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

Sketching My Way Around the Links

For years I gave playing the game of golf a go.  I loved the scenery and happened to see a lot of the courses we played with my particular game...  I came to look on golf the same way Mark Twain did - a good walk spoiled. 

Then, the last 5 years I played, I began to bring my sketchbook and watercolor pencils with me.  My husband and I would always play with 2 other men.  I had time to sketch little bits of things when they were on the tee box.  I immersed myself into what I loved and would forget the last lousy shots made.  This practice helped me take 10 strokes off of my game!!!

I no longer play the game, but do join my husband in the cart with my plein air setup.   

These two small studies were started while the foursome finished one hole and teed up on the next.  I finished them from memory as we rode along.  

My little lap desk was purchased at an office supply store.  They also come in a light aluminum.  Their original use is for workers in the field that have forms to store inside.  When closed it acts like a clipboard.  I use blue tack to hold my brushes and small mixing palette.  Lots of clips to hold things in place.  It can be a bouncy windy ride around the courses!

Pumpkin sketch

My new love...pumpkins!!!

Murrah buffalo

Watercolor and gouache on moleskine.

Sketching in the Field.... or Forest

Last Friday, my co-worker/naturalist, Kristen Marshall Mattson and I led a nature journaling workshop for members of Spring Island, South Carolina.  What a great way to start the day!   Walking through the woods, examining plants, sketching our finds, adding details, learning new things both art and nature related.  YUM! None of us wanted it to end :)

Did you know.....
White flowers are pollinated by moths? (the flowers show up better at night)
The purple flowers of wild ginger is pollinated by beetles?
That a hollow tree can still live and thrive as long as the outer 'living shell' is not compromised?

Central California Coast

These are a few of the things I found during our week staying near San Luis Obispo, California. Before packing my bags to fly home to Iowa, I gathered my treasures in one place.

Central Coast California Treasures

Hiking along the craggy coastline of the Point Buchon Trail was a highpoint of our trip. It was a calm and sunny day. I drew from the edge of the cliff, the roiling surf glistened below and the barking of unseen sea lions serenaded me. This is a place I yearn to return to, again and again. 

Point Buchon Trail, Again

From the house where we stayed, soft morning light washed over the sparsely treed hills.

Hills Above Edna Valley, Morning

Autumn Sassafras Leaves

It has been fascinating to watch the gradual change of the leaves on the sassafras sapling that sits near my feeders and the bird bath.

Above is a sketch of the sapling created half on the tan book facing, half on smooth hot press watercolor paper in my sketchbook.

The leaves turned yellow after a couple of freezing nights and then revealed spots of red. On some leaves, red completely filled the space between veins, and on others, the red appeared as random smudges with no particular boundary. Observing the overnight changes was magical.

 

I also realized, I only noticed these details because I was watching for color so I could paint them!  We certainly take in our world differently when we see it through our artist eyes!

Visit my blog post on enjoying movement and surprise in watercolor in my "Fun with Fall Leaves" series at Vickie's Sketchbook.
To learn more about the how and why of autumn color visit:  Why Leaves Change Color 

Cumulus humilis (Cu hum) - Maree

“We all have 10,000 bad drawings in us. The sooner we get them out the better.” 

― Walt Stanchfield

W&N watercolour on Aqua 300gsm (Tarlton, Gauteng, South Africa)

While sketching this landscape, I was fascinated by the colour of the clouds. So as soon as I finished, I decided to research some clouds and came up with some interesting information.

Cumulus humilis (Cu hum) is the smallest non-ragged cloud and usually shows a light-grey shading underneath.

These are small fair-weather cumuliform clouds of limited convection that do not grow vertically and generally do not produce rain showers. Being at or near the beginning of the convective cloud’s daily life cycle, they lack the moderate vertical extent of cumulus mediocris. Consequently they are commonly classified as low clouds. Cumulus mediocris (Cu med) achieves moderate vertical development, has medium-grey shading underneath, and can produce scattered showers of light intensity.

Striking cloud colorations can be seen at many altitudes in the homosphere, which includes the troposphere, stratosphere, and mesophere. The first recorded colored cloud was seen by Nathan Ingleton in 1651, he wrote the event in his diary but the records were destroyed in 1666, in the Great Fire of London. The color of a cloud, as seen from Earth, tells much about what is going on inside the cloud.

Cloud droplets tend to scatter light efficiently, so that the intensity of the solar radiation decreases with depth into the gases. As a result, the cloud base can vary from a very light to very-dark-grey depending on the cloud’s thickness and how much light is being reflected or transmitted back to the observer. Thin clouds may look white or appear to have acquired the color of their environment (cloud iridescence).

Colors occur naturally in tropospheric clouds. Bluish-grey is the result of light scattering within the cloud. The bluish color is evidence that such scattering is being produced by rain-size droplets in the cloud. A cumulonimbus cloud that appears to have a greenish/bluish tint is a sign that it contains extremely high amounts of water; hail or rain.

Yellowish or brownish clouds may occur in the late spring through early fall months during forest fire season. The yellow color is due to the presence of pollutants in the smoke. Yellowish clouds, caused by the presence of nitrogen dioxide, are sometimes seen in urban areas with high air pollution levels. This info from Wiki

So, either our veldfire-season has started already or I’m living in a highly polluted area!

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Dawn on the lagoon of Orbetello- Concetta Flore

The sun rises late in September, so it was fine to slip out of bed and walk the short path to the look-out of the Orbetello sanctuary managed by WWF Italy.
I was there with seven students for a watercolor workshop.
The sky was full of new light and  a kingfisher appeared on the branch cunningly submerged just outside the look-out . Grebes glided by the fishing nets, and the water was absolutely flat.
The ripples appeared later, with the first sea breeze.

