spottage (a technical term: feel free to pronounce it spot-AAHJ), but this individual is fairly pale and nearly spot-free. They inhabit rocky stream courses in Arizona and the Southwest with intermittent or permanent water, where they enjoy feeding upon small invertebrates. This one was photographed at Aravaipa Canyon. (Photo A.Shock, 2009)
Etymology
Hyla arenicolor: arenicolor is a Latin compound meaning sand-colored: to the Romans as well as to us, an arena is a sand-covered area. The origin of the genus Hyla is a bit more complex, and much more picturesque. To start, the greek work ὗλη — cognate with the more familiar Latin sylva, means woodland, and may come into play in the naming of a genus of tree frogs. 
But a more colorful tradition connects the genus name with Hylas, one of the original Argonauts who while searching for fresh water ashore was pulled into a woodland spring by a desirous water nymph. Hylas’s companions — including Herakles and Jason — searched the island for him in vain, crying his name over and over: the story goes that the incessant cry of his name relates to the repetitive calling of tree frogs.
above: the story of the rape of Hylas, “Hylas and the Nymphs” by J.W. Waterhouse, 1896. If you’re lucky enough to be in London during the next couple of weeks, check out the exhibition: J.W.Waterhouse: The Modern Pre-Raphaelite, it’s on at the Royal Academy until 13 Sept 2009. (And, there’s a pleasing similarity between the color schemes of the Waterhouse painting and the tree frog photo at the top: the watery-brown background, ivory skin tones and heart-shaped green foliage.)
2d update, April 2015, about using magnetic tape to secure pans to Altoids tin, see comments
Updated 19 May 2013 (see link at bottom of article)
Everybody in the world has posted their version of the Miniature Watercolor Box, usually ingeniously created from any flat metal tin, often Altoids, sometimes Velamints, or others (see here, here, and here, just for a few examples of many). These projects are all well-described and illustrated. I hereby add my version, but will only add a couple of tips I think are an improvement on what others have already shown.
As a hiker/backpacker, I’m always looking for a way to carry along sketching and watercolor or gouache supplies that doesn’t take up too much volume or weigh too much. (Or cost too much: commercially made ones are available at artist’s suppliers but seem exorbitant, if pretty cool.)
Not all hikes yield usable painting or drawing time, and I want to carry something that I won’t begrudge space to if I don’t get around to using it. So I was enthralled by the mint-tin plein-air kits I saw on the Web. It’s just the kind of project to seize my imagination, so off I went. Which brings up the first tip: if this is your kind of project, beware taking up more time constructing your kits (or posting about them!) than painting with them — and I speak from experience — it’s easy to go there. Although, the preparation can be big fun and have its own rewards.
The basic idea is to use empty, flat, metal boxes (such as those in the top photo in various stages of the process) to carry small containers (like contact lens cups, or polymer clay depressions, or purpose-made watercolor half-pans) filled with tube watercolors pre-squeezed out into them and allowed to dry. The dried colors can be re-wet and used to paint, just like commercially available pan watercolors. But with a customized mint-tin box, you can choose your own brands and colors, or easily switch them out for landscape, botanical, or portrait projects — whatever you like. 
(Second tip — don’t glue your pans permanently in place, as some folks recommend. If they’re inconveniently loose, fasten them down with something temporary, like double-sided tape or that gummy product they sell; or, wedge them in with a bit of sponge or paper towel, which would be useful anyway for blotting. You want to be able to take them out to change or clean.) Many people like to accompany these tiny paint-boxes with water-brushes like those made by Niji and Sakura, which have water reservoirs in their barrels, so they don’t have to carry extra water in a bottle. (The photo on the right shows the insides of boxes in various stages, the top one awaiting enameling, the other two enameled and awaiting paint selections.)
I don’t think I’m the only one who’s been saving metal Altoids tins for years with the idea that some day they’d come in handy. Well, this is that day. It turns out the older ones are best — the ones with the flat lids, without the product name embossed in the lid (like the one below on the left, painted with a red anti-rust primer). The embossing is fancy, but since the inner lid becomes your mixing surface, a flat one is better (more about fixing that in a minute).
