The Ruins of Murat

Murat is a very small village about an hours drive from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Old Murat is a fascinating maze of the crumbling mud homes from days not all that long ago. The earth in the region of Murat is a much deeper red than the surrounding areas of Dhurma, Al Brrah, and Shaqra, and the view of the old village is just beautiful.
It seems that women are women all over the world, and throughout all of history. We spend a lot of time in our homes, and we want them to look as good as possible, so we decorate.
The designs carved into the walls of these homes is just amazing to look at, and the shelves built into the walls are decorative as well as functional. This was a room where the family would have spent many hours, and entertained guests, and the shelves would have held such things as coffee pots, tea pots, and all of the essentials needed to be a generous host/hostess. A guest would be sure to be served a pot of "gahwa", or Arabic coffee, and a plate of dates within minutes of his arrival.
Many times the date that the home is built is carved into the wall, as well as some religious quotes, as in the wall above. The date is 17/3/1373, which corresponds to 24/11/1953, and the writing says There is no god but God, and Mohamed is God's prophet.
On this wall, the quote is the same as above, while the date is 28/12/1369, which corresponds to 10/12/1944.
Yet another example of beautiful designs carved into the wall. In addition to the shelves in this home, there is storage space recessed into the wall.

I love looking at camels. They have such expressive faces, and some can get quite silly, as the light colored one on the left of the picture shows. And while I am not usually terribly interested in portrait painting, I thought that it might be an interesting twist to paint portraits of camels.


So this is my first attempt at painting a camel portrait. I think I'll call her Zelda. Oil on canvas. She still needs work, but it has been fun painting her goofy expression, and I think I'll make it a point to take more camel pictures for future projects.

Karma

This is Karma! Dec. 26, 2010

Jan. 7, 2011

Jan 12, 2011 Look at those long legs! She is a regular weed!

Three weeks ago, my husband, daughter, and I went out to the desert for the day. We wanted to visit Al-Barrah, the village where my husband was born. On the way, we passed a few other small villages and being armed with my camera, we stopped to take many pictures. Many of the smaller villages in Saudi Arabia have been all but abandoned in recent years, and there are a lot of interesting ruins to wander through and look at.
At probably the third place we stopped, I had barely gotten out of the car, and I could hear the cries of a puppy. The desert is full of wild saluqis, and I was a little leery of poking my head into the room of an abandoned home to see the puppies that were definitely in there, for fear of Momma dog biting my face off. My husband had no such fear, and ran to take a look, and what he found was three starving puppies, not more than three weeks old. I guessed the Momma had been hit by a car, or some such thing, and after debating it for 20 minutes, we decided to take the puppies home to try to save them. Sadly, the two little cream colored males didn't even make it to the house. The sand colored female, however, not only survived, but has thrived, and is now as demanding as any puppy can be! Look at how far she has come....

I've been messing around with some jewelry designs. I love copper wire, so it gets used a lot, but I also use silver and base wires. I hammer, twist, bend, and add beads. In many cases, texture from the hammer is part of the design. The assembly line, machine made look of department store jewelry is much less interesting to my eye.

How d'ya like them apples? In these earrings, I used silver filled wire, ceramic beads, and findings.
This set is made of 18 guage copper wire, hammered to give shape and texture. The chain, the S hook, and the ear wires all all hand forged.
Copper and jade work so well together. For this pair, I do think I might go back and put an antique patina on the copper to take the shine away.
This by far is one of my favorites. I used a very thin copper wire, doubled and twisted, to make the chain and the earrings.