November 1st is All Saints Day, it is also the first day of the Festival of the Day of the Dead. Did you know that you can search on a date and find a listing in Wikipedia that will give you notable events, Births, Deaths for that day? Sometimes it is useful to be able to find such information but otherwise I imagine you could get overloaded with that amount of trivia.
I don't have a new drawing for today, and haven't managed to get any further with my bird. Well I am thinking about adding a second bird and have printed some reference photos but that is about it.
The above photo was made Sunday afternoon at the Blue Hills Reservation. While much of the East Coast and even Central and Western MA got buried in snow Saturday night we here on the south shore only received a couple of inches. It is mostly gone now, though there is some left in shaded areas. The poor central portion of MA is still dealing with it and the aftermath of down trees and downed power lines. They certainly have not had a good year weather wise. Tornado's, Hurricanes, floods and now snow, have all caused major damage to that region of the State. I am thankful to be living in a quieter portion.
I do have a couple of Nature Journal pages to share:
The above page was done last Tuesday on a visit to Massasoit State Park in East Taunton. First image is another maple leaf. This one I believe is from a Sugar Maple. The tree might be a Norway maple (the leaves look similar) but Norway's leaves turn yellow in the fall and this one was more red/orange which is typical of a Sugar Maple. It was a young tree so I couldn't go by the bark.
Next images are related to the ornamental Cherry trees that are planted by the road at the edge of Lake Rico. These poor trees have gotten confused as to the time of year and actually have some blossoms on them along with their fall berries. So I drew both the berries and the flowers. So strange to see an almost leafless tree with small bits of green and white scattered through the branches
The next page is from a visit to Borderland State Park, Easton, MA., October 28th.
The ferns are beginning to turn first yellow then brown. The top drawing is of a fern frond that had turned brown, curling up into just these bits before they crumble back into the soil. Not sure why it attracted my attention, but it did and I thought it would make for an interesting sketch.
The next image is of an Ash leaf. I am not sure the variety of ash as I found the yellowed leaf on one of the paths and wasn't able to identify the tree it came from. Without knowing what the bark looks like it is a bit hard to truly identify the tree.
Last image is of 2 mallard ducks on one of the ponds feeding on something at the bottom of the pond. I call this sketch Bottoms Up as that is all you can see of the 2 birds. Drawn from one of my photographs. I saw more ducks visiting the ponds this past week then I have on other visits.
Below is my figure drawing from last night.
We didn't have a large turn out. One regular was probably hanging or prepping to hang his pictures for a solo show that starts Friday at a local Art Association Gallery in Scituate, MA. Everyone else was probably handing out candy. I don't get trick or treaters so had no reason to stay at home. I was much happier being out and drawing.
I am much happier with this weeks efforts. Not sure about the feet, but that isn't unusual, otherwise I am fairly pleased.
Next a couple of photos from my Park visits.
Above is the photo I used as reference for the drawing on my Massasoit State Park visit pages. The only hint that this isn't a spring photo is the reddish brown blur in the background from some of the fall foliage. Otherwise you are going to have to take my work for it that I really did make this photo last week.
A spillway at Borderland State park leading from one of the upper ponds to the lower ones. We have had so much rain that water is spilling over the entire length of the spillway. When I first visited the park only a little water was flowing over one end. You can see that there isn't a lot of color, mostly brown. Weather has finally turned cold, but too late for this fall.
That is it for today. Lots of photos and only a few drawings. Hopefully the next post will have more drawings, in the meantime comments are welcome.
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