A Most Intriguing Package
I received a wonderful surprise in the mail last week. Sent to me by a former class participant, the well-wrapped container held two mahogany seed pods—one closed and one open. The mahogany tree has evolved to create a serious package for its next generation—the pods are hard as rock, thick walled, and tightly sealed. When the time is right for them to release their winged seeds into the wind, the pods split open in five segments. Pods that fail to open simply fall to the ground – which is why it is ill advised to park a car under this tree. Fortunately for me, I enjoyed all of the beautiful benefits of sketching with none of the risks.
Tips and Techniques– I love doing pages like this, where I can study a single thing in multiple ways. I used a sepia 005 Micron pen for the drawing—a nice match for the brown of the pod—and then added watercolor. Even with a largely one-color subject, it’s important to look for the variation in hues and values. I used an underwash of yellow ochre, layers of burnt sienna and ultramarine blue, and a bit of alizarin crimson to lend a reddish tone to parts of the husk. I mixed burnt sienna with cobalt blue for the outside of the pod, along with some white gouache for texture. If you want to try something like this, I recommend picking a largely monochromatic subject and seeing how much variation you can get.
Not quite finished
Every time I thought I was finished with this journal page, something else begged to be included. First, an additional flower, then another flower pod, another leaf, and finally two seed heads. But while I was adding the seedheads, several ebony jewelwings appeared and I thought, okay, yes, you can be part of this too. So here it is, a week of poppies come and gone and a week of painting in the garden. It’s time to turn the page.
Tips & Techniques– While it is important to plan your composition and color scheme for a finished painting, that doesn’t happen in the same way when working spontaneously in a journal. I often start with what strikes me and keep adding until the page feels complete. Each time I add an element, I think about the overall composition, but sometimes an addition pushes me in a new direction. Sometimes it creates a problem that needs to be solved. Sometimes the page unfolds beautifully, and sometimes it doesn’t. Because it’s a journal, the result is intended to be a reflection of your experience more than a perfect painting. Learning to embrace the imperfect is part of the process.
Seabirds Up Close
I’ve spent many summers watching seabirds from the deck of the Maine State Ferry, on boat tours to the Atlantic Puffin colony on Maine’s Eastern Egg Rock and, more recently, on Iceland’s rocky cliffsides. From common sightings, like gulls and terns, to more unusual ones, like storm petrels skimming close to the surface or gannets plunge diving into the water, it’s always a thrill to see what’s out there. The Double-crested Cormorant is a common bird to watch for. It’s is easy to spot from its characteristic behaviors: sitting low in the water one minute and disappearing the next to dive for fish, flying low over the water, or perching on buoys or rocks to dry its outstretched wings. Rarely do you get an up-close look at its stunning turquoise eyes or bright orange bill. So, I hope you enjoy this portrait and get a chance to spot one through your binoculars soon.
Tips and Techniques– Join me in July and August for Seabird Portraits in Watercolor, a four-class online workshop. Each class will focus on one bird species. Tuesdays 6-8pm Eastern, July 16: Northern Gannet; July 30: Common Tern; August 13: Double-Crested Cormorant; August 27: Atlantic Puffin. Register at Winslow Art Center.
Answering the Call
When poppies bloom, you can’t wait. You can’t say: I’ll paint them next week, or even tomorrow. By next week, they may be gone. Tomorrow it may be raining. You have to set aside the vacuum, the groceries, the weeds that need pulling. You must go out and paint.
Tips and Techniques– If you are unsure of which colors to choose for a particular subject, do some color tests. This can be invaluable for deciding which pigments will work best before you are committed to your painting. I tested a lot of red pigments and combinations of reds and yellows before settling on the colors I used here: Pyrrol scarlet and Hansa yellow medium for the flowers, and Hansa yellow light and Prussian blue for the leaves. The centers and darks are Ultramarine and Alizarin crimson.
Glorious Globes
I discovered allium growing in a wild garden a few years ago and I’ve been enthralled by it ever since. This is the third year of blooms for the bulbs I planted in our garden and love the bright purple globes popping up amidst the green foliage of poppies, daisies, and other perennials that will bloom next. I hope you enjoy its unfolding as much as I have.