The inner lids of most brands are silver like the top one in the photo above — those are usable, but it’s easier to see your colors if you’re mixing on white. Some tins are already white inside. A few folks have inserted a portion of a plastic mixing tray here; good, but there’s both extra weight and extra work to cut it out of an existing watercolor palette (although you do get to wield your Dremel tool). Others spray paint the surface white. That’s the solution I went with, but here’s my next Valuable Tip: don’t just use white spray paint, use spray-on Appliance Enamel, found with the spray paints at hardware or DIY stores. It’s perfect — stain 
resistant, glossy, very white, quick drying, and rust proof. It was miraculous to watch a metallic surface become pure white, shiny, and even in just 2-3 coats. I couldn’t stop using the stuff — the cats were lucky they didn’t end up slick and white. Don’t forget to mask the outside with some tape before spraying. If you want to obliterate the product labeling on the outside of your tin, use regular indoor-outdoor spray paint for that — I’ve been doing that after spraying the inside (mask it so that slick white surface isn’t contaminated).
Next tip, about indented lids: if you have an embossed tin lid, your mixing surface will have dents that cause color mixtures to pool. If this bothers you, start by filling these dents on the inside of the lid with a waterproof product. I use a modeling product called Apoxie Sculpt. Just follow the instructions; you can smooth it out with a wet fingertip and then sand when dry. Polymer clay would work as well, but needs to be oven-cured. Remember to do your infilling before using the Appliance enamel. This adds a level of complication to the project, both because of having to do the leveling and procuring the product, but I know your ingenuity is up to it. If not, just forget it and find a non-embossed tin — they’re out there, but not Altoids, I don’t think — or, use the embossed lid anyway. It’s not the end of the world. (The photo on the right, below, shows an embossed lid box filled and awaiting enameling, the other box is complete; it’s the rust-colored Altoids gum box above — you can see that the indentations of the lettering have been filled and the lid now has a smooth mixing surface).
Where to put the paints. Since I don’t wear contacts lenses and don’t have access to old lens cups, I was going to make my own half-pans with polymer clay to hold the paints, but I found I didn’t have the patience to make as many as I would need. Using a solid pad of clay and making paint depressions in it is a good solution, but not for me: I wanted to be able to change out individual colors. So I went for purpose-made plastic watercolor pans and half-pans, which wedge snugly into mint tins in various combinations. Unfortunately, I found that individual empty pans are not easy to find, currently. Jerry’s Artarama has them in their catalog, but as long as I’ve been working on the project, they’ve been out of stock. I finally found another supplier, Natural Pigments, a cool vendor in Willetts, CA, who specializes in pigments and supplies for people making their own paints. They have empty pans available for a good price, but frankly their shipping fees are mysteriously high for such lightweight items. Still, beggars can’t be choosers, and that’s who I’ve been buying from. Consider that another hot tip, with a caveat (shipping price).
Now you’re ready to configure your pans geometrically in your prepared tin, and select your palette — both tasks similar to scattering rice in front of a vampire: there are those who obsess on these things. I won’t presume to dispense advice on color choice, but just a warning: the smaller the tin, the fewer your colors, the harder the choice, for most.
Let me finish off by saying that if this is the kind of project that floats your boat, there are many possibilities: different sizes of tins (to accommodate larger and smaller palettes); traveling tins for gouache (non-acrylic gouaches are re-wettable like watercolors and like them can be squeezed into pans and allowed to dry); and gifts for artist friends, with or without the paints (some artists are picky about their color choices). Now that Altoids has introduced Smalls, there’s a Really Tiny Tin to challenge your minimalist palette selection. And finally, modern mint-boxes are great, but how cool would vintage metal boxes be?! I’m thinking Kiwi shoe polish, for one…
Update: Here’s another artist’s traveling pastille box, with plastic caps for pans. What a great idea!