Sandy Williams - End of June flowers

Since I've been doing this series of flower sketches in my moleskine I've found that I really "look" at the garden and all the things that have been right under my nose that I just didn't notice before. Case in point -- how beautiful are the potato blossoms and leaves! These sketches were done in pen and ink with watercolor pencils and white gouache.

Sandy Williams - June in the garden

I started this flower sketch journal last year with the intent to catalog the flowers in our gardens and fields. I thought it would take me several months and instead I find that it's a year later and I still have a lot more to go. And I've missed some of the blooms again this year so the journaling will be continuing into 2012. Here are two more pages for June!

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.

Don't forget our LinkWithin feature!

I love being able to see other related posts at the bottom of each entry here...LinkWithin picks them, and sometimes I have NO idea why, but it's always fun to revisit earlier entries in this blog. Sometimes I've forgotten a related post and I'm grateful to see them again...

To our blog authors...HELP!!!

Hi all, just a quick note to all our authors! I've asked this on our Yahoo group, but not everyone is subscribed, there...

For now, PLEASE put your name on the title line? I linked the group blog to my Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=logo#/cathy.johnson1?ref=profile and unfortunately found I couldn't show it as a blog with group authors.

I don't want to take credit for your work! When it shows up on my FB page without a name, people assume it's mine, and I've been needing to go back and correct that impression.

Till I can figure out what else to do, it would be a huge help if you put your name on the subject line, thanks.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled group blog!

We've grown!

Sketching in Nature came online April 10--you can see the first post by clicking on the title, above--and I'm delighted with how far we've come, as well as with the quality of posts here!

I put an invisible counter on the site at the end of May (I know, wish I'd done it from the first!) and I can tell you we've had nearly 16,000 hits in that time--and nearly 5,000 so far THIS MONTH.

We have 37 correspondents, now, some of whom haven't had a chance to post yet, and some who are regulars--delighted to hear from ALL of you.



We have a sister site on Flickr, which has been around quite a bit longer than the blog--we have 168 members there, and counting. (You're welcome to join, if you're not a member already!) It's HERE--and now in our sidebar, so you can click on the image any time and get to Flickr!

We have a new slide show on the blog, here (scroll to the bottom), to feature our Flickr group artists. (In fact that's where I've found many of our correspondents!)

We even have a Facebook group, here, with 96 members...

I enjoy the "world tour" of nature here, and it appears so do many others!