Woven
I was invited to spend a recent Saturday basket making with a group of women from my old home town. What a treat! Good company, summery refreshments, and a lovely day outdoors dedicated to creative pursuits. Basket making takes patience, I discovered, both in the weaving and in waiting for reeds to soak until they are pliable enough to work. I was glad I brought my sketchbook to fill the soaking time. I came away with a finished basket and a sketch in progress, which I completed at home. Tips and Techniques:… Read More
Essentials
Imagine a week on an island off the coast of Maine. No cars, no stores, no streetlights…just good company, good food, starry skies, blue horizons, and long days spent almost entirely outside. These are the essentials for Arts and Birding, a week-long program I facilitate each year at the Hog Island Audubon Camp. Because I’m teaching, I don’t have time to complete much artwork of my own, but I did manage a few pages. And as always, I came away inspired to keep observing, sketching, and sharing my work with the wider… Read More
The world along the roadside
Were it not for relentless deer flies and record-breaking heat, it might not have taken me four days to complete this page. But it is hard to sketch on the roadside under such circumstances, no matter how determined, and so, one flower at a time, the page grew. Still, sometimes it’s good not to rush a painting. It lets things evolve; insights emerge. What started as a simple painting of flowers grew into a recognition of how much of the world is at our very doorstep. I am reminded of one of… Read More
Firefly Nights
Oh, the warm nights of late June and early July, when the spectacular light show of fireflies flashes through the fields! Not just one or two, but hundreds of luminescent beetles signaling to each other in the gathering dark. I caught a single firefly that made its way into the kitchen the other night and watched it flash its bioluminescent message for several hours. But how to capture it on paper? That artistic dilemma led me to throw out my usual arsenal of watercolor techniques and try something completely different. Patterns, color,… Read More
New Neighbors
I’ve been watching our newest neighbors as they take up residence in our yard. Bluebirds recently fledged from one of our nest boxes and a brief battle for the box was won by a pair of house wrens. There are not really four birds, as depicted, but I wanted to capture the pattern of the pair’s activities during the nest building stage. These poses were repeated over and over as I sketched. You’d think that would have made it easier, but wrens aren’t known for standing still. I switched between using binoculars… Read More
High Chroma
I am frequently a painter of subtlety: of small things that might be overlooked, of browns and blues and layers of green. Not today. Drawn in by the vivid, bold color of these poppies at the Berkshire Botanical Garden, I pulled out a whole new palette from a set of six high chroma colors from QoR to paint them. I have never used any of these colors before and it felt a little like driving a car for the first time– a little nerve wracking and reckless, but also liberating and fun…. Read More
Counting your chicks
For the last month, I’ve been watching a robin’s nest that sits on the sill of an eyebrow window at our house. I’ve been able to directly observe everything from four perfect eggs to four pathetic-looking naked chicks to four gaping mouths, begging for their parents to stuff them full of moths and worms. Last Sunday I made this ink sketch, added a bit of color on Monday night, and figured I finish the page later this week. But even when you count your chicks before and after they hatch, it doesn’t… Read More
Nest Map
Finding bird nests is something typically reserved for late autumn, when fallen leaves reveal summer’s hidden treasures. But I’ve been lucky this spring. Bluebirds and trees swallows took up residence in nest boxes we put up in April; a robin returned to a nest used last year on an upstairs window ledge; I spied a pair of cardinals making their nest in a hemlock bough; and, just last week, I caught sight of an American redstart as it landed and disappeared into a tangle of shrubbery at the edge of the woods–… Read More
Lilacs
Isn’t it nice to think that Don Wentworth’s poem may be true? Today, just letting it be the wildflower picks you Have a great weekend.
At Last
Each year we wait. We count the days, watch the weather, complain, wait longer. Our patience stretched thin by the cold and by gray skies that are slow to yield to clear blue. Then suddenly, at last, we are surrounded by green. I can never keep up; never find time enough sketch or paint it all. Still, this year as in the past, it is a pleasure to try. Tips & Techniques– The window for capturing spring ephemeral wildflowers is very short– miss it and you have to wait a year. This page… Read More
Drawn In 