sketching out some ideas

The past week the squirrels have been chewing off the growing ends of the magnolia tree branches, especially in the last couple of days. There are 67 in this picture and that's not counting the half dozen or so that are already completely brown. They have never done this before, at least not to this extent. A few here and there, yeah but not like this. Are they determined that my tree won't produce a single bloom?

I finally sat down Monday and drew my rectangle and then stared at it for 30 minutes with not a clue about what to try and draw. Then it was time to go to yoga but that night I got a glimmer of an idea with a bird in flight on the front and a nest on the top with broken eggshells, sort of a reliquary for an empty nest, babies raised, nest abandoned so I wrote down a brief description.

Tuesday morning I posted on FB one of the boxes I did several of years ago, a Reliquary for Memories. 

I liked the concept but wasn't that pleased with how it came out aesthetically. I like the box very much. Inside it holds 9 or 10 faded and grainy images supposed to represent memories and the top is constructed so that it can hold one of the 'pictures'. The problem is, I don't like the way it looks when it's holding a picture 

and with the exception of two, the images don't represent any specific memory for me so it's sort of fake. Anyway, Tuesday morning I posted the box sans the memory pictures on FB and asked people what came to mind when they saw it in an attempt to get some ideas to repurpose the box. One response was simply...zen. Which triggered another idea for the new box...an Ode to Tranquility.

So after I did my weekly grocery shopping I sat down and did a rough idea sketch of a koi on the front with a lily pad and lotus flower on the top.

Then I sketched out the Empty Nest idea.

And then I started thinking about the reliquaries I've done that represent the destruction wrought by humans like Reliquary for a Shade Tree and Reliquary for a Night Sky and I started thinking about what else human activity is destroying and I thought of coral reefs. And I think this may be the one. A colorful inlay on the front of a coral reef with dead bleached coral on the top and maybe shells for feet. So I did a very rough sketch of that.

And then it was time to start working on dinner, smothered steak with onion, garlic, mushroom gravy; short grain brown rice; and pan fried squash patties. No picture I'm afraid but it was really good.

Now I need to do more precise, working drawings of the ideas, bird's eye view of the tops, think about how I might make some of the components like the bird nest, and ultimately pour the wax slabs to make up the basic shape of the box and decide which idea to pursue for the gallery.