EDM, Signs of Spring and finished sparrows.

Above is another of my fairly quick Everyday Matters sketches. This one was done for number 44: Draw an Animal, a pet, a zoo animal, or a stuffed one. I chose to draw another of my Beanie Babies. I really don't have that many of them, just 5, and this is the only one that isn't some kind of cat. This is Rainbow a chameleon, though mine is mostly blue with a bit of green.

I drew this little guy the other day when I didn't think I would have anything else finished for the blog, then I decided it was about time I finished my sparrows, so put off the blog update until today and finished them last night.

Above is the finished pen and ink Sparrows drawing, they are gathering food on stones placed in the ground. The sparrows are taken from photos I made last summer, but the drawing is a combination of two photographs not one. Drawing size is about 8.0 x 6.0 inches on smooth Bristol board with crow quill pen and India ink. I actually finished the drawing last night, but I had some left over pencil lines that needed erasing so needed to wait several hours before I did that. After all the work I put into this I didn't want to smear ink erasing pencil, been there, done that, and I wasn't happy.

It had been quite a while since I had done a drawing with crow quill. I use ink all the time, but mostly Micron or Technical pens and it isn't the same. The nib of the crow quilt is more flexible, giving a more varied line, though I used a very fine nib for this, also I have to keep dipping the pen in the ink which takes getting used to.

I am fairly pleased with how this came out. I won't be adding color to this, I feel it would only distract from the ink work.

I actually managed an outing this week to one of the State Parks. We had beautiful weather on Wed., sunny, temp in the upper 50's or low 60's so I took advantage and went to visit Borderland State Park in Easton, MA. I was rewarded by being able to see and photograph some snowdrops that had sprung up in the old garden area by the House. These are the first real flowers I have seen so far this year, even with all warmish weather we have had.

The image on the top of the page is one of the snowdrops. The honey bees were out in force, something that surprised me, since there can't be a lot of flowers blooming at this point. The hive they are from must be in the neighborhood, though I don't think there is one on the Park grounds, unless they are wild.

The bottom image is of a small wooden bridge that crosses the pond outlet stream. We had some rain last week so the ponds are all high and the stream is flowing well. My reference photograph had a couple of people on the bridge, but when I came to do the drawing I decided to leave them out. Too much detail for so small a drawing.

Above is one of my photographs of the snowdrops, you can see a bee on one of the flowers toward the top. Usually honey bees don't pay much attention to me when I am photographing even if I get up close, these guys didn't seem very happy with me on Wed. so I didn't make as many photos as I wanted to. I didn't want to push my luck with them, and end up stung. Competition for the nectar seemed to be pretty stiff among them, so I have to wonder if they were from different hives.

That is it for today, I should be back on track posting my next update next Tuesday. In the meantime comments are always welcome.