Jaci Dawn

I just spent the better part of today organizing in my studio in preparation for a long winter of art & inspiration. I still need a storage cabinet for my drawings, but I have the exact measurements written down & will peruse the local thrift stores until I find the right thing. No worries: I know I’ll find it.

Back in August, as we wound up our vacation, my husband noted that I hadn’t picked up a lot of odd sticks and items for use in my studio. First off, we didn’t have that much room, but mostly – and this is what I told him – I had been busy taking photos of things too large to bring home that inspired me. Old cottonwoods with their wrinkled bark and lichens, the rocks, stumps and limbs of trees – these were all going into a special folder to upload onto my desktop on my computer just for Faerie Inspirations.

Every camp site provided me with ample fodder:

How about a rectangle boulder stuck in the roots of an old dead tree? I can picture that as the wall of a faerie house.

I just liked the lines and angles of this. in my mind, the two sticks that are leaning against the stump become wizard’s staffs and the limb is a two-headed dragon. Or something. Just thinking out loud here.

There is just something magical about this old cottonwood on Pike Creek. The fat lips where a branch used to be might be part of the magic, but I think it is the lines: the twists of the trunk and main branches, the orange lichen and the deeply grooved bark.

This was just fun. Don & I would sit out and watch the “howling dog” every night. It was better when there was a breeze – the “dog” seemed to come to life.

Jones’ Crossing offered up this fascinating standing tree. I can’t begin to guess at why the tree was hollow, but a beaver did quite a bit of work on the opening to the hollow. Isn’t that inspiring for a faerie home??

It was at our last camp on Prairie Farm that I found the most inspiration. The above stump was but one idea to come to me – I will just post the photos and let you decide for yourself if there’s inspiration to be had. I’m sure you’ll see a few strange woodland gnomes and elven homes and at least one “dragon”…