I am switching gears a little.  I have several ink drawings in the works and will be finishing them shortly. I have deleted my blog "Quilts For Veterans" out of respect for my father's wishes.  I have a few quilts ready to be finished, but to be honest, they were more art projects than in a Veterans-appropriate theme, so they will be art quilts.  They are all fairly small - about 45 inches x 60 inches.  I will be sewing blocks into layered blocks by machine, and then hand-quilting my logo on each block, along with other designs as I go.

The first is called "Hello"

Civilian Volunteer

A separate type of Service to our country is volunteering your time.  It is not like committing to being in the Armed Services, but it is very important.  I am very proud that my son volunteered when asked.  This past weekend, when asked by someone in Washington, for the trip when President Obama was visiting California, my son offered to help with any support The President's trip might need.  He ended up driving one of the vehicles in the motorcade for the weekend, and performing various similar tasks asked of him by the Secret Service.  He couldn't send me a photo until after the trip had ended, due to security restrictions, but when he did, I was both in shock and awe, that my son, a very down-to-earth (scientist) could have such an honor as to help the President.  No matter how we each vote, it is respect for the Office of President that ensures our Freedom and Democracy.  Thanks, kiddo, and wow- look what you did!!!!  (My son said The President was "incredibly kind".  Thank you Mr. President!, for the respect and dignity you showed my son.)

I have three videos uploaded that are about ink stippling.  The third is one I just finished today and talks about using a flesh-tone ink where yellow is not wanted.  All three videos can be seen at this Playlist

I am working on a small American Flag for the demonstration in the video.

I have moved the ants from AntsAlive.com (Colony 2) into a gel habitat for my own safety.  They had been extremely active in the dirt environment, and are very slow in the gel environment.  My first thought was that they aren't "happy", but then I realized that ants don't function on emotion.  They function on a survival instinct.

One thing these lose in a gel environment is foraging space.  After doing a little more research about how they would behave if I start them in my garden in the spring, I found that foraging activity is related to humidity.  The gel environment does supply the correct balance of moisture and nutrients, so the changing humidity levels of a natural environment are missing.  In fact, this explains why they are more active after I place the gel environment in the refrigerator- even though the cold slows them down, the higher humidity that forms triggers an instinct to forage, so when they do "wake up", they are starting to run around to forage.

This page at Wikipedia gives more information about their natural activities.

In addition, a photographer who specializes in insects, Alexander Wild, says that many providers of ants for ant farms use Pogonomyrmex californicus, a native to the west, but also an ant with a very painful sting. Knowing that, and expecting that these are the ants I have, has reaffirmed that by using gel habitats, I am cutting down on the risk of a sting.  But what about the ants?  I think in gel, they are safe, fed, and bored.  But again, boredom is closer to an emotion.  I will be watching to see what behaviors may appear in the habitats when they don't "have" to do anything.

These ants would seem to do well in a garden of well-planted Opuntia.  They won't have a queen to keep the colony going, but their normal activities of foraging for desert seeds should be satisfied in a cactus garden of blooming-size plants.  I had thought I would be leaving my apartment, but right now, it may be next fall before I find another place.  If that turns out to be true, come spring, when I have several more Opuntia humifusa plants to put outdoors, it may be beneficial to let the ants live in the cactus garden.  I am not sure they would survive in colder weather unless they stayed underground.  The Carpenter ants that I have seen in the foundation may kill them off, or even the Pavement ants might swarm them.  But their place in my garden (as opposed to the other two types being pests near the house) would be in a cactus garden.

So, with my sensitivity to bees forcing me to keep the Harvester ants in gel habitats, I will learn new behaviors that may arise from the abnormal conditions they are in. But knowing they are suited to my preferred plants for my garden, Opuntia humifusa, a Massachusetts native Prickley Pear, gives me the incentive to plan a desert garden with the ants as my groundskeepers.  They are formidable little guys, afarid of nothing it seems, and I would prefer to have them in my garden than some type of house ant.  And here's a question - if I placed them on my large containers of Opuntia humifusa, would they live in the sand, or roam around the house?  I will have to do that type of experiment with them when the containers are outside.  Turning a negative into a positive by learning more about the species.  Knowing they are actually meant for my current type of gardening puts them and their venom in perspective in my life.  They match it, and they are an insect that I need to be aware of as far as danger, just like the bees that used to cover my herb garden, or the spiders, or any other insect competing with my own environment.

A caution about Harvester Ants!  After setting up what I had thought would be a long term art / science project, and while doing research on Red Harvester Ants, I have learned they are related closely to wasps and bees.  Being allergic to bees, I will now have to proceed differently, perhaps not working with ants at all.

I wish all of the ant farm packaging and pages had mentioned this relationship between Harvester Ants and bees.  I was swarmed by yellow-jackets when I was 5, having over 500 stings at once.  Bee stings are life-threatening to me, and now I have to suddenly view Harvester Ants in the same way.  Ughhh!  I am surprised the close relationship is not required on ant farm packaging that is mainly marketed to children.  Packages ARE marked that ants can sting, but the relationship to wasps and bees puts them in a different category.

The article I learned this from is at Desert USA .  I will be doing some other specific art project in the future.  For the ants I currently have, I believe I will be putting them in the Uncle Milton's Light-up Gel Colony habitats I have.  They do not need to be fed or watered in a gel environment, and there is much less chance of being bitten or stung.  When I was a kid, I used to collect regular old black ants, but Red Harvester ants are the ones provided with ants farms.  I can, of course, use photographs for reference on ants and work that way.  That would be different from my usual preference of working from life, but if I decide to proceed with studying ants, it is safer.

I made a short video of viewing the Red Harvester Ants in a natural soil environment.  While doing that, I also was deciding whether graphite or color is best to depict them. My video caption is:

"Although the gel ant farms and sand ant farms are excellent for viewing the red ants against a green or green-outlined environment, viewing them in a natural brown environment, soil, allows their natural hues to be more pronounced.  There is a subtlety to their color.  They are lighter in hue than the soil, so drawing in graphite, which is what I am doing, will capture the lightness of them against a darker soil.  I will add color if I am viewing them as red against a green environment"

I may also draw one ant design daily, instead of depicting the ant anatomy scientifically.  This would be similar to some ACEOs I have done, and also similar to the many pears I have drawn and painted over the years.  I want to draw daily, but do not always want to take the time for a truly scientific drawing.  Like Vincent van Gogh and his sunflowers, I am sure each ant design will be slightly different, even if the exact same design is used.  It is sometimes comforting to just draw and not try to place impressions of mind on the paper.  I will be using my young harvester ant design as shown in a previous post.

My videos about the ant farms can be found at my YouTube Playlist

As we face the 6th mass extinction in earth's history, scientific illustration is going to be more and vital in recording species.  One species that has survived 100 million years is the Harvester ant.

"Young Harvester Ant" sketch  December 31, 2016 (c) laeom