Tanis

These images show how the course has wound its way into my life. The photograph was taken today because I love the colour of the cardinal flower and am still trying to capture it and paint it. Besides the book used for the course I now have one dedicated to wildflowers. This picture shows the information that I have started noting or researching about the flowers. Both painting  and journalling were new to me but are becoming something I love to do now. So thank you to Liz for teaching us ways to improve our skills and to awakening me to journalling. This was a wonderful and enriching course.

What a great way to record your trip. I usually take photos and recently added journaling. The variety you captured with your pictures gives a fuller picture of the area you visited.

We have a Phoebe which returns every year. It likes to watch us the way this one is watching the goats. Fun picture.

(In response to covid-19 I was looking for quiet road where I could jog and my dog could be unleashed. I found a spot and have returned to it 4 days a week since early April. Much of my drawing has been inspired by what I saw there and now I share part of it with you.) Island and I Early April Island: The ducks are back again, drifting beside me, she in brown, he with his dark head and glowing white eye patch, diving for food then, resurfacing and drifting again. Me: I park opposite this small island in the middle of the Madawaska River, off the gravel road, ready to run with Molly. My eyes are drawn to the river and what looks like chunks of snow floating on it. Eventually I realize that it is ducks but as I draw closer they lift and with a whistling sound quickly disappear. Island: Over the next few days more Goldeneye arrive and some mallard pairs, feeding and seeking places to raise their young. The woman has appeared often, parking her little green car, appearing now and again long the road, stepping out in a small clearing below me with her dog, then disappearing again. Me: I arrive quietly and slip out of the car, binoculars and bird book in hand trying for a clearer view so I can identify these ducks. Finally I decide they are Common Goldeneye. While I observe them for several weeks I never see their nests in hollow trees on the far side of the island nor their young, before they are gone. Early May Island: The Canada geese have arrived. Just a pair make their nest at the tip of me. The nest is away from the road so She will not see it. I wonder when the other pair will arrive. Me: I see a pair of Canada geese floating in a quiet spot at the end of the island. I will have to check it again and see when the young have hatched. When I go down the bank to a sandy stretch I am surprised to see so much black mixed with the pale sand. Looking closer I realize that it is hundreds of emerging black flies. Climbing the bank I lean against a cedar to stretch then see all the small black flies lining it as high as I can see. Hemlocks, maple and poplar are similarly covered. While I may not enjoy my run here next time, the birds should be happy. Early June: Island: I do enjoy the song of returning birds and seeing them flit among the bushes. Jays, kingfishers and sparrows, even wrens fly back and forth. Heron fly down the river and the occasional bald eagle sits atop my tall pines. I wonder if she sees them. Me: There is so much to see along the road. Just the flowers: rosa rugosa, starflowers thimbleweed and cardinal flowers. Some I know but others I have to look up in my wildflower book. Then there was the doe I was watching, lying in the shade on the road when another doe came up from the river right beside me! Both took off while I searched for young. Where are the young? Were these two escaping the deer flies? Another day as I was ending my run, a flutter of swallowtails rose up around me. What joy! They settled on a damp area on the road and could be found there for a couple of weeks. What drew them to that spot? It was no longer a puddle and did not seem to be a source of food? June 18 Island: She has sat there for a long time, looking at me and drawing. Will she capture the rapids and quiet areas which keep the fish and birds returning here? Will see notice my magnificent white pines? Me: It is hard to capture the variety of plants on the island; grasses, bushes, maple or oak and of course the tall white pines. The campers must love lying beneath them. I only wish I could see the other side where the Goldeneyes hid. The colour of the water and the rapids are particularly hard to capture. Three ducks flew up the rapids too quickly to identify. A white-crowned sparrow flits among the bushes beside me, while blue damsel flies dart from water to grass and a red squirrel chatters above me. Molly and I will return because I look forward to seeing more flowers emerge, birds flock up and trees change to their brilliant fall colours. But for today I say good-bye to the Island.

This is an island where my dog and I go for a run. I pack sketching pencils and paint kit in a backpack along with a camera. The things I often forget to take are a test paper and something to wipe the pen on to dry it so now I just use another page in the sketch book. Usually an hour is all the time I want to sit in one place so it helps to take photograph of the scene. When I get back home I can focus more on adding the details. Capturing the colour of the water, its movement and the sense of white water are areas that still need practise.

I am spending more time near lakes and rivers to beat the heat and for landscape painting. In this painting I like the way you have captured movement in the water. It is one thing that I am still trying to do.

This was my first experience with watercolours so the tips and demonstrations were particularly helpful. The first thing I did was to make colour swatches of the paints so I would have some idea of what they looked like. When it came to mixing the grays it was hard to decide whether blue or purple should be added and which one. The pink was also a challenge but drawing the surrounding colours into the pink helped to blend it in. It was a fun experience and I look forward to tackling the crocuses which are now appearing in our yard. The mountain picture is pretty daunting but I will start its pallet and see how it goes.

Gestures happen so quickly that you can only capture a part of it. It makes me focus on how they are doing something like the position of the kit's legs when it is tumbling. I found myself pausing the videos so I could capture more of the action. When I took photos of the birds at our feeder I tried to stop an action and draw from it later. This exercise helped me move beyond looking at colours and markings to thinking of their anatomy when it is moving.

This was a very interesting exercise. Comparing really helped me focus on the differences where before I just noticed the similarities. I decided to do a balsam fir and spruce because while I can recognize them from a distance I continually confuse them when walking through the woods. Sitting down and drawing the bark and noting the growth pattern of the needles has helped fix it in my mind. Since it was cool sitting outside for an extended time I brought the spruce bough inside to sketch and did the fir from memory. However then I began to question the accuracy of the fir drawing. Bringing in a branch helped me look closely and more deeply at it. This is an exercise that I will continue to do. After looking at some of the other work I see how my records need more numerical data.

We have south facing windows which overlook a bird feeder and a place where we feed deer. At noon a deer approached the apples so I stayed inside and used this as my "sit spot". Later another deer came out and joined it. I was able to note their different appearance and behaviour. In the afternoon I moved outside (snow covered ground, 0 degrees and overcast)where I could observe both the feeder and the apples. Outside you could use your senses so much more fully. The chickadees where particularly chatty. I thought that writing up observations would take all the time, but somehow time slowed and I was able to sketch some trees and a bits of a bird. The trees I wanted to identify because I had wondered what the deer were eating besides the apples. Several blue jays came to the feeder and as I started to sketch their outstanding features as I noticed that not all were the same. Observing the shape of the birds' tails and the markings was the "outside of the box" for me. For example, it was hard to identify the colours of one bird because the overcast weather made colours indistinct. Instead I noted its size, bars on the wings and distance it kept from me. Observations certainly do lead to more questions!