Butterflies, Damselflies, and Goldenrod

Painted Lady Butterfly

It has been too long since my last blog update. Oops though it isn't entirely my fault, I have been sick, very sick, but am now getting better and after about 4 weeks out of the field I have actually been able to get out with the camera. So today's post are some of my more recent photographs. This update was supposed to be about mushrooms, but my research just isn't happening as quickly as I would like so I thought I would post these instead.

These first two photographs are butterflies that are visitors to MA. They can't overwinter here (too cold) so they usually show up later in the summer, some years they never show up in large numbers. This year for some reason Monarchs arrived early and the Painted Lady above has also been seen in larger than usual numbers along with the Common Buckeye which is usually anything but common.

Monarch Butterfly

I photographed both butterflies in my local city park enjoying the Joe-pye weed. Made for a nice first outing after weeks off my feet.

These next two photos are both Damselflies. Damselfies are Odonate's as are Dragonflies. The difference between Damselflies and Dragonflies is partly size, Damsels are usually smaller, but also they can fold their wings. Dragonfly wings are always open, sometimes angled forward or backward but they can't fold neatly along the back. 

The blue Damsel above is a Skimming Bluet. Both Damsels were photographed at Ames Nowell State Park, Abington, MA. Aug. 25th.

This orange beauty above is an Orange Bluet. I have been wanting to photograph one of these for a while so was happy to see them this week.

It is August so it is time for the Goldenrods to start to bloom. There are many varieties, these two photographs represent just 2 of them, and sorry I can't be more exact than that today.  I was going to include a photo of ragweed in flower, but the photo isn't as sharp as I prefer so am leaving it out. But ragweed is also in bloom and is usually the real cause of hay-fever. Goldenrod pollen is really too heavy to float in the air and be breathed in. Ragweed flowers, on the other hand, are small and green so most people don't even notice that the plant is in bloom, so they blame the showy goldenrod that is so conspicuous.

Note that the top photo shows a stalked goldenrod, these plants are often quite tall and showy, the second image above is a flat topped goldenrod, with more bushy growth characteristics. The leaves are also thinner than those on the top image.

Last image today is a Great Blue Heron waiting for dinner at the upper pond/lake in my local park here in Brockton. It stayed motionless while I made my photographs waiting for a fish or frog to swim too close. Hope it found dinner sooner rather than later.

That is it for today, per usual comments are welcome.

More Sketches, Titmouse and Stuff

 The reference for the Tufted Titmouse above was another of my more recent bird photographs. I suppose I should have darkened the background a bit more, but the reference isn't that high contrast and I wanted to keep the same soft feeling for this drawing. Done with 2H, HB and B grade pencils it wouldn't have been easy to go a lot darker in any case. Just trying to get my drawing chops back up to par. Not totally displeased with this, it does look like a Titmouse.

 I know the circles are seriously out of shape, and the "leaf" motifs aren't all the same size, nor are the center segments. The reason is that I did this drawing entirely by hand, usually when I am doing circles I pull out my campuses and use them (it can bother me if circles are too wonky) but I was just exploring designs so decided not to do that. After I finished the pencil drawing I inked the whole thing using a dip pen and one of my new crow quill nibs with India Ink. The paper in the sketchbook I was using seemed to spread the ink a bit so the lines aren't as fine as they should be. After I finished inking (and let it dry overnight) I erased out the pencil lines.

Design is based on some architectural motifs that I photographed on Chicago buildings over Christmas. I am working on another piece the same shape and wanted to play a bit with designs, and how to shade the background for the outer ring. Not sure how I feel about this, it seems to cry out for color, but I also like the black and white version.

 Managed only one page this week for the WetCanvas Scavenger Hunt. Part of my excuse is that a lot of the prompts called for outside (meaning outdoors) images and our weather here in MA just hasn't been sitting outside weather (too cold, too wet, rain and snow). Hopefully I will do better next week. Done in the sketchbook I seemed to have dedicated to this with a .1 Copic Multiliner pen. Again these were drawn directly in ink, no pencil underdrawings. The screwdriver isn't too bad, considering.

