Well this will probably be (for me anyway) a relatively short post. Above is the current status of my third try with my sun design. Note that I have darkened the background significantly with an olive green. I went back to the lighter lime green in the ribbons while leaving the center and the purple alone. I like how the center design and lime green pops against the background, while the purple is still dark enough to also show up.
I have a bit of tweaking left to do, but I think this will be the final version
Below is a scan of an interim step, I had darken the ribbon green a bit and added an overlay of yellow to the gray.
It is OK, but obviously I wasn't satisfied with it. Not sure why I picked the olive green, but once I started adding it to the background I decided that was the way I wanted to go. Then I needed to lift out some of the brighter green and redo the lime green. Both greens show up darker in the scan than they are in real life.
I think I need to live with this for a bit, before deciding how I actually like it.
Below are a couple of pages from my Nature Journal:
These drawings are from my Monday visit to Daniel Webster and North River in Marshfield, MA. I drew the log in the pond at Daniel Webster for the third time. The water level in the pond was as high as I have ever seen it and I wanted to document it. There were about 4 or 5 painted turtles all sharing the same log and catching some sun.
Otherwise nothing particularly to note, no new birds (for me) but the mosquitoes are viscous. I am beginning to look forward to the first hard frost. Esp. as here in MA there is the concern about 2 diseases, West Nile and Triple E, Triple E is by far the worse of the two carried by mosquitoes, but West Nile can be no fun. I do use bug spray and thankfully haven't been bitten yet, but they do sometimes swarm a bit so are a concern.
The drawing of the trees is from North River, note the stone wall in the background. My problem with the leaf and the trees is that I am not sure what they are. The nearest I can come is some kind of Cherry. I think they are Choke Cherry trees, but only spring will really verify that for me. I know what the Choke Cherry flowers look like, even if I am not sure about the leaves or the bark. It is too late for the berries, which I just realized are very eatable, not just by birds and animals but by people.
When I was a kid living in Ill. we had a Choke Cherry tree in the front yard. I am positive that I was told then that the berries were poisonous. Though perhaps I was just told they were bitter and I made an assumption. During my research I recently learned that the Native Americans would crush the whole berry eating pit and flesh together, it was a valuable food crop for them.
The pages below are from my visit to Blue Hill Reservation on Tuesday Afternoon.
The top sketch is of the bird feeder area at the Trailside Museum location. The feeders were busy with Titmice, sparrows and some Chickadees. Over by the pond area the chipmunks were out in force collecting scattered duck food and maple seeds. I was able to make a few good photographs of the chipmunks, though they move so quickly I also made quite a few blurry ones.
The leaves are from trees around the parking lots. The maple is from a large Silver Maple located in the north lot, while the Black Locus leaf is from the lower lot along the roadside.
One last photo:
These pretty red leaves belong to a poison ivy plant. Needless to say I just photograph and don't touch these, though I am not sure how much of the chemical that most folks are allergic to is left in them when they are changing colors.
That is it for today. Comments are welcome.
No comments:
Post a Comment