Practice Sketching

Ring-necked Duck -- field sketch

I suppose it is a little late for a New Years's resolution .... but I have been working on this one for most of the month of January.  Honing my ability to draw lifelike animals in a variety of poses is a never ending process.  I want to get better at it!  I'm guilty of tending to pick 'safe' poses.  My resolution for this year is to make a point of doing at least some sketching every day and to dare to fall flat on my face, i.e pick difficult positions.  The above sketch I consider a 'safe' pose.  The next image has some where I'm daring to push my limits.  The pleasant surprise is that sometime they turn out better than I expected.

Birds sketched in my front yard.  No pencil, just jumping right in.    I am  fortunate to have at least a dozen species that are regulars to my feeder.  Here I have lesser goldfinches and dark-eyed juncoes.  Oregon's juncoes are quite different from eastern juncoes.  They used to be considered a separate species, but got lumped into one a few years ago.  

Wolf, 2 elk, and 3 ravens. -- several favorite species drawn from a slide show my husband put together recently.    Usually I post things I've actually drawn from life in "Sketching in Nature',  but I included these to demonstrate one can do a lot of practicing at home so that one is ready when the opportunity arises.  I know I do far better field sketches of a specific species when I have drawn it before . 

Practice!  Practice!  Practice!

One woman's treasure...

Graphite, colored pencil on  8.5 x 11 Strathmore paper

I've loved to walk since I can remember. I love to put one foot in front of the other and propel myself into the known or the unknown. It's a simple act that we mostly never even think about. For many years illness has limited my ability to go walking, which has only made me appreciate it more. I'm thrilled when I can go to a park and walk even for just a half mile and ecstatic when it's one or two miles.  I've learned to appreciate every single walk I'm able to take, even when I can only go around the block.

Last Sunday I did just that early in the morning before the neighborhood was awake. I listened and watched as birds began to move about, looking for food and mates, not necessarily in that order. I noticed that the leaf buds on many trees were nearly ready to burst and that many lawns had been mowed. On one of those lawns I saw a pristine dead Roof rat (Rattus rattus) looking so natural that I hesitated before collecting her to take home, afraid she would leap up and take offense as I placed her into a bag. She didn't and I spent a couple of days sketching and admiring her.

I know I'm not really supposed to like rats. As I write this I'm listening to the rustlings of a family of them that we've been unsuccessfully trying to evict from the attic above my studio. As my work day is ending I can hear theirs beginning as they exit through the (not so) cunning trap door we put in to let them leave but keep them from getting back in. I really do admire their ability to adapt to adversity. They've traveled far from their original place on the planet, yet thrive and multiply. And multiply. Where once they lived high up in trees and foraged in fields and forests, many now live high up in our buildings and get a ready supply of food from our gardens, homes and refuse. These tiny creatures have caused us much bigger creatures an awful lot of grief for a very long time without even trying. Pretty impressive, if you ask me.

Graphite, ink on 8.5 x 11 inch Stonehenge paper

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.

Fruit, Flower & Berry Report - Pam Johnson Brickell

Click to enlarge - 'tis much easier to read :)

On the 10th hole of my neighborhood's golf course and across from the 150 yard marker is a spot large enough to park the cart and be out of the way of golfers... Standing in this one spot, I was treated to all these beauties. Eye candy everywhere!

I did the pen sketching and added watercolor to one flower, Beautyberry leaf, Hickory leaf and nut - enough for reference when I returned home.

More time was spent doing research and the lettering than sketching! I love the thrill of sketching plein air. But, the fun continues when I hit the field guides. After searching all 3 southeast wildflower field guides in my library, I had to consult the internet for the Bigroot morning-glory. I'm a Wikipedia fan!

Learning to sketch birds

I've been just awed by Laureline's sketches of the birds in her yard and thought I'd add some of mine. I've been trying to sketch the birds at our feeder a little bit every day, so I have several pages of bird sketches now. I'm actually feeling a bit more confident sketching quickly and finding it easier than when I began a few weeks ago. It's affected my other sketching, too, which is a pleasant surprise!

I really wasn't paying much attention to our feeder birds before sketching them and have gotten to know them a bit better in the time that I've been at it. I've discovered that the nervous, chatty, bossy house finches are the most numerous but we have quite a few other visitors, including White and Gold crowned sparrows, who mostly hug the ground, but occasionally will jump up on the platform feeder. The California towhees are quite brazen and don't seem as disturbed by my staring presence on the other side of the glass. In fact, they stare back while they eat! Oregon juncos move faster than the speed of light, it seems, and the Mourning doves are true Californians, very mellow and easy going.

I look forward to my bird sketching sessions and find myself listening for the house finch's chatter as I work on other tasks around my house. When they call, I come running whenever I can.

Helvella

Helvella lacunosa are a fairly common fungus in northern California that seem to fruit longer than most. The fruiting bodies are quite sturdy and persist for a good long while. I'm told that they fruit with conifers but I find them mostly in association with one of our native trees, coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia). Helvella don't have gills or pores. Rather, they produce their spores on the upper surface of the wrinkly cap.

I had collected several of these, with caps in various shades of gray and black, planning to do several watercolor sketches. They languished in the refrigerator for over a week and today, when I finally got around to sketching, they were rather old and funky. Every time I moved one, or opened the container, spores swirled up, up and about the room. It was sort of like a dust storm. Blggghhh! They're still fruiting so tomorrow I'll try to find some that are a bit fresher.  Apparently they're edible. I've seen several suggestions of ways to cook and eat them while reading about fungi online lately. Not that I'm going to eat them myself! But I did lay them to rest in my backyard. We have a valley oak (Quercus lobata), which is a poor mushroom host, but maybe I'll get some to fruit in my yard next season! My very own helvella garden! How cool would that be? Oh, the sketch of the black capped fungus was done with ball point pen and the color sketch was done in ball point and watercolor.

Fungal baseball bat...with a few wrinkles

Not surprisingly, this fungus is called a club fungus. Although it doesn't have gills it still reproduces by releasing spores and is closely related to mushrooms. Clavariadelphus occidentalis is a western fungus. It's believed to be mycorrhizal, or to have a symbiotic relationship, with conifers. I find it fruiting with Douglas fir, although there are also always oaks around, as well. There's an eastern (Clavaridelphus pistillaris) version which appears to fruit with Beech.

I had hoped to include a drawing showing a club in it's habitat but they seem to have all disappeared or become saggy old things, so this will have to do for now.

I usually find these alone or in small groups of three or four. Once I found a large crowd of them, looking like a small army standing in the woods.

Two websites that have more information about this fungus are Mykoweb and MushroomExpert and there are some wonderful images at MushroomObserver.

One of my favorite mushrooms

These pretty little mushrooms appear around Christmas here in northern California and are called Marasmius plicatulus. One rainy December I saw a huge troop of hundreds or more, all in one place. Mostly, where I walk, they appear in smaller groups and you have to look very carefully to find them because they blend so well with the leaves. I drew some a week ago in black and white because I love working in black and white, but I wanted to try to capture the lovely colors, so today I made a little watercolor sketch. It was very cold and I kept waiting for the sun to come out and make it warmer. I finally gave up and packed my things to go home and finish up. As I walked out of the park, the sky cleared.