From a walk last week in one of the Blue Hills Reservation sections this is a photo of lichen covered boulders, left by the glaciers at the top of a hill that goes down to Ponkapoag Pond. Note the smaller rock balanced above the gap between two others. MA not only has a foundation of granite but it also has a great many rocks and boulders left loose on the surface by retreating glaciers. That is one reason why we have so many stone walls, they had to get the rocks out of the fields to plow them, so why not build something. Oddly enough early settlers mostly didn't use stone for their houses, they preferred wood or brick for those.

A photograph from Friday of snow left by Thursday's all day snow storm, a small local park. I think we only got about 8 inches but other areas of the state got several inches more. Yesterday (Saturday) we had another couple of inches of snow then clouds for the rest of the day. Since there was no sun I didn't take the camera out. Today we again have clouds only today we are getting some rain which is expected to turn to snow overnight then we are scheduled for another storm tomorrow. ACK one winters quota of snow storms in about 5 days. It is more fun when they are spread out over several weeks.

That is it for today, per usual comments are welcome.

Happy New Year 2017

I want to wish everyone a Happy, Healthy, 2017. May some of your wishes/dreams come true this coming year.

I spent about 2 weeks in Chicago visiting my sister and her family, which is why the blog hasn't been updated. I take the train from Boston to Chicago (and back home), for me it is a straight run, though we do stop in Albany, NY to link up with the train coming up from NYC. It takes about 22/23 hours but I have room for my feet/legs, I can sleep and get up and walk around so I find this method of travel not at all bad. It may take longer than flying but I don't have to go through security, I don't have to pay to have my bag checked, I get a discount for being a senior and the tickets are less to begin with. I also don't have to put my car in long term parking someplace, so that is another expense I don't have. All in all I am happier taking the train than flying. Flying is no fun any more, and I don't miss it.

Enough about my personal life. Over the holidays I tried to get back into the groove of making some art. My efforts are taking too long, I don't seem to have the concentration to just sit and work for hours on something, but I am doing some art.

Above is a bookmark, about 2 x 6 inches on cold press watercolor paper. I painted the background with watercolors before heading to Chicago and I took some reference photos with me to have something to work on. The bird is a tufted titmouse at a bird feeder. I photographed this little one with the new camera so the photo I was working from was sharp with lots of detail.

I used the copic multiliners to ink this little guy, and I am fairly pleased with the results. Esp. as it has been so long since I did any drawing other than doodles.

Also done over my Christmas holiday. My sister gave me some Hunts crow quill nibs for Christmas, well I did ask for them, and the above piece was me playing with the new nib and India Ink. Again this is done on cold press watercolor paper that had been pre-painted. Just various designs and textures. Still I think it is kind of fun and it was a good way to start getting my hand back into the groove of using dip pens before moving on to a more challenging piece.

A slight digression here, my sister had to order my nibs on-line, no brick and mortar art store seems to carry Hunt Nibs, they only seem to have Speedball or some Japanese Manga nibs. The Japanese nibs are good, better than the Speedball nibs but not quite as fine and I was looking for, hence the request for the Hunts nibs. I have also discovered that my local art supply store no longer carries a brand name India Ink, well, they have Speedball ink, but I don't consider Speedball inks to be artist quality. I am planning a trip into Boston soon and hope that Blicks still carries a good quality India Ink. The store owner was telling me that some stocks just are no longer available for purchase here in the US, like Hunts nibs. All I can say is bother, how are students supposed to learn if they can't purchase quality supplies. Thank heaven for the Internet, at least there are still a few suppliers that carry those products.

Another bookmark, again cold press watercolor paper pre-painted, this one was also done with my copic multiliners. Just felt like doing stars. It didn't turn out quite the way I envisioned it but it will have to do.

