Fall Has Arrived

Here north of the equator fall has officially arrived with the Autumnal Equinox yesterday. So today is officially the first day of fall. From now until December not only will the dark of night be longer than the period of daylight, but it will be getting longer each night. I fear it will feel like a long six months before the Spring Equinox arrives.

Above is the finished pen and ink drawing of the Cape Cod Canal and the Sagamore Bridge. I posted an in-process image of this last week, and am happy to say it is now done. Not sure how I feel about it. I think it works, but might have been a better drawing if I had placed a boat in the canal to add some interest, or maybe a seagull flying above the canal. Some times I focus too much on the overall subject and not enough on the details. At the time I felt there were enough challenges to rendering this subject and didn't even think about it lacking a focal point other than the bridge.

I used an old fashioned dip pen for this piece. Now that I have finished it I need to find a new subject to use for this type of ink work. Working with the dip pen for this drawing I have rediscovered how much I enjoy using it.

Still catching up with my nature journal, though I am beginning to see the daylight on this one.

I have two pages to share again today. The image above is from a visit to Daniel Webster, MA Audubon Sanctuary in Marshfield, MA on September 3, 2012. Saw quite a few birds, from hawks to various ducks, mallards, blue wing teal, wood ducks, but wasn't able to make any good photographs of them. So my images in the journal are fairly mundane. Top image is my usual tree stump, water level in the Panne was down a bit from the previous week. The other image is of a log bench on one of the boardwalks. It has a fern growing out of the side which has so far survived our dry summer. I wouldn't say it is thriving, but it is alive.

Later that week I made a visit to Borderland State Park over in Easton. I am happy to say I found and picked up quite a few acorns. After the almost total lack of acorns last year this year, while not a banner year, is at least proving to have a noticeable crop.

The journal page for that visit documents several of the ones I found. I hadn't realized prior to my acorn hunting that there was one more common variety of oak that I should have added to my list. I knew about White Oaks, Black Oaks, Scarlet Oaks, Northern Red Oaks, but the Pin Oak was a new one for me. On this visit I didn't identify any particular leaves with the acorn so will have to keep my eyes open when I visit other sanctuaries.

My other image is of a clump of mushrooms growing by the side of the path. It looked to me that they were growing out of some horse droppings. There are a quite a few horseback riders who ride the main paths at Borderland. It must be a lovely way to spend a few hours as the park has some lovely views.

The figure drawing above I actually drew last Monday, meaning that I am now caught up with my figure images. Not totally pleased with this image, seems I am alternating on weeks, though this isn't quite a bad as the drawing from a couple of weeks ago.

Scott was playing with lighting. This week the light was directly over the model. My issue this week was even slight position changes would cause major changes in how the shadows fell. making it hard to get a good drawing of her face. I don't love the pose either. Maybe if I had moved to a slightly different position. I would have enjoyed it a bit more and created a more successful drawing. Have to think about that during my next session.

The above photograph is from Borderland State Park, and shows one of the various bridges that are located in the park. Most of them are strictly for walkers. You can see that some of the trees are just starting to change colors. I am hoping that we get a hard frost soon so that we have better color this fall than we did last year. Weather last fall was just too warm, in a way it was nice but the warm weather made for an odd winter.

The above photo shows some blooming fall asters. These are small white asters that bloom along the edges of paths and roadsides.