still waiting for trees to leaf out!
Tuesday, May 10th, 2016 At our altitude of 7500′ the scrub oak are the natives. They wait to leaf out until there is no possibility of a heavy, wet snow. This is why there are seldom broken branches on the scrub oaks. They are well-adapted to our climate.
I keep photocopies of lots of actual leaves so that I can keep working through the long winter of bare branches. The photocopier is a very good camera for things that are flat.
The sharp division between heartwood (darker) and sapwood in these bowls tempted me to draw zentangles on the sapwood portion. Before I drew in the backgrounds, the leaves seemed a little undersized for the bowls. Usually I like for the leaves to touch the rim in at least 2 places.
The cottonwoods are also native to this region, and they, too, are slower to leaf out than the non-natives.
I took both of these photos before applying the final finish to these bowls. It is an acrylic lacquer with a shiny finish. It looks silky to the eye, but my camera doesn’t like the shiny finishes, even in filtered light.
A woodturner would ask about the wood. These were air-dryed roughed-out blanks that Dennis prepared in 2013. Absolutely bone dry at the time I turned them, and very fine-grained for a Western Ash. These trees are dying from the green ash borer that came to the US on a shipping pallet from China.