I also spent time working on a pencil drawing for my colored pencil series, and I also worked a bit on a couple of the colored pencil pieces I started last year. I do hope to finish the series this year, but we will see.

Thought I would share a few photographs. Above is the Chicago skyline from the Arboretum in Lincoln Park which is just outside the zoo. The photo is looking over the lawns toward the zoo and the city.

Above is Lake Michigan with a front moving in. It was actually a warm front, unlike the typical Chicago Christmas weather we had a lot of warmish days this year. Warmish is of course relative, but for Chicago in late December anything above freezing during the day is warm. After I left a cold front came through and put them back into the freezer.

We had about 8 inches of snow over this past weekend, the above photo was made in my local park, showing the frozen pond and snow covered trees. I just like the lighting in this photo.

If you want to see more photos from my Chicago trip visit my facebook page, link at the bottom of the page.

That is it for today, I won't say I have made a resolution to do more postings this year, but it is my intention. In the meantime comments are always welcome.

Flowers, Pots, more Still Life's

Just noticed that all of  my images today are various forms of pen and ink work. These first two are from the WetCanvas Pen and Ink forum's monthly project photos. The African Daisy's above are from a January selection and the pots below are from a photograph posted last fall.

Both were done with my technical pens, 3 different sizes for the daisy's (quicker to stipple the background using a larger tip). Daisy's are on Stonehenge paper and done with mostly stipple. The pots were just done in my notebook as a quick study. I was actually a bit surprise by how well the pots came out as I didn't do any preliminary pencil work on this drawing, guess all the drawings I have been doing are paying off. I admit that I did do some pencil work for the daisy's.

The next 2 images are drawings of objects in my Apt.

This first pen sketch is from the other day and shows one of my cups holding various art tools, pencils, brushes, and pens. When I am working on a colored pencil drawing I use this cup to keep the pencils selected for the drawing separate from the hoard. Makes it easier to keep track of the actual colors I am using to have them at hand. I have also started to keep my clutch pencils in this holder.

This is really a very small vase, only about 4 inches high. I started out drawing it as a pencil drawing and decided to add ink. The objects stuck into the vase are mostly dried berries, and thinking about I don't think I have them sized correctly.  May try this subject again on another day.

A photograph from a walk last week. It was made after our most recent snow fall, which really didn't amount to all that much (only about 6 inches). There is a stream that semi winds through the center of town and now has a couple of parks adjacent to it. Between the snow and the rain we have been having since Christmas the stream is running pretty high.

That is it for today, per usual comments are welcome.

Sunflowers, shoes and pears

Above is a small watercolor that I just finished. It is from a photograph of Jerusalem Artichoke flowers I made a couple of years ago at Massasoit State Park in E. Taunton, MA. The Jerusalem Artichoke (one of its many common names) is a native North American sun flower. The roots were eaten by Native Americans. The plants bloom in September with lots of tall stems and showy yellow flowers. 

Anyway I did the ink drawing of the sunflowers while I was on vacation in Chicago over Christmas but waited until I got home to work on the watercolor portion. I find it slow going to paint flowers, these took more than one session with paints and brush to reach a point where I felt they were done. The painting is small, post card size (4 x 6 inches) on heavy (120lb) watercolor paper done with my Travel sized Winsor Newton watercolor box.  

I have mixed feelings about using watercolor, I like the results when I can get the look I want, but don't really like the process. But maybe that is just my lack of skill. My technique is to use thin layers of color to build up to the final results. Not for me the one stroke of the brush and calling it done type of painting. I admire those who can paint that way, but it doesn't seem to work for me. 

These next two images are me working on my still life's. This time with shoes. The one above was done with Derwent Graphtint pencils. They seem to be a cross between watercolor and graphite pencils. I have about a dozen of these in various tones that were a Christmas present a couple of years ago. Anyway, I draw with the pencils first then apply water with a damp brush and watch what happens.

