JOURNAL STUDIES | PEN AND INK

Last year I purchased a beautiful journal from WonderCabin on Etsy.  The pages are filled with 140# traditional Fabriano hot-press watercolor paper that are not only a joy to paint with but an immense joy to draw on! My journal when opened is 12 inches by 9 inches.

Working full time right now does not give me the time that I would love to spend in nature and in my studio.  One day this spring, I brought my journal into the den with my pencil and ink pens.  As I watched TV and with images on my Kindle, began to draw a series of dogwood buds. 

I was taken with the "magic" when I added the value via stippling and darker lines with my Micron pens.

And here is the true flower! These study pages help us not only to see but to know.  We live in a magical time when we have all these tools available to us .... my phone's camera is just as good as my Nikon D90!

I like to draw using a .03 HB lead mechanical pencil.  The thinner lines suit my eye.  Also here are the black pens that I am using.  I start with the 01 and build up by adding the larger sizes in the project as you can see here.

Thank you for visiting, 

Linda C Miller Artist | Naturalist | Instructor

http://www.lindacmillerbotanicalart.com

https://thebotancialblogger.blogspot.com/

Copyright Linda C. Miller 2022

 

Reciprocity

 

Nature replenishes my spirit in so many ways. Clean air and water. The simultaneous serenity and thrill while standing on the edge of millions of acres of public lands. Sunshine warming my face. The sound of rain on my rain jacket. Watching a bee fly; toads, deserts, murmuration.

Trees are an organism for which I am supremely grateful. I have always loved them, even before I could understand the depth of what that means.

On a grand scale, trees have sustained cultures for millennia. Closer to home and more personally, trees provide life-saving shelter, shade from the powerful sun, bone- and muscle-warming heat, magnificent beauty, the sound of wind moving through the leaves.

So I've been pondering lately, what do I give back to them? Indeed, what is the exchange between all of nature and myself? It did not take me long to make the connection.

A spotlight. Through my art and writing I shine a spotlight on the beauty, magnificence, importance, and cultural community that trees and forests provide; the very reasons we should be protecting, respecting and thanking them.

My hope is that my work will inspire others to broaden their interest in trees, to the point of finding themselves caring about trees in their own environment, maybe even becoming stewards of the land.

In the spirit of paying it forward, for the trees, click here for a beautifully made documentary created by a young Alaskan woman about the clear cutting of old growth forests in the Tongass National Forest of southeast Alaska.

Reciprocity.

Digging for Fossils

 I had a great day today digging for fossils with some of my Master Naturalists friends and Chris & Holly from the Whiteside Museum in Seymour, Texas. I found a few small fossils and one larger one that was part of the head spike on a Xenacanth Swamp Shark. (I was pretty excited!) 

If you haven’t ever been to the Whiteside Museum in Seymour, you need to load up and go! Spend some time seeing the exhibits and then eat some BBQ at The Big Empty. You can fill your brain and your belly all in one day!

(And, yes I know I have misspelled vertebrae on my page. Apparently I was just too excited to slow down and spell things correctly. I will have to fix that!)

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5.5 x 8.5” 

Strathmore 400 Series Journal

Ink & watercolor

NFS

A connection to place

 I think we’ve all known special places that have deep meaning for us personally.

 Maybe we don’t always recognize it at the time.  There are several natural places that are special to me, but those with the deepest roots are woven from my childhood memories.  Colors and shapes, smells and sounds, and textures like the tactile velvet of new buds or flaking limestone. 

 The memories stay vivid and strong – some more so, some less.  Most of them comforting, but some, not so much.   They speak of my relationships with nature.  They are both known and unknown, some barely lurking within my subconscious.  What I remember most are not the events, but the feelings those connections gave me.

Maple leaves, owl feather, hickory nuts, and wild grape.

This is a small nature sketch done years ago, somewhere in the mid-1980s, of things collected on a walk through Iowa woods.  It was mid-autumn, and the season gave me treasures and a near infinity of browns and buff, with splashes of red and yellow.  Along the trail: leaves on limb and ground, sticks and branches and trunks and bark, seeds and frost-bitten fruits, empty acorn caps and sometimes a glimpse of gritty green. 

 The woods I rambled in are located in upper northeast Iowa, along a limestone ridge and bluff above a river.   It is a place of meditation, of quietness threaded with birdsong.   This is also a connection to a point in time.  Fall is a favorite season of mine; it feels like an important transition somehow, and I sometimes catch my breath waiting for the next thing to come.

It feels like a time to let life unwind, and a place to rest and heal. 

A sacred place.

 

Media:

Paper - unknown mass-produced watercolor paper pad
Watercolor paint, probably Grumbacher and/or Winsor & Newton
     (the colors still surprisingly bright after almost 40 years)
Craft brushes
# 2 Pencil

HOLIDAY PALM TREES

We've come back from 3 weeks on Tenerife, our favourite Canary island.  I took a sketchbook of course and filled it with nature drawings.  This is my favourite and there are plenty more on my blog I've just posted.  I have rediscovered my multicoloured pencils and really love the effects they give.

 

Winter Fallen Treasures

 

Spending time with a fallen treasure!   Using a .03 TH lead on Fluid 100 cold press watercolor paper.  This paper is a delight to work on, erased easily and accepts the subtle and the dramatic.  

Linda C. Miller

GINKO BILOBA TREE

On our recent visit to Dinan we came across this wonderful specimen of Ginko Biloba, apparently one of the first to be planted in Brittany which features in a census of important trees in the region.