Mushrooms Finished along with the usual stuff

Well I worked on this over the weekend and got it to the point where I am calling it done. I expect I could have done more work on the front left, but decided since I wasn't going for total photo realism that I didn't need to work it much further. I laid in enough color/pencil that it looks like wood. Besides, I will be honest and admit that I was getting tired of the piece, not to mention that I didn't want to overwork it. I am mostly pleased with how this came out. The dark values are good and really make the light mushrooms pop.

FYI I did not use any black pencil on this. The darks are several dark browns, a dark grey, and indigo. My Illustration instructor a couple of years ago advised us to not use black unless we absolutely had to. It is a dead color that absorbs all light, if you get a dark using combinations of others colors, your paintings will have more life.

Below is a Journal page from a visit I made to an ocean side State Park last week.

This was a new park for me, Ellisville Harbor in Plymouth, MA. It is on the shoreline with an estuary, marsh, beach, and barrier dunes along with a narrow strip of woods. I spent most of my time walking the the beach, picking up a couple of rocks and shell fragments. The rocks and shells I used for the drawings on the top and middle of the page. The rocks were totally smooth, worn that way by the action of the waves and sand on them. Both are probably quartz, the larger more milky and the smaller round one more translucent.

Both shells were broken a bit, and I am not sure my ink drawings do them justice.

The bottom sketch is of two gulls sitting on a rock surrounded by seaweed. The tide had been almost all the way out when I arrived, but it had already turned and was coming back in during my visit. The rock they were standing on was covered with seaweed and at high tide was certainly underwater. Not sure the species of gull, they have black legs and I think black beaks, though their backs are dark grey. Maybe a Laughing Gull in non-breeding plumage.

Below is my figure drawing from last night.

All I can say is oops, I was not in good form last night. I am not pleased with her face, or her right arm/hand. Good thing I get to try again next week. My excuse is that we had more artists this week, and I was distracted by conversations.

Below are a couple photographs from my visit to Ellisville Harbor:

The view is looking out over the tidal mud flats in the estuary, with brown grasses and some trees on the barrier beach in the middle. The land in the distance is Cape Cod, just across a narrow bit of Cape Cod Bay. The white tower toward the right belongs to a power plant on the Cape.

Not sure just what this is, but I thought it made an interesting photograph. Since the tide was almost totally out I was able to photograph rocks with some attached life forms. This is actually quite small only about an inch across.

That is it for today. Per usual comments are appreciated.