A couple of years ago if someone had told me I would be drawing shoes again I think I would have thrown something at them. When I was taking classes at the Community College it seemed like every instructor wanted us to draw shoes, so I drew shoes, and more shoes and then again more shoes until I was totally sick of shoes. Now here I am a few years later finally willing to tackle the subject/object again. They are after all complex shapes and readily available, who knew.

Same shoes but a different day and slightly different pose, this drawing was done directly with ink using one of my technical pens.

This time the subject was pears, I actually used the same pear just different positions for these drawings, the one above was done with the Graphtinit pencils and water. Because these are being done on cheap sketchbook paper you can see where the paper has wrinkled from the water, with the scan it gives an interesting visual effect.

The pears above were first drawn with pen and ink then scanned into Photoshop where I added the colors and grey shading. Colors aren't totally realistic as this was a Bosc pear, but realism wasn't really my goal I just wanted to play and see what I could come up with. There are about 4 different colors on each pear, does give them a bit more depth then I would see otherwise.

Above is another photograph from my walk the other day. I need to get out with the camera today as we now have about 6 inches of cold snow on the ground. If I get back over to this park I may take another photograph of this piece of art work. Brockton doesn't have a lot of municipal artwork but there is some scattered here and there.

That is it for today, per usual comments are welcome. Hope anyone reading this who is in the Northern hemisphere is staying warm this cold winter.

Collage and Figure Drawings

It had been a long while since I had checked into the Sketchbook Challenge blog to see what was happening there. I sort of stopped reading when the themes got too cutesy for me. I am not really into sketchbooks the way they are urging people to use them. From what I remembered they were pushing folks to create sketchbooks sort of like scrapbooks but with more personally created art/drawings.

Not my thing really, I did make a scrapbook way back when I was a teenager and continued it for a while when I was in college but eventually work got in the way and I outgrew that phase of my life. My sketchbooks are either practice drawings or doodles that may or may not become something else. Most are not meant for anyone other than myself to see. And even those meant for other to see are basically just drawings, which is my preferred artistic voice.

Anyway checking out the blog I found the theme for this month is Collage. Not my favorite kind of art work, either to create to or to look at. However I happened to have 4 cards with Japanese prints that I had been saving with the idea of one day using them in a collage. Also I had purchased some specialty wrapping paper for that purpose. Since the card images represented the four seasons I had my theme ready made.

Above are a couple of photographs showing my early stages of developing the collage. Top image is of my collected materials before I started to work . Obviously some work had already been done, separating the Japanese prints from the card stock (they were glued along one edge and were separated easily by using water to soften the card stock), selecting the colors of paper, printing out the season names and kanji characters.

Next step was to mostly cover a 90lb 11x15 in sheet of watercolor paper with various bits of my wrapping paper. I tore the wrapping paper not wanting shapes with finished (cut) edges. I selected a color for each season, blue - spring, red - summer, yellow - autumn and white for winter. I also started cutting the kanji characters and season names out of the paper they were printed on. Not wanting a lot of extra white I mostly cut around letters leaving just a bit of white paper showing.

Top photograph above show how I was arranging the cut out words and characters with the rectangular prints. Looked OK but I felt that something was missing. Lines, I though some black lines might help to link all the areas together. First impulse was to add them around the areas where the prints were going to be, but realized it would probably be better to just draw the lines on the background so that is what I did, you can see the background with lines in the bottom photograph above. I used a Japanese style brush and India ink for the lines.

Almost there, I re-positioned all of my objects but still felt there was too much open space. What to use, I thought why not some seasonal poetry. I pulled a book I have off the shelf (Little Pictures of Japan, a Book House for Children publication) and selected 4 poems that were applicable and short. Next step was to print the poems out, cut out the lines and arrange them on my collage. One of my last steps prior to gluing it all down was to use my watercolor pencils to tone the white paper for three of the seasonal names and characters, blue - spring, red - summer, yellow - autumn.

