Pen and Ink Mushrooms and a bird

If I were more organized about my projects today's posting would include a landscape. Well I suppose in a way the mushrooms are a landscape but on a miniature scale. I just finished reading about large scale "Important" landscape paintings as in those created by John Constable (1776-1837).

Constable is a well know English landscape painter who did most of his work in the early 19th century (1800-1835). The son of a Miller who was successful in business he studied Art and spent his life drawing and painting, mainly landscapes but also portraits. He was part of the "new" breed of painter who felt that Landscape was just as worthy of being painted as Religious or Historical subjects. Another notable English painter of the same period is Turner.

From my vantage point here in the 21st century it seems odd to think that once large landscape paintings were not considered serious "Art" I have a feeling Constable would be bewildered by some of what is now called art.

I think my major take away from reading the book and looking at his paintings, is how much work he put into planning the composition of each major work. Course we are talking 6 foot wide canvases here, so probably each painting was something he worked on for months let alone weeks. Work of that size does need to be planned. Painters of the time had to make large paintings and show them at Royal Academy shows in order to get noticed and acclaimed.

Without a camera he was dependent on his sketchbooks or other paintings, some smaller plein air, as reference materials and his later works are often revisits to subjects/objects/locations he painted/sketched when he was young.  I don't want to paint like Constable but it was interesting to learn more about the times he painted in.

Constable isn't the only artist who revisits subjects. I seem to keep coming back to mushrooms. Finally managing to to finish this stipple work of a clump of mushrooms. I used as reference a photograph I made at Broadmoor (a MA Audubon sanctuary) in October of 2012.

I started this sometime last year, but put it away when I got tired of working on it. I had it with me over Christmas vacation and worked a bit more on it then, putting it aside when I got home for other projects only picking it up again about a week ago. This time I managed to finish it.

Since the the only white on the paper is the mushrooms themselves I had to make a lot of dots. Size is 6.5 inches square on Stonehenge paper, and done mostly with my 3x0 technical pen. Lighting could be better, but I had to use the flash on the camera to photograph these guys. But then I don't pretend that my art has any "noble" purpose.

Above bird, a parakeet here in the US, is another of the March WetCanvas Pen and Ink forum challenge images. I drew this guy out with pencil first then inked it in. I didn't feel like including the background which was chicken wire fencing so the image wasn't that complex to draw.

The above started out with me playing around with 3 colors of colored pencils and developed from there. Think Easter morning after the kids have been on their Easter Egg hunt, 3 colored eggs some jelly beans (miniature), a chocolate bunny and a "grass" nest. No clue where that came from except we are in Lent and I guess I must be thinking ahead to Easter. Anyway it was fun to do, hope you enjoy looking.

As my final photograph today, my neighbors cat, she enjoys sitting in the sun on the railing outside one of my windows. I will probably draw this at some point. Not sure what she was looking at, probably a bird on the roof, or flying overhead.

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

More EDM, a Nature Journal and a Figure Dwg

Above is another of my Every Day in May drawings. I should have two more, but got lazy Sunday, and was busy running around yesterday. I had lunch with a friend and then checked out the Student Art show at the Bridgewater State University Library. Both were good, though I understand the show comes down this weekend with the end of year Graduation celebration. Leaving Bridgewater I dove over to Daniel Webster for my usual Monday visit and finally attended my weekly figure drawing session. A busy day that didn't leave me much in the way of extra drawing time. I will catch up, hopefully by my next blog post.

Anyway the challenge was to draw something sweet. I often keep miniature peanut butter cups on hand, so I used one of those for my subject. Need I add that I ate it after I finished the drawing.

Above is another Nature Journal spread. This one not from yesterdays visit to Daniel Webster but from my visit the week before. I ran into 2 sets of Canada Geese parents that day. One with 6 goslings and the other with about twice that many. They were hard to count as one group seemed to stay with daddy and the other with mommy, but I think there were about 10 or 12, certainly way more than 6.

Still it does seem a bit odd that there are only 2 sets of parents at Daniel Webster, esp. since it has not just the man made pond but also a natural pond, not to mention the river. I have a feeling that the MA. Audubon folks have taken active steps to limit the number of young raised at the sanctuary. Since there are still a lot of Canada Geese on site I can't say I blame them.

At the pond I watched a Killdeer having a bath, and noticed a medium sized bird sitting on one of the small islands. Another visitor arrived as I was leaving and I took the opportunity to ask him if he knew his wading birds and if he could help me to identify the sitting bird. He told me it was a Wilsons Snipe. Later that afternoon I saw a Wood Duck pair on the pond and a Green Heron. A good visit, esp. as I was also able to see the Osprey preening its feathers on a fence post near its nest stand while I was out at Fox Hill.

Above is last nights figure drawing. The model had brought a couple of hats with her and we all though the white hat with the black rim quite fetching. Another artist had brought some other accessories which included a pair of red gloves. So our model last night was "dressed" in hat and gloves. I didn't realize that I had her expression quite so severe. She is really an attractive young woman, I just have no love for drawing faces so foreshortened. Hopefully next week's pose won't have this feature.

I have been seeing butterflies out and about for several weeks now. Mostly the white and yellow cabbage butterflies but also some of the small American Coppers like the one in the photo above. These are small butterflies and not easy to get a good photo of, so I am fairly pleased with this one, made on my April 30th visit to Daniel Webster.

Because the weather has been a bit crazy this year I almost missed the blooming of the apple trees at Daniel Webster altogether. Just one tree was still blooming that Monday which enabled me to make the above photo. I am just hoping the trees didn't get hit by a late frost killing the young apples, only time will tell.

That is it for today. Per usual comments are always welcome.