Sorry for the uneven paper and consequently bad scan...

Pine tree grove- Concetta Flore

Back from a working holiday on the Tuscan coast and with little to show- I was studying and tutoring most of the time- but this one watercolor I produced in a well-known place called Feniglia, one of the Isthmus (?)  that conects the Argentario mountain with the mainland.
The song of cicadas was deafening but the light poured into the large walkways and the sky reflected on the tree trunks made the simphony of shades just too tempting.
As I lately love to do, I painted direct with no pencil. I ruthlessly "logged" some trees that were in the way- no worry, only on my sheet of paper! and enjoyed every minute of it.

The place where I live - Maree

This little stream flowing through Tarlton (Gauteng, South Africa) near where I live provides me with hours of enjoyable sketching. It’s mostly dried up now, but with strong rains the water still flows, passing under the R24 and some telephone lines, meandering through Oaktree and Sterkfontein, ending up joining the Crocodile River in Muldersdrift on it’s way to Hartebeespoort Dam. 

This area is rich in sketching material as we border on the Cradle of Humankind, the Sterkfontein Caves and the Wonder Caves, with many game reserves, dams, lakes, rivers, airports and other tourist attractions. You can see a map of where I live and some of the attractions HERE and things to do HERE.

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Under A Telephone Pole - Maree

W&N watercolour and black ink sketch in a hand-made sketchbook with linen, satin-finish paper 

Here in the rural area where I live in Tarlton, Gauteng, South Africa, telephone poles are becoming a thing of the past. The copper wire has been stolen so many times that Telkom has abandoned the land-line system and resorted to a satellite telephone system. I’ll miss the poles and lines in the landscape, they provided great perches for birds of prey and congregating swallows before they leave on their great winter migration up North. 

I AM a copper wire slung in the air,

Slim against the sun I make not even a clear line of shadow

Night and day I keep singing—humming and thrumming:

It is love and war and money; it is the fighting and the

tears, the work and want,

Death and laughter of men and women passing through

me, carrier of your speech,

In the rain and the wet dripping, in the dawn and the

shine drying,

A copper wire.

- Carl Sandburg

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Mount Crawford Forest

This weekend my boyfriend and I had a motorbike ride to Mount Crawford Forest. I had about half an hour to make a small watercolor sketch. The forest is so dense, damp and dark, very unusual for South Australia!

Cotton plant

Yesterday I bought two branches of the cotton plant.

This is the drawing.

Angela Maria Russo - "Cotone - Gossypium" watercolour on Magnani sketchbook

A Nature New Year Wish for You!

Wishing you a year filled with happiness, health and the joys of getting out there and Sketching in Nature!

Here is my first sketch of the new year.  This Live Oak has amazed me for a few years.... finally sketching it today! The angle of the winter sun really showed off the tree's form.

I'd like to thank Kate and all of the contributors that fill this blog with such stunning work. It's an honor to be included in this award winning group :)  Thank you Katherine Tyrrell!

All my best,
Pam Johnson Brickell

High in Cotton

Yes, the Lowcountry of South Carolina and many southern states in the US were once 'high in cotton'. This plant has an incredible history all over the world.

A week ago, I had my first one-on-one with a field of cotton.  The private island I work on used to be a cotton plantation.  Now to honor those roots, a field of cotton is cultivated yearly.  It's such a joy to have access to all the wonders on Spring Island.

I had no idea about the wonderful architecture of the plant.  I picked several cotton springs but what really caught my eyes were the pale yellow flower blooming out of a three-sided leaf-like structure that has long thin fingers. I brought my treasures home and put the flowering branches in water.  After a few days, the pale yellow flowers slowly started to turn the same crimson color of what I now know is called a 'square'.  I found a great website that explains the life cycle and gives the names of the various parts of the cotton plant. A 'boll' forms from the flower and it takes 24 days to reach full size.  An additional 24-40 days is needed for the fiber to fill with cellulose and the boll to open.

I'm tickled that the cotton plant came into my life at this time.  It has such a rich history.  A special plant for a special day!

NOVEMBER

angelamariarusso.blogspot.com - watercolor on sketchbook - Cartiera Magnani

Two sketches made in November. The drops of rain and a dead leaf that I picked up from a carpet of leaves on the road.
Winter is approaching.

Saucy Little Chippy

Saucy Little Chippy, a photo by Teri DC on Flickr.

I was totally entertained with this little chipmunk. My daughter's two Golden Retrievers are in the kitchen avidly watching this chippy perform all kinds of antics: running, eating and sleeping as though she knows perfectly well that she is safe on the other side. Drives the dogs nuts and if she could smirk she would be doing it. Small things like this are so delightful and entertaining!
Painted on Stillman and Birns Beta sketchbook.  I so love that paper!

More Autumn Treasures - Teri Casper

More Autumn Treasures, a photo by Teri DC on Flickr.

I found all these things while walking the Golden Girls: leaves, hickory nut shells and dried hydrangea blooms, then sketched and painted each one and the page just grew. I tried to artistically add the words. This is really a fun way to create a journal page. I plan to do more.
It was done in the Stillman&Birns Beta sketchbook which I have fallen in love with.

First Wid Mushroom

First Wid Mushroom, a photo by Teri DC on Flickr.

A little bit of rain produced the first mushroom of the season in our woods and DH found it! I put it in an omelet for lunch. So good.

He knows which wild mushrooms are safe to eat but please don't try it if you don't know. Some wild mushrooms are very poisonous!  But they sure are fun to paint.