Everything was then glued down, the paper was a bit warped so I brushed clean water onto the back of the paper and stuck the whole deal under some books. When it dries I will apply some acrylic matte media to the surface to protect everything. Note that the printer I use is an Epson Ink Jet with permanent inks that won't run if they get wet.

Above are some selected figure drawings from last weeks short pose session. Top grouping were 2 minute poses, yes I know the one looks pretty sketchy, that is because I started over when the first start wasn't working out. I like the energy in this sketch even if it isn't very finished.

The middle grouping shows one minute poses. One of the other artists who attends the sessions is taking a class in downtown Boston and had homework to draw 100 gesture drawings of people. Scott though he would help her out so had our model do one minute poses for about 20-30 minutes. They are work, but fun, not sure I want to do this all the time but it was a good change.

Bottom section of drawings shows some 5 minute and some 10 minute poses.

In closing another photograph made in my local community. This tree as I recall is still alive even though it seems covered in Ivy. I will have to go back either in the spring or summer and make another photo of it . If we get more snow it might also be fun to make a photo of it snow covered. Hmm will just have to wait and see on that one.

That is it for today. Time to get back to my still life's and other drawings.

Flowers, a Figure and Snow

Where does the time go, this week it has totally gotten away from me. No excuse for not updating the blog, I actually have been busy working on various projects so have images to post but somehow didn't manage to make the time to actually scan images or post an update. Oh well, means I have works for my next post which should happen in a more timely manner.

Before I forget Happy Valentines Day to all, though I have to admit it is one of those Holidays that I usually ignore.

Anyway the above colored pencil drawing (with some ink) was finished earlier this week. The images started out as a doodle that I rather liked so I scanned it into the computer, enlarged it in Photoshop and reprinted it at the larger size. Then using tracing paper I transferred it to Stonehenge paper, inked in outlines and colored. Sometimes I feel like I am still working in coloring books though colored pencils allow for much more finesse than crayons do. Still I rather like the look of the finished work so probably will continue to work this way.

Needless to say these aren't real plants/flowers, though the fern leaves are fairly realistic. The leaf variegation was inspired by seeing some spotted wintergreen on one of my fairly recent walks in some woods.

Above is last weeks figure drawing. I actually made it to a Monday night long pose session. Not totally happy with this, but not sure what I would want to change. I think the model found the pose more of a challenge than she initially though it would be and had a certain amount of difficultly maintaining it, which made it a bit hard to draw. When a model shifts a pose it shifts the shadows which can make it very tricky to get the drawing finished the way I would prefer.

Shifting shadows are one of the major challenges of painting or drawing plein air landscapes, when doing those the idea is to lay in the major outlines including shadows in the first 15 to 20 minutes, and then work on details. Not quite so easy to do with a figure drawing. But then the challenge is why we keep doing it, or at least I tell myself that.

One week ago here in the Northeast everyone was preparing for a blizzard. The storm started Friday morning and stopped Saturday afternoon. I tried to document some of the storm in photographs, though I have more start of storm images than I have after storm images. Still I thought I would share some of the ones that I liked.

Above is a road near where I live, the photograph was made Friday afternoon when it had been snowing for a couple of hours but still wasn't much in the way of accumulations. The road is fairly empty because our Governor had declared a driving ban starting just prior to when I made this photograph. People grumbled, but at least we didn't have hundreds of cars stuck on major highways here in MA like they did in CT and NY, and like we did back during the blizzard of '78. BTW thought the photograph looks like it is just black and white it isn't, the snow just seemed to wash all the color out of the environment.

The above photograph was made out one of my windows Saturday afternoon after it had stopped snowing. It shows the snow piled up on the porch railings. I would guess it was about 14 inches of snow. Course it didn't actually stay there long. By Sunday afternoon it had fallen or melted off the railings.

