More Watercolor and ink with some pencil sketches

Above is another of my studies using a watercolor wash background and then ink on top. The ink this time was Acrylic Indigo Blue with a dip pen. This is OK, but not what I am looking for so I have another in the works, but the inking I want to put on top of the next one is taking more planning. For the tulips I used a couple of my reference photos, but the end results don't quite do it for me. Might  have been better if I had put leaves in the background, but by the time I realized that it was too late.

Spring is arriving, the world is turning green around me, the flowers and butterflies are starting to emerge for the season. After seeing photos of a Kestrel on the facebook bird group I belong to, and knowing that there are some spring flowers that bloom in the Oak Wood, I took a trip over to Daniel Webster. The flowers were just budding so not as far along as I had hoped, I didn't see any of the Kestrels, but I did see one of the Osprey who are again back on their nest stand, and I think I saw a blue bird pair. Not a total loss but not the most successful visit either, so there are no photos, and least none I want to share. I did sit out at Fox Hill for a bit and drew the nearest tree and the line of power poles above. Done in my sketchbook with one of my technical pens. The view is open fields and wetlands, a perfect spot for Kestrels and Osprey.

I also went into Boston last week, hoping for some beautiful blooming trees on Commonwealth Ave., nada, I was either too early or too late. Even Boston Garden didn't have a lot of trees/shrubs in bloom, only one or two trees, again too early for some trees and too late for others. On the bus driving in I made the above sketches in graphite, fellow passengers.

I also visited the MFA, my main goal was to look at the Techstyle Clothing exhibit that I have been walking through but not really viewing. The clothes are very out there, and I found myself a bit impatient with some of what they had on display, totally unwearable unless you weren't going to sit down for hours. I am neither young enough or thin enough to even dream about wearing that stuff even if I had some place to wear it, which I don't.

Anyway I took the time to revisit some galleries that are old friends, Late Egyptian period, and then some early Greek statues and wares. The above sketches were made in those galleries, the woman from a relief panel, the small vase from an actual alabaster jar, and then a bust in the Greek gallery.

Spring is coming to the Fens, you can see the weeping willow is starting to green up a bit, actually it is yellow since it is starting to bloom. Anyway I just like this photo so I thought I would share. Hard to believe this is in the middle of a fairly large city, but it is.

Another trip last week had me driving down to Myles Standish State Forest in Carver, MA. I was looking for butterflies, and found several but I also found this, Trailing Arbutus, our state flower. I had never seen it in the wild before so I was thrilled when I made the ID. There was a lot of white blooming bearberry (a low ground cover) in the area and if I hadn't realized that some of the white I was looking at was different I might have missed it. That was a very good day out, two new Elfin Butterflies for my list and the Trailing Arbutus.

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

Signs of Spring

Here it is the first week of April, so far our weather has been fairly kind to us, sunny day's with some overnight showers, and daytime temps in the 40's/50's. With the longer hours of daylight and sun I have been trying to get out and do more walking. I am not in very good shape after spending most of the past couple of months indoors so even the shortish walks I have been making leave me feeling a bit stiff the next day, esp in the knees.

I haven't yet made it over to Daniel Webster, with snow on the ground I didn't feel like wading through the paths over there but on Monday I did get over to Ames Nowell for a walk. Above is a sketch I made of one of the islands in the lake. Not wonderful, but at least it is something to get me started drawing outside again. Done with ink in my small sketchbook.

From over a week ago here are some sample drawings I made at a short pose session I attended that week. I am not thrilled with any of these drawings. I feel like I was having an off night. Oh well, that is why I attended the sessions, doesn't matter if I am on or off, just need to do the work. Anyway the above drawings were done in ink from 5 minute poses.

 The two drawings above were made with pencil from 15 minute poses. Our model had pulled her back and was feeling some pain so to give her a bit of a break the poses were longer and not too stressful for her. Longer poses meant she didn't have to take as many.

Above is my long pose drawing from this past Monday night's session. It is OK, but I am not totally thrilled with it, I much prefer the last long pose drawing I made to this one. Ah well there is always next week.

As signs of spring I want to show two photographs I have made this week. Above are a couple of blooming crocus, the nights are still fairly cold so they may be a bit frost nipped.

Photographed on the same walk a couple of pussy willows growing along the lake shore. Still not a lot of other green but I did notice a few trees where their buds are swelling. YEAH, just hope we don't get any more snow this year, I have had quite enough of snow for this winter.

That is it for today. Not a lot of art, but I have been working on a stipple piece so may have that for my next update. In the meantime comments are always welcome.

Nature Journal, Figure and WIP

If this is Tuesday then it must be time for another blog update. But I fear I don't have a lot of new material today, hope you enjoy what I do have.

Above is my Nature Journal spread from a week ago Monday's visit to Daniel Webster. Though I visited Stonybrook (another MA Audubon Sanctuary) also last week I didn't write in the journal, so saved the Daniel Webster pages for today. Photographs and comments about the Stonybrook visit are on my previous post.

Actually the Daniel Webster visit was quite wonderful. I saw a Glossy Ibis, the image I used for the bottom drawing above. It was really a beautiful bird, I only wish I had a lens for the camera that would have allowed me to make some good photographs. Oh well you will have to make do with the sketch, or if you want to see what they really look like you can visit here. The bird I saw had a copper brownish head and back. But was too far into the pond for my camera. I mostly observed using my field glasses, and I spent quite a long time observing it as it was feeding around the edges of the various small islands. I also observe some other smaller wading birds but I have no clue what they were, too far for me to ID, with my limited knowledge.

