Naked ladies in the garden!

 

This is the time of year when the gardens in my area are filled with these beautiful lilies, nicknamed 'Femmes nus' or naked ladies because they appear before the leaves in big clumps of bright pink blooms.  My neighbour gave me the bulbs several years ago and I can spot all the other people she gave some to as well!

American kestrel

I have been wanting to do another bird illustration and almost everyday as I drive down county road 1100 I am inspired by an American kestrel perched in a fence row. I finally got around to doing the drawing. He is always perched in the same spot on a power line but I decided to put him on a more organic perch.  It is roughly 12"X12" and all colored pencil on Bristol board.

 

www.buroakbotanicals.blogspot.com



White oak leaf variety

It has been a busy month for my family we just moved from Northeastern Ohio back to Central Illinois; from the beech-maple forest back to the oak-hickory forest and prairie.  I have been pretty busy and just got back to doing some drawing. 

The fall color is just about peak here and one of my favorite trees, white oak (Quercus alba), is displaying a wide variety of colors right now.  Yesterday on a walk with my son I grabbed a variety of white oak leaves representing a wide range of shapes and colors.  I cant be sure these all came from the same tree, but they did all come from three or four individuals in a small area.

Sorry for the splice - I had to scan it in two pieces.  Colored pencil - Polychromos

Magnolia flower

A few years ago we planted a small magnolia tree in the garden.  It's quite slow growing but delights us every spring with these beautiful flowers.

I decided this year to follow the growth of one of them as they are stlll at an easy height to draw.

The whole process lasted 3 weeks with daily visits to check on the progress, luckily I was in time to pick up the fallen petals before they blew away.  I had hoped also to draw the fruit when it developed but there is no sign of any on the tree now.  Maybe the birds got there first!

Quokka

Hello everyone!
I have recently been invited to join this wonderful blog, which I am really proud of. As this is my first post, I will say a few words about myself. My name is Anna, I am an illustrator and an artist. Originally I am from Russia but four years ago I moved to Australia, which became my home. I hope you will forgive me making mistakes, as I am not a native speaker of English.
As an artist I love to be experimental with styles and techniques. I love abstract art and cartooning as well as drawing from life and my materials range from charcoal to color pencils, from watercolors to digital painting. You can see examples of my art on my website.
One of the greatest sources of inspiration for me is animal life and marine creatures.
In my free time I volunteer at my city's zoo, and almost all holidays I spend snorkeling, diving and drawing sea dwellers.
Today I would like to present my drawing of a Quokka, small and very cute Australian marsupial. It has a baby in a pouch, that's why it is a bit lopsided.

I made a rough sketch of it in the zoo yesterday and finished it off at home.

If you are interested in my process, here are major steps of my drawing:

Sketching at Poet's Seat Tower

©2012 Carolyn A Pappas, 4/29/2012 outdoor sketching (Poet's Seat Panorama). Colored Pencil in large handbook sketchbook.

I did some sketching at Poet's Seat Tower (see this link to my blog for a photo and more info) yesterday using colored pencils. This is the highest point above the city of Greenfield so it offers a spectacular view (but lots of wind).

This is another experiment with sketching in color. I had a limited variety of colored pencils with me, which I selected because they were "natureish" colors. They were a good mix, although I will add a darker green for next time.

Sedges

Anyone who owns a “Flora of …” field guide has surely noticed that the Genus Carex can easily chew-up 50 plus pages of dichotomous key without the help of pictures or line drawings.  It is intimidating.  Ohio is home to more than 160 different species of sedges easily making it the largest genera in the flora.  One of the primary characteristics used to identify sedges to species are the perigynia, an inflated sac containing the achene (seed).  Usually a 20X hand lens is needed to observe the characteristics of these structures as most of them are around 3-4mm long.  I have only been interested in sedges for a few years, but from my first look through the hand lens I was struck by the beauty of sedges especially when magnified.

Here is a banner of 11 different perigynia all from sedges native to northeast Ohio – can you identify any of them? 

www.buroakbotanicals.blogspot.com

Small Nature Objects

©2012 Carolyn A Pappas, Small Nature Objects. Ink and Colored Pencil in large handbook sketchbook.

A top of an acorn, a piece of bark with some lichen, and a pussy willow that I was lucky enough to come across. Normally, I've been sketching with just ink, but this time I added some colored pencil.

I have some exciting nature sketching excursions planned over the next few months. I am going to make an effort to add color of some sort to my sketches.

