Stephen Fell

Author: admin

  • Birds!

    Birds!

    Listening to and seeing birds offers proven mental health benefits, reducing anxiety, stress, and paranoia while enhancing mood.

    In early February, I put up a bird feeder that I got for my birthday – it’s one of those ones that has a camera in it so you can login and watch the birds dig through the seeds, finding the ones they like best. Every day since, there has been a feeding frenzy of redpolls, red breasted nuthatches, chickadees, Steller’s jays, European starlings, magpies and the occasional squirrel.

    cropped-img_0582.jpg
    🙁
    paying my respects to the deceased
    the ravens came a few hours later

    We’ve also been visited by Bohemian Waxwings as they forage for the fermented fruit of our neighbors’ apple tree. Unfortunately, one such bird got a little too tipsy and crashed into our window, despite us having placed anti-bird-crash stickers to help them avoid it.

    Here is a collection of all the birds that have visited our back yard this winter.

    dark eyed junco
    dark eyed junco
    redpoll
    chickadee
    nuthatch
    pine siskin
    pine siskin
    redpoll
    Bohemian waxwing
    Bohemian waxwing
    Bohemian waxwing
    Bohemian waxwing
    Bohemian waxwing
    Bohemian waxwing
    Bohemian waxwing
    chickadee
    chickadee
    redpoll
    a hungry redpoll waits for the feeder
    a hungry redpoll
    Steller’s jay
    Steller’s jay – maybe with a slight bit of avian keratin disorder: the upper part of the bill extends outward a bit too far
    female downy woodpecker visiting our back yard
    female downy woodpecker visiting our back yard
    female downy woodpecker visiting our back yard

    I’ve also been going down to the Campbell Creek trail to get some steps and enjoy a bit of nature. I’ve seen lots of birds and animals, even during the coldest winter months. Here is a small collection of the birds I have seen along the trail.

    mallard
    American dipper chasing away a Bohemian waxwing at the edge of Campbell Creek.
    James Pond (common goldeneye)
    belted kingfisher at the pond
    belted kingfisher about to splash down
    european starling
    common goldeneye aka “James Pond”
    common goldeneye – aka “James Pond”
    a young moose on Campbell Creek trail
    A raven on trash day
    ducks at the pond
    Mallards coming in for a landing
    European starling in the neighborhood on a frosty morning
    male downy woodpecker along the trail at Campbell Creek
    common merganser flyover
    juvenile bald eagle perched on a tree by campbell creek
    juvenile bald eagle perched on a tree by campbell creek
  • Chickadee dee dee

    Chickadee dee dee

    The other day I put up the bird feeder that my wife had given me for my birthday last month. It’s one of those feeders with a camera so you can see the birds up close.

    Within 2 hours, we had a squirrel and shortly after that, chickadees, nuthatches and redpolls. I’m getting more than a hundred pings each day with all the hungry birds that come to feed.

    Here’s a drawing of one of my visitors, a chickadee who came to rest on one of the lower branches of our oak tree. I drew this on a sticky note to save time and show that you can draw with any kind of supplies that you might have lying around, even when you’re taking a short break at work 🙂

    Watch me draw on YT

  • If fish were people

    If fish were people

    Last summer was the first time we’ve been dip-netting in almost 11 years. So we’ve been eating our haul of salmon almost once a week this winter, which is probably a net positive for our health. We’re already making plans to go again in the summer, but I couldn’t help but think, at least for a moment, what if the fish ate people?

    Time lapse of a fish vacuum packing people.
  • The secrets of self expression

    The secrets of self expression

    One day I was in the bathroom, washing my hands and with a quick glance down at the sink, I realized that the spacing on the cold and hot water faucet handles appeared to be about the same as one’s eyes. And at that moment I began imagining myself wearing the faucet on my head, almost like a pair of goggles. And I began to think about the symbolism of the water creating a feedback loop from the brain to the eyes and back into the mouth. Maybe I’m drowning in my own thoughts? I don’t know. I will leave that up for interpretation.

    I got out my phone and took an awkward bathroom selfie, trying to keep the perspective like that of the handles from the angle that I had taken the other photo. I brought the two images into photoshop and began outlining them with a sketch. In reality, the spigot was a bit shorter, so I decided to elongate it so that it lined up better with my open mouth.

    I decided on a vertical composition, slightly off center, focused on the bottom third of the frame. I felt like I needed some leading lines or something interesting going on in the background. Later I looked down at one of our African Violets and noticed how all the stems radiate out from the middle and I realized that this effect would be accentuated if I took a photo with a wide angle lens on my phone and that it would make an interesting background – to focus the attention towards my open mouth, which could be flooded with water at any minute.

    They say that art should make you feel something. When I showed this to my wife, she asked if I was ok, which tells me that she felt concerned and maybe a little confused. Would a normal person paint themselves with a faucet on their face? How does it make you feel? Is it cliché or is it a little weird? Let me know in the comments.