The top image in the above spread is of a woodchuck fleeing my arrival at the Fox Hill observation deck. It was hot that Monday (into the 80's) so not a lot of visitors were walking out to Fox Hill. The animal was taking advantage of the quiet to dine on some new plant growth along the fence. I only manage one photograph of its rear running away from me. It disappeared into a rock pile and I am sure it just waited for me to leave before it resumed its meal. I was out there to see if I could observe the Ospreys, but I think only the female was there sitting on her nest, and I didn't really identify her.

Above is the work in progress image of my latest colored pencil effort. Not quite finished, and to be honest I am not totally sure where it is going from what you see here. So far I am having fun working on this. The main image started as a doodle in my sketchbook, I rather liked the shapes so decided to play with it a bit. I am working on Stonehenge paper with primarily Derwent pencils.

Above is last nights figure drawing. The model is wearing a jacket that she is making for herself. In a way it is a pity that I don't work in color as the jacket was quite colorful and very fun. I only broadly sketched it as every time she resumed her pose (which she actually held wonderfully well) the fabric would fall different ways. I am not happy with her right hand, and the leg folded under her is only semi successful. Ah well, there is always next week.

Above is a flowering tree that I photographed out at Daniel Webster last week. Not sure what it is, some kind of ornamental Cherry I think, anyway I rather like the photograph showing the still bare white birch trees in the background and the still golden fall grasses on the ground. You can see hints of green here and there. Yesterday I did notice that the flowers are gone and the tree is now leafing out and turning green.

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

May Day

I don't usually do a Monday Blog update, but yesterday was May 1st and I was out making photographs to document the progress spring is making here in the Northeast. So I thought I would share a few. All were made in different sections of the Blue Hills Reservation area. The above is just trees, but I love the colors and shapes of the leafing trees against a blue sky.

A photograph of the area outside the Food Pavilion at Houghton's Pond.

I photographed this Magnolia a week ago when the blooms were just buds, yesterday it was in full bloom. You can see some of the petals have been damaged by our recent rain storm. I think the pink/white is so beautiful against the blue sky. The young tree is in the picnic area at Houghton's Pond, Blue Hill's, Milton, MA.

A last image, an unknown type bush blooming against the backdrop of Hougton's Pond, Blue Hills, Milton, MA. Other than cropping these photos they have not been altered in any manner.  Comments welcome, tomorrow's post will be back to my art.

It's Spring

OK I now consider it officially spring. Above is a photograph I made today at Blue Hill's Reservation of Trout Lilies. They are one of the earliest spring wild flowers, and as you can see are now in bloom. Last year we had a late freeze and the blossoms were malformed so I didn't get any good photos. That said they are pia to photograph because they are only about 6 inches high and the blossom tends to droop a bit so they look at the ground. A bit tricky to photograph through a view finder. I have one more photo of these lovelies for you.

Monday was Patriots Day and the 114th running of the Boston Marathon, not that I run but it is notable that they have been running this race for over 100 years. I didn't realize that I didn't have class on Monday so got up per usual and puttered around working on some things then collected myself and headed out to school, only to find an empty parking lot - hmm well guess that made it pretty obvious there were no classes. So I thought I would head up to Blue Hill Reservation and check on how the Trout Lilies were doing. There were no open blooms on Monday, but it was apparent that it was only a matter of days before there would be flowers to photograph. I made mental plans to come back on Wed. then did some wandering around. Monday morning though a bit on the chilly side was a beautiful sunny day with just a few clouds, so I though I would take some landscape pictures. Well I ended up taking landscape pictures all the way up to the top of Blue Hill and into the observation tower. Even ended up with a picture of Boston to show for it. Visibility was for miles and about as good as it gets in the Boston Metro area. Enjoyed the outing very much though I am not sure I took any really good photos. I will spare you having to look at distance landscapes, photos of Boston, which to be honest from a distance looks like almost any large city.

Tuesday it was back to classes and my Intaglio class. Here I finally have something to show for all the work I have been doing, I finished re-working my tree plate and made 4 good prints. I also applied some aquatint to the Cat in a Bag plate, and applied hard ground to my final plate so I can do some drawing on it at home. I think the image for that plate will be a Jack in the Pulpit. I did a drawing which is OK, but it needs something so I am considering using an older drawing of the flower for a reference or looking up some more reference photos on the internet. Will probably do the latter.

So here is the final version of the tree after aqua-tinting the background top and adding a fair amount of engraved lines to soften the edge between the bottom plate and the aquatint. I scanned this so the shadows are the from the paper not being totally flat on the scanning bed. Paper for Intaglio has to be wet so it doesn't always dry totally flat. When the ink drys a bit more I can press it, but right now I need to let the ink dry. That's it for this post. I have to tint the prints that I did with the soft ground, I also added some engraved lines to that plate after adding some more hard ground etched lines. Will upload a photo of that when I get the tinting done and the print scanned, next post I am sure. In the meantime I am trying to get my cover design for my resume package worked on. I had something for class today, but it was pretty much rejected out of hand by everyone in the class. Oh well, I wasn't in love with it so don't mind going back to the drawing board with it. I have been spending more time with page layout, what images to use, what order to show them, what size to make this and what paper I am going to use to print it on. Did you know that you can no longer get really good paper in a legal size? No where, and I have even checked for web sources. If you want letter size there is plenty to choose from but not legal. Very frustrating but I think I have a solution, at least I hope I do. Will get back to you on how it works. In the meantime comments are always welcome.