It's been pretty chilly here in Massachusetts, but I am excited that it is officially spring. I can't wait for the weather to warm up so I can spend some more time outdoors with my baby. She is almost five months old now.

Early Spring



Spring is upon us and based on the flowers of leatherwood at least 26 days earlier than last year and 11 days earlier than 2010.  I was back in Illinois again this past weekend and the vast majority of spring ephemeral plants were up and flowering.  Here is a drawing of some of the action this time of year.  Three different looks at bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis).  Visit my blog http://www.buroakbotanicals.blogspot.com/ to see some snapshots of this drawing in progress.

Meet the Correspondents - Nate Beccue



My name is Nate Beccue and I am honored to be included in this group - thank you for the invitation Kate!  I grew up in East Central Illinois along the Sangamon River –the place where I found my love of nature.  My mother, mother-in-law and now brother are all art teachers so I have quite a bit of art influence in my life but no formal art education.  I have a bachelor’s degree in Natural Resources and a master’s degree in Forest Ecology from the University of Illinois and I work as a Natural Areas Manager at the Holden Arboretum in Northeastern Ohio. 

Birders like to talk about their “spark bird” the one that ignited a passion for birding, I like to say that I had a “spark subject” that started a passion for nature illustration.  In grad school I was documenting some tree falls in the woods and saw an Ohio buckeye (Aesculus glabra) that was just breaking bud, I don’t know if it was the colors or the dynamics of the opening leaves but I had to draw it.   I bought some Crayola colored pencils and got started.



My "spark"

My favorite subject to draw in detail are winter twigs of woody plants – I am amazed by the variety of colors in a twig, the details of a bud, the imperfections and their causes and then the dynamics of a twig coming to life each spring.  In addition to twigs you will find that I will draw anything I find in the woods especially botanical and I am starting to gain more interest and confidence in drawing birds.  A few years ago I started carrying a field notebook for fast sketches and notes of things that I see on a daily basis working in the woods.  I recently switched from Crayola colored pencils to Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils and almost always draw on Bristol board or in my notebook.  I own watercolor, oil and acrylic paint and will also play with that stuff every once in a while.  If you would like to take a look through my work please visit at www.buroakbotanicals.blogspot.com.

Enough of an introduction – here is a page from my notebook from earlier in the week - a little look at some of the botanical activity where I stopped for lunch on Tuesday.  Lunch was adjacent to a slip above the East Branch of the Chagrin River and the first thing to catch my eye were the undersides of hundreds of round-leaved ragwort (Packera obovata), a brilliant violet anytime of year but especially striking in February.  Next I noticed some young sedges, their exposed roots barely clinging to the eroding slope.  Carex (sedges) is a difficult genus to master, but in this part of the world there are only a few sedges with leaves this wide and the pale bases of the leaves give this one away as C. platyphylla.  Much more common here, and abundant to my right on the wooded hillside, is C. plantaginea it is given away by the red/maroon bases of leaves.  And making their 2012 debut all over the hillside is wild leek aka ramps (Allium tricoccum) a solid two weeks ahead of schedule based on my notes.  As always a great day to be in the woods!

Tulip Composition (Work in Progress)

Yesterday I noticed a small tulip appearing in the grass. We have a very soft winter in Belgium and that explains it. But it doesn't feel right to go from fall to spring without a winter.
It does cause tulip-mania and during the next few weeks I'll built up this flower composition.
I hope you enjoy the start with 3 tulips.
Paula Kuitenbrouwer

Lunar eclipse

6:10 a.m.

Our local paper reported that there would be a lunar eclipse on Saturday, December 11, 2011. The total eclipse was to occur between 6 and 7 a.m. The report said that the event would only be visible if you were at a relatively high elevation or at the coast because the moon would be so close to the horizon at the time of the eclipse. Over coffee on Friday my friend, JoAnn, and I decided to meet at the top of a hill (Fountaingrove) that's 800' according to Google and is near both of our houses. I got up at 4 and looked out the window to see if the sky was clear. I could easily see the beginning of the eclipse just below the canopy of the Valley oak in our backyard. It was hard to imagine that the moon would be very close to the horizon in only two hours. JoAnn, thinking similar thoughts, called me at 5:45 to say that she could see it from her yard, too. We considered meeting at her house to watch but decided it would be more fun to go up the hill as planned.

6:35 a.m.

