Friday, June 17, 2011

Clematis Finished


The clematis colored pencil drawing is done. Well, as done as I am going to make it. I am sure I could have done more fussing with it and even improved on what I did. But as far as I was concerned it was time for it to be done. I don't think I am cut out to do photo-realistic drawings. The above is about as close as I want to come I think. Not bad but I have seen much better works shown in the Colored Pencil Forum at WetCanvas.

Even at the size I was working (drawing area 4.5 inches square) this drawing took hours to finish, and I wasn't even attempting a realistic background. In the end I did use a black colored pencil to help darken some areas and to add an edge to the petals.  It like most of my recent drawings/paintings was done on Hot Press Watercolor paper, the 140lb weight.

I have started another pen and ink work that I will hopefully have done by the next blog posting. In the meantime we finally had a sunny day and I took advantage of it to drive out to Stony Brook, one of the MA Audubon sites. Below are a couple of photographs I made that day. More photographs are on my Facebook Fan page in the Summer Photograph album, and I will probably be adding them to my flickr albums in the next few days.


I have no clue what the insect above is. It flies and sort of looks like a butterfly, but the wings were a bit strange, I don't think it shows in the photograph but it was like it had double wings. One set is down with the round lobes and the 2nd set is more vertical, you can sort of see an edge along the left side of the body. And note how fuzzy the body looks. If anyone knows what it is please leave me a comment. It wasn't very big, maybe an inch across.



The photograph above is of what probably was the mill pond at Stony Brook back in the day. This photo is about as close as I am going to get to making a photograph of a Great Blue Heron without a telephoto lens. That fuzzy gray area in the center left is a Great Blue flying across the pond. When I approached one edge of the pond he took flight and I attempted the photograph. Someday maybe I will be able to afford a lens, then I will actually be able to photograph birds, in the meantime small blurry images are where I am at. Still it was fun to see him/it, I don't know if they have a nest here or just look for food but they can often be sighted at the edges of one of the ponds.

Enough for today. Comments and questions are always welcome, and I would really love to know what that insect is.

2 comments:

  1. The clematis drawing is absolutely wonderful. As to the insect - it looks like a moth, but what kind I don't know. Maybe you'll have luck with an online identification

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  2. Connie, thanks for the comment regarding the clematis, I found my mystery insect, it is a member of the Skipper family, Hylephila phyleus, http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/species/Hylephila-phyleus mine doesn't seem as orange as the ones they show, but with butterflies there can be variation.

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