The above photograph was made Sunday afternoon after the snow, and shows a bench in the park area around our city hall. I am not sure how much snow we actually received in my area, but from this image I would guess at least 18 inches, not as much as many areas, but still quite a bit. Some walkways had been cleaned out, but obviously not around this bench. The little lumps of snow are bits that had fallen off of tree branches in this park area. The initial snow fall was very sticky and stuck to trees, sides of buildings and phone/power lines, the bright sun on Sunday caused it to fall away.

That is it for today, per usual comments are welcome.

ATC and More Cookbook Illustrations

Above is another ATC that I have been working on. I wanted to play with designs that looked more like a machine than what I normally do. Still I can't seem to stay away from curves and more organic looking forms. I started with my technical pen, drawing the lines and dark areas then added color using my watercolor pencils and a couple of the Inktense pencils. Colors with activated with a wet brush. 

Done strictly for fun. 

I am still puttering away on my ideas for the cookbook Illustrations. When drawing the above page I was thinking that my sketches so far have been way too complex. I really don't think I need elaborate drawings for these pages, in fact simpler is probably better. So above are 3 quick sketches that I drew from memory. The knife and fork are slight wonky, but that is semi deliberate, I am also trying to get away from my urge to make totally realistic drawings. While that sounds easy to do, for me it isn't. I imagine that the early modernists also had to work to distort and simplify their images after being trained to draw realism.

Just for fun I cropped out the plate with the knife and fork from the scan of the above sketches and using some different brushes in Photoshop applied some color. I didn't even try to stay too neat and within or under lines. Sort of fun to do, and just another option that I need to think about prior to making any decisions.

I actually finished this bag a couple of weeks ago, and it was started a couple of years ago. Oops, can I say I got sidetracked with other projects. Anyway this one is now done, batiks on the outside and more ordinary fabrics as the inside lining. I am still working on 2 more of these and a couple more of the shopping bag size.

Another photograph made in my local park. I just thought the clouds were interesting in this photograph.

That is it for today. Per usual comments are always welcome. If you have been following along with my cookbook sketches let me know which style you find the most interesting, simple sketch, Illustrator drawing, Pen and Ink outlines, or one of the more elaborate sketches that could become a finished drawing.

A bird, flowers and a figure

Above is another Artist Trading Card. This time the flower is a pink phlox, at least I think that is what it is. I can't recall where I made the photograph I used as reference, but the wild flower Dames Rocket, which this resembles has only 4 petals not 5. My critical self tells me that I should have made the flower larger. Maybe I will redraw this one and do exactly that, otherwise I think it is fairly successful, I really do like the combination of green and pink.

The hen in the above drawing is from a photograph I made last summer down on the Cape. For some reason she looks mean, though I don't recall that the actual bird displayed any mean behavior, in other words she didn't chase me.

This has been drawn in one of my sketchbooks and was done mainly for practice. I have a larger drawing of chickens that has been just sitting for way too long, I should really get back to it.

Above is last nights figure drawing. Other than I was working a bit small last night I am rather pleased with it. At least I am much happier with this drawing than I was with last weeks. I need to remember to try and work larger with my drawings, that way I don't have to put in quite so much of the background.

The one area I am not pleased with is the left arm/hand which was draped over the couch. I had two problems, she kept slightly changing the hand/arm position and I just couldn't seem to draw a natural looking hand last nigh. Since I did fine with the right hand I have no clue why the left was giving me so many problems. Another something to work on next week.

The above photo was made in Brockton's Fields Park, in March 2009, and slightly later in the month. Again I haven't made it out to one of the sanctuaries or State Parks to walk and photograph since my last update. Yesterday was cold, though sunny and I decided I just didn't want to walk in the cold and wind. Despite the past couple of days it has been so warm that I expect to see trees in about this stage of Spring growth when I next venture out which should be tomorrow or Thursday.

That is it for today, per usual comments are welcome.