It was 35º F (2º C) so I dressed warmly, packed my binoculars and sketch gear and scraped the ice off of my car windows before heading out. JoAnn and her family were already parked when I arrived. We were near an area designated as an open space with some homes on the other side of the street. A young German shepherd was roaming about and seemed very excited to have company. The eclipse was well under way and I got out some paper and a pen to begin sketching, using a nifty head lamp I'd bought for just such an occasion. I seemed to be having a hard time seeing the moon and commented to JoAnn about it. We both tried looking through binoculars but that made it worse. It was past 6 and it was our understanding that the moon was supposed to get bigger as it neared the horizon and turn a strong red color. Oh, and be fully eclipsed. My first sketch showed the moon way too big. The actual size appears above the sky. As we watched the moon sank lower in the sky and grew harder and harder to see. As the sun rose and the sky grew lighter we were able to see that a thin haze of clouds hovered low in the sky, causing the eclipsing moon to look hazy and blurred. The moon did get a bit bigger as it went lower but it never seemed to be totally eclipsed. At about 6:45 we decided that a nice warm breakfast sounded a bit more interesting than the fuzzy, eclipsed moon. I took one last look, cranked up the heater in my car and went home to eat breakfast then  had some fun coloring my sketches from memory.

Sketching the Lake

©2011 Carolyn A. Pappas, 12-15-11 Lake Sketch. Colored pencil in large handbook sketchbook.

I bought some Derwent Coloursoft pencils recently and I did some sketching of the lake yesterday to try them out. I had never used these pencils before but I can tell that they are my new favorites. I love their buttery texture. They also have a ton of muted, nature inspired colors that are great for nature sketching.

It was a rainy, windy and overall gray day. I really wanted to try out a lot of different colors though so I wasn't entirely accurate in my color choices.

insects and friends

An evolving sketch over days--I started over a week ago.  All of these were on my deck at the shed at one time...so I did the rough sketch below with a Prismacolor Verithin black colored pencil, then took photos to refine them.

These are not much more than quick gesture sketches...I was standing up, the butterfly might move at any time, and the katydid, DID!  Sort of a slow-motion sloth effect...

 

I increased contrast so you could see the lines better...really, mostly just going for shapes and poses here, not detail.

slow-moving but definitely MOVING bush katydid...

My reference photos were really helpful in getting at the details I'd missed, although I never COULD get my camera to focus properly on the walking stick. 

I love the cricket-like sound of katydids on a summer night...

I waited a few days to add color, until my new open-stock Verithin pencils arrived from Dick Blick--and then decided to add some watercolor after all! 

 I couldn't resist adding the daddy longlegs or harvestman, which strolled up later...and before you say "ick, I hate spiders," these aren't spiders at all!  They have their own order, they are non-poisonous, and they eat other small insects.  They're very beautiful, up close, like a jeweled mosaic box.

Colored pencil and watercolor.

Bunny on Brown Craft Paper

Bunny on Brown Craft Paper, a photo by Teri DC on Flickr.

I saw this bunny on my early morning walk. He just sat there and let me take his picture and still didn't move when I walked past. I had a camera but no sketchbook.
This is done on tan craft type paper with ink and colored pencils.
I didn't realize until I did this that the bunny had such a variety of color in his coat.  
Isn't nature wonderful?!

Juvenile Grey Heron

This is a young bird that has taken up residence in the harbour, much to the annoyance of an adult bird which seems not to want to share the easier pickings provided by the fishing fleet.

Sketched with pencil and watercolour and coloured pencil added afterwards.

Merry Christmas

This is my latest kitty, very cute and acute, especially when he's up to mischief. I realized the drawing from a few snapshots and lots of observation. Photos make good references, but sometimes give little information on light and dark and many other details. It was really fun.


Merry Christmas everyone!

Foliage, part two - Carolyn A. Pappas

I finally got around to doing some scanning and uploading of my nature sketching sketchbook, so this sketch is about a month old. This sketch was another one done by looking out my window, although from a different angle. It reminds me a bit of this drawing from last year. The colors in the leaves have changed a lot over the past month; there are more reds and rust colors, as well as more of the birch trunks visible. I will have to do another version as it looks now.

Window Sketching - Carolyn Pappas

I was without internet access for some time, so I was unable to post. But
now I am all back up and running so I will show some of my sketches over the
next couple of days.

I made this sketch while sitting in my new studio on a stool next to my open window. It was an odd feeling because I could feel the breeze and hear the birds chirp just as if I were outside, but I was still in my house. I did this in colored pencil while waiting for my laundry to dry.

Frozen Lake

Gorgeous yesterday at the lake...finally sunny, and deceptively warm in the sun.  Until I sat long enough to sketch the whole sweep of frozen water! 

I'm glad we got out...it was spitting snow/rain/sleet all day today!