Tips and Techniques– When you have fussy, small florets like allium or lilacs, you can paint a few of the small blooms and use a wet-in-wet technique and some negative painting to suggest the rest. Combining precise elements with loose watercolor produces more evocative blossoms and invites the viewer to fill in the details.
Spring Mornings
I love going outside on spring mornings to discover what birds have migrated north overnight. Every day brings new species and new songs to the woods and fields around us. Tree swallows came back a few weeks ago and I always love seeing their flash of blue and hearing their twittering song as they fly overhead. They typically hang out for a week or two before settling down to nest in one of our bird boxes. The rose-breasted grosbeak, on the other hand, just passes through. A single male spent only one day in our yard. Lucky for me, I was working from home that day and enjoyed watching it at our feeder before it moved on.
Tips and Techniques– I’d like to paint all of the migratory birds that pass through or nest here, but there’s no way to manage it while working full-time. Still, I like considering a series like this and these two paintings reflect some experimentation with a style that might work to keep the focus on the bird while not fussing with much background. If you’ve ever done a series, I’d like to know what subject you chose and how you considered developing a consistent thread that unites the pieces. Next on my bird list are the yellow warbler, prairie warbler, and common yellowthroat, but I need to get going before everything is fully leafed out and I can’t find them!
Fiddlehead
I spent the entire afternoon yesterday hiking and sketching ephemeral wildflowers and ferns at Bartholomew’s Cobble, a nature preserve in Sheffield, Mass. What a treat! Bloodroot sprang from rocky limestone ledges, and Dutchman’s breeches, hepatica, and red and white trillium carpeted parts of the forest floor. My wildflower sketches remain unfinished, so I have only these fiddleheads unfurling by the banks of the Housatonic River to share. How I wish you could go there in person to see them for yourself.
New class coming up: Watercolor for Beginners, June 6 and 13– Learn the fundamentals and techniques you need to begin painting successfully. The class is geared for beginners and for those who may have missed learning foundational skills.
Tender Greens
There’s a fleeting moment each spring when shoots emerge and recently barren ground begins to turn green. In another week these sprouts, these plants marching across my page, will be twice as tall and unfurling fast. If I had to wager, I’d say that Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) wrote her poem, Spring, in mid-April. When “blows the thaw-wind” and “drips the soaking rain,” she celebrates the season’s change in “tips of tender green.” I was pleased to find her words, connecting across time and place, resonating still.
Tips and Techniques– Experiment with mixing different combinations of warm and cool yellows with various blues to see what greens you like best. I often paint test strips and keep them for future reference when trying to choose the right green for a particular subject. Notice, too, how much red appears along with spring greens. You’ll often see it in stems and leaf tips. I find Alizarin crimson to be the perfect choice for the ruby red shades at this time of year.
Springing into Yellow
I am sending you a bit of whimsy today as we spring into the return of yellow forsythia and daffodils, goldfinches wearing their summer suits, and—soon—the songs of warblers echoing in woods and fields. I painted this as a demo for my class Painting the Colors of Spring, thinking it would be fun for participants to try perching a bird on an atypical object. I hope you are enjoying spring unfolding wherever you may be.
Tips and Techniques– Yellow can be a tricky color to paint since its value range is so light and shadow colors can easily become too heavy. I painted this mainly with cadmium yellow medium, cobalt blue, and permanent rose. (Hansa yellow medium is a good choice for a warm yellow, too, but I was out). I chose that combination because neither the cobalt nor the rose tends to overwhelm the yellow. You can push mixtures toward bronze, green, gold, or brown, and the cobalt and rose together make a nice purple complement to the yellow.
Renewal
It’s the season of waiting here in New York: waiting for warmth, waiting for blossoms, waiting for green, waiting for birds to return. But it’s the season of renewal, too, as spring unfolds with song, color, and light. I’m celebrating Earth’s turning toward the sun with this tree swallow nest and the promise of eggs and new life. Wishing you the same.
I’m excited to be sharing techniques for sketching nests and other nature subjects during Botanical Art & Nature Sketching Retreat. This weekend workshop takes place Nov. 8-11 in New York’s beautiful Catskill Mountains at the Ashokan Center and includes instruction with Wendy Hollender, Lara Call Gastinger, Giacomina Ferrillo. What a lineup! Visit Draw Botanical to book your spot.
Drawn In 