  • Recent sketches from the creek

    Recent sketches from the creek

    As I walked out onto the Campbell Creek trail, from the entrance near our house, there was a twittering cacophony of birds. The snow crunched beneath my feet, but the sound was no longer audible. I pointed my camera at the chokecherry bush, holding my breath for steadiness and to prevent moisture from my breath condensing on the now cold glass – the temperature was hovering somewhere just above zero degrees Fahrenheit.

    Bohemian Waxwing

    I took a growing number of photos. And the birds would scatter at every movement. But once I remained still for a bit, a brave one would return and slowly attract the others, and they would continue feeding on the gradually fermenting berries.

    A rift in the ice opened up as temperatures hovered above zero degrees F.

    I walked down to see ice crystals near the edge of the frozen creek. Ice thickness is unpredictable on rivers, but I felt somewhat comfortable as cold as it was. Near the edge, ice flowers bloomed on a sheet of translucent blue ice.

    American Dipper

    A little further upstream in another spot of open water, I spotted my dancing friend, the American Dipper, bobbing up and down between underwater dives for small fish and insect larvae. The ice-cold water forms beads, rolling off his downy feathers as his performance continues.

    Sunrise at the snowbank

    Further down the creek, I stopped to look at the sun and possibly generate a few micrograms of vitamin D that is in short supply during the dark winter months. The light glittered on the hoarfrost covered branches and on the soft white pillows of freshly fallen snow.

    The quiet, peaceful stillness of freshly fallen snow, insulating from city noise and birdcalls in trees overhead bring a sense of calm that’s rare in a busy life. Carrying a camera every day brings a lot of opportunity to capture images that inspire drawings. And in the evening before bed, I can quietly focus, practicing drawing from the photos I’ve taken myself. And I really like that.

  • Let’s draw a kingfisher

    Let’s draw a kingfisher

    Hi everyone. Here’s a quick sketch of a kingfisher that I saw a couple of weeks ago when it was about zero degrees Fahrenheit and most of the water was frozen. The cat tail pond, fed by warm runoff was open and active with ducks and this kingfisher. I saw him swoop down over the water several times to get minnows and other small fish.

    I spent about 10–15 minutes on this sketch, and the DaVinci Eye app made the whole process so much faster. It helped me lock in the proportions right away—something that would’ve taken much longer if I’d used a grid or other traditional techniques.

    The pencil I’m using is sharpened to a long point, which seems to help me see more clearly what I’m doing.

    I’d like to do a larger, more polished version of this when I have time.

    Let me know in the comments if you’d like to see that, and don’t forget to subscribe using the link below.

  • The waxwings are here

    The waxwings are here

    In midwinter, Anchorage’s Campbell Creek corridor becomes a lifeline for fruit‑eating birds. The trail entrance at Greenhill Way, where residential plantings meet native trees, often holds onto berries longer than the deeper forest sections. This overlap creates a seasonal buffet that draws in nomadic flocks like Bohemian Waxwings—sleek, masked songbirds known for their synchronized movements and soft trilling calls. When the fruit peaks in sugar and softness, waxwings descend in coordinated waves to feed, turning quiet branches into a flurry of motion.

    A European starling feeds alongside the Bohemian waxwings

    Occasionally, their feast attracts unexpected company. European Starlings, opportunistic and highly social, will slip into waxwing flocks when food is abundant. Though the two species differ in style—waxwings elegant and orderly, starlings bold and noisy—their shared love of berries creates moments of ecological harmony. These mixed flocks offer a glimpse into winter’s adaptive choreography, where abundance briefly bridges behavioral divides.

    If you enjoy these small windows into the life of Campbell Creek, consider subscribing to the blog so you don’t miss the next story from the trail.

  • Drawing weird things in Paint

    Drawing weird things in Paint

    I had a weird dream last night so I sketched it in pencil first, scanned it into Microsoft Paint and then added lines and colors, exporting the progress frame by frame into the animation above.

    The whole process didn’t take too long – in the morning I sketched while drinking my morning coffee and later on I spent about an hour and a half doing the animation.

    It’s kind of fun to do these!

  • Robins and Dippers

    Robins and Dippers

    I got some more photos of some robins and dippers today along the Campbell Creek trail. Unfortunately I lost my glasses while crawling in the snow by the riverbank – let me know if you find them.

  • A Severed Subsea Cable

    A Severed Subsea Cable

    We were at the beach earlier this fall at Pt. Woronzof in Anchorage and came across a rather thick cable sticking out of the water.

    Here we see a thick braided copper cable with a flexible polymer insulation layer and an outer jacket. My guess is that this cable carried power over to Fire Island at one point in time.

    Then kids started throwing rocks at the piece of cable sticking out of the water and I managed to capture one splash right at the base of the thing… and I imagined it like a worm coming out of the water… because I really like Dune.

    This inspired the following conceptual illustration that started out as a picture of my kid sitting on a rock.

    I decided to draw my kid on top of the severed cable instead and I thought that looked cool.

    Below is a short animation of my coloring process.