Easter Flowers and other

Last Sunday I had Easter dinner with a friend and her family. Food and wine were excellent, company was good and I believe a good time was had by all. My friend had been gifted with a couple of potted flowers, the above an Easter Lily arrived while I was there brought by another friend.  I spent a little time sketching it first in pencil and then adding ink while her family conversed around me. I like to keep my hands occupied.

When I arrived these tulips were sitting on a table in the living room. At another point during the afternoon I sat on the couch in front of them and did this graphite sketch. The tulips were yellow so I tried to not add too much shading.

I love drawing Easter flowers, their shapes are relatively simple with not a lot of complex petals, and in the case of tulips also have large leaves which make relatively simple shapes. Lily leaves are a bit trickier, but both drawings were fun and fairly quick to do.

Hope that everyone reading had good holidays this past weekend, Easter, Passover or even just a good weekend with family and friends.

Otherwise I haven't been drawing a lot. I have been doing more reading, and when not reading I am trying to get out and about to various parks and nature reserves to check on their status, and oh yes lots of visits to library. Still I have been a bit hampered with my park visits since snow is still covering paths and so far there hasn't been much in the way of signs of spring. Oh, well I just have to have patience it will come, I know it will.

The above is my pen "exercise" for this week, I have been trying to think of a title for this, how about "Watching educational videos". Well the shape of the watchers did turn out to be a bit suggestive. It wasn't my intent when I started this, it just sort of happened, honest. At least that is my story and I am sticking with it. I did have fun drawing this though.

The above photo was photographed in my local park, standing water in the foreground and one of the parks lakes in the distance. Ice is almost totally gone from the lake, the mallards and geese are again able to feed. I spotted a couple pair of Merganser ducks diving for their dinners the other day, too far into the lake for me to photograph, and almost too far for me to ID them even with my field glasses. But with their distinctive heads and the males white fronts they are unmistakable. I was happy to see something other than the usual mallards in my local park. I have been over to Daniel Webster, but the water level in the pan is very high and not much was taking advantage of it. I did also see some song sparrows so at least the birds know that Spring is coming. Should see more in a couple of weeks.

Short post today, per usual comments are welcome.