Some Pencil Play

Sometimes I like to take my sketchbook, start drawing a doodle (more or less) and see what happens. Usually they don't go anywhere but sometimes I develop them into something that I like and want to explore further. The above pencil drawing is one of those. Using tracing paper I transferred the major shapes to a piece of cream Stonehenge paper. The images felt like they should be in browns so pulling almost all of my brown colored pencils out of their slots I worked on the drawing. I added a couple of blue greens and yellows to the mix to add variety to the colors.

Below is the resulting drawing.

I rather like it, though I am finding myself thinking about what could be added or changed. What I really like is the color combination of the browns with the sort of turquoise blues. In reality I am not going to add more background, I think it would only be distracting to the already complex shapes. It doesn't have a name just yet so if anyone has any suggestions please leave a comment.

Below are my Nature Journal pages from Monday's visit to Daniel Webster.

The top drawing is my usual tree stump, I think it may have shifted a bit more in the water. The water level seems to have gone down a bit from last week, but the way this stump is shifting around it is a bit hard to tell.  Anyway it is still my best indicator of water levels so I will continue to draw it.

This week there were four turtles hauled out on the trunk enjoying the sun. Each week when I arrive at the viewing blind I am wondering if this will be the week that I no longer see them, but each week, so far, they are still out and about. I have to wonder just how much longer they can stay active.

The center section is of some tansy flowers and leaf. Because of our warm weather and lack of a really hard frost (despite snow on a couple of occasions) the tansy is still blooming at Daniel Webster. I didn't draw the leaf very well, but the flower heads are rendered fairly accurately.

The last drawing is of a robin sitting in some sort of cherry tree that still has a lot of berries. Actually there were 4 robins in this tree, all dining on the fruit. They let me get fairly close with the camera before flying off. I am sure that as soon as I left the area they all came back to resume their interrupted meal. I expect the tree will be picked clean on my next visit.

Below are a couple of photographs from my visit to the Sanctuary.

A view of one of the bends in the river with the edge of a stand of Red Maples. It was a beautiful day Monday, though really too warm for this time of year, but I will take what I can get. You can see that these trees have totally lost their leaves so at least the next snow fall shouldn't take down any trees.

I photographed this dragonfly on the railing of one of the bridges that span the river. I didn't really expect to see it but there is it. This week I didn't hear any crickets in the sanctuary. I had been hearing them in the grasses near the river but this week they were silent.

That is it for today. Comments are always appreciated.