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 Pastel, Nature Journal and Figure

I tackled another pastel drawing the other day. This time the image is a couple of apple blossoms that I photographed earlier this spring. The paper is a darker blue Crason pastel paper.

I don't recall that the drawing was as dark as it appears above prior to my spraying it with fixative and, actually, the real drawing doesn't look as dark as the scan appears. Pastels do have to sprayed with fixative or you end up with just a smear instead of an image (I recall that from my previous experiences with pastel), but I suppose I could use Photoshop to lighten the scan. I don't like doing that but, in this case it may be necessary.  

I think I know what part of the problem is. I don't have either a good dark green or dark brown pastel and have been using black to darken those colors. I try to not use very much, but black is tricky and appears to scan darker, so I may have to manipulate the scan until I can purchased some darker greens and browns for my collection.

Above is my Nature Journal spread from Monday's visit to Daniel Webster. It was a beautiful spring day, and I enjoyed my walk. I was surprised at how few others were there at the same time I was, after all Monday was a holiday for many people here in the US. But then a lot of the retail stores were open so I supposed more people had to work than would have in years past and others were probably at family gatherings.

No new bird sightings, but I did startle a couple of deer, and saw evidence that Wildlife Sanctuaries are not peaceful places for all the inhabitants. The bottom image above is one of those pieces of evidence. I saw an empty eggshell on the path, by size I would guess it was a goose egg. The shell didn't look like it had been cracked open by an emerging chick, but opened from the outside by a hungry animal. I know there are foxes at Daniel Webster, so that is probably the most likely culprit. At another path location I saw a scattering of feathers. It looked like a Phoebe's, but I can't be totally sure. Probably the culprit there was one of the birds of prey that live around or in the sanctuary, hawk is most likely but it might have been an owl.

The top drawing is of another turkey, I know I drew one for my last visit, but I saw this one out on the paths which I don't normally do so wanted to document it. I have been seeing a lot of the Turkeys so far this year, not entirely sure why, perhaps there are just more of them.

Above is Monday nights figure drawing, and yes despite the holiday we still drew. She was wearing a sweater and a short skirt, so we had another semi clothed model. Not sure about that one foot and leg but other areas I am fairly pleased with.

Another butterfly photo for you today, above is an American Copper. I have photographed one of these before as they are fairly common in my area. But they are also quite small (about 1 1/2 inches) so it can be hard to get a good photograph, when I manage I like to show them off.

My treat Monday was to capture this photograph of a tree swallow. I normally see them catching bugs on the fly at the pond or over the fields. There they are impossible for me to photograph with my camera. Monday they seemed to be in mating mode, which makes them a bit distracted, and not so noticing of humans. I actually saw one pair mating on top of one of the bird houses they have scattered around the sanctuary. That was amazing to watch, though with birds there isn't a lot to see.

This bird had landed on the bridge just prior to my crossing over. I slowly approached making lots of photographs and finally managed to make this one. I was probably only 5 or 6 feet away, which is much closer than I can normally get to wild birds, unless I am on the other side of a glass window. Isn't he a hansom fellow, and I am quite sure it is a he, the females tend to be a bit duller on the back. But he wasn't really watching me or my approach so I have to wonder what he was paying attention to.

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