3 crow a girl

This is the cover from a stationary card I received from my maternal Grandmother, back in Early November of 2006. The image is of 3 crows entitled "Young Crows" and was painted by Donald William Richards, from a gift set of cards called "Birds of Nova Scotia" I've kept this card on my desk since I received it, always reminding me of the woman who means so much to me.

As you may recall it was my Nan who taught me the the poem about the seven crows and it is because of that early impression that, to this day I love crows, and when I was deciding on my first Tattoo it was at a time when she was not doing well and so that Tattoo is as much a tribute to her as it is my love of the bird.

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We lost her to her great reward on Wed May 7th, 2008. It was not such an unexpected loss, as her health was failing and she bluntly refused any treatment to prolong her life.

I wrote a few blog posts about her at my main blog, the first in part about a visit back in August of 2008, then in October 2007 on the 17th and the 23rd (in part... it's a LONG post, it's more at the beginning). Then May hit, like a brink... May 6th, May 7th and May 11th

While I feel these are all wonderful tributes to a woman I dearly love and will miss deeply til the end of my days, I felt she deserved one more tribute and it is here, where she and I can continue to share our love for one another and the birds we loved to count.

Here is just a short snippet from her not. Cute and playful as always:

And here's how she signed off.



So long Nan, I love ya, ya old crow!

crow art: a flock of skull

How delicious is this!?

Blending the chaotic elegance of crows in flight and morphing the photo to show the murder in a skull shaped flight pattern. When I saw this image back in February, it helped cement the concept of my first tattoo. The patterns of their silhouettes. Pure magic!

I stumbled across Skull-a-Day though Keltie's 365 Masks. Keltie was inspired by the artist Noah Scalin and his piece of art a day concept blog. Talk about varied mediums and techniques. This man is a genius!

I visit both sites regularly to see what they come up with next, and am seldom if ever disappointed. I only wish they'd use more crows! ;-)

crow art: the filigree mask

The Blogworld is one I'm very glad to have found, and have been happily blogging my ass off for a little over one year now (at my main blog) What impresses me more than just the number of blogs out there, is the talent you find, and the wonderful people you 'meet' behind that talent; be it words and or art.

I'm not sure when I first started reading Keltie's blog, but I remember finding her through a friend of a friend of a friend's blog. (you see how easy that is!) She's got a great mind. Back in January she started a secondary blog called 365 Masks. Her goal: to create a Mask a day for one year.

She's doing some impressive stuff there, and you can go check it out yourself here, and more specifically the reason for this post: here.

Now she never comes out directly and says it's a crow mask, but I gotta tell you I was reading Christopher Moore's "A Dirty Job" at the time, where Crows/Ravens figure prominently in the story and when I visualized them I see her mask.

I love the simplicity of main mask with the detailing of the filigree and the colour evokes thoughts of Hallowe'en, an absolute iconoclastic moment in the year of a crow.

Check out her other masks, she's a talent!