The Collective: Turkey Feathers

Dear Laura,

I am enjoying our handwritten letters to one another in the book we send along with the art for The Collective. 

In your last letter to me about this project, you were exploring new paths in the woods and witnessing wild turkeys come across your path.

I have had a few wild turkey sightings myself on James Island, but not recently.  I do however have a few turkey feathers in my feather collection so I used that as inspiration. I have been waiting for inspiration to use this new set of chalk pastels.  I cut a map to our 8"x10" size and began sketching.

Now, you know I am not super comfortable with color, but this material is usually easier for me to add and subtract the color as I see fit.  Plus I like working with the subtle color from the map. I finished this drawing fairly quickly.  It feels more like a draft of perhaps a bigger drawing I may do later. This chalk pastel material seems to demand a larger size which I will explore.

The last challenge I had was protecting the drawing so it will not smudge over all the other work in our collection. I decided to add a layer of clear plastic on top of the drawing and join it with a rivet. 

The tools look like this...It will be off in the mail to you very soon! 

Looking forward to getting it back in the new year. We need to get together and look at all this work in 2018. 

I want to make plans to exhibit this work in some way that allows people to read our letters in sequence and view the artwork created. 

Wouldn't that be great?