Dawn

I was lucky enough to see 2 Great-horned Owls and 2 Barn Owls while I was paddle boarding in Northern Utah last weekend.  The alarm calls of mobbing robins and chickadees alerted me to the presence of the first owl, an adult Great-horned,  concealed deep in a juniper tree about 4 feet off the ground.  A little further downstream I spotted a strange large pale shape in another juniper tree.  It looked like a plastic bag, but it was another Great-horned owl.  This time a fledgling.  It stretched its neck up and bobbed its head around to get a better look at me and then flew off.  When I paddled back upstream 2 hours later I could still hear the chickadees and robins mobbing.  I was looking around for the fledgling, but saw a different owl in the same area, an adult Barn Owl.  It too flew off after watching me and then I spotted a second Barn Owl.  The original adult Great-horned was still in the same tree getting mobbed.  It seemed like maybe it was drawing fire for the other owls as the little birds didn't pay any attention to them.  I have never gotten such good looks at Barn Owls.  Felt like I was as Hogwarts!

I have been leaving shelled unsalted peanuts for the crows on my dog walks for a year now.  They seem to know me, the dog, the sound of my squeaky front door and my call "hello crows".  They will follow me around the block and perch right above me.  They don't alarm when they see me usually any more.  I leave about 6 peanuts in an open area and walk away and they usually swoop right in to take them (if they are not busy chasing something away). There is an adult female (I think) with a subadult helper to feed the fledges each year.  There were 2 last year and 3 this year.  I am starting to be able to identify some individuals by their unique bill shapes! Sometimes the adults will gather up all the peanuts at once and go get some water.  Then they take them to the fledges that gurgle as they get fed.  Lately I have seen some adults ignore the fledges begging calls and cache the peanuts in the grass and make the fledges find them for themselves.

Wow!  This looks incredible for a first drawing!

1. I have a small zippered pouch to keep my drawing implements in at the field.  Taking fewer items and making good notes to fill in later seems to work the best for me. 2.  My goal was to improve at field sketching, drawing and watercolor painting.  I make sure to always include at least a little background metadata on every page.  I really  want to try to capture the moments and memories spent outside.  I really prefer to create from photos that I take though.  Temperatures are in the 30's now and it is very difficult to draw for more than 10 minutes at a time.  I also have a pandemic puppy that requires my full attention - so I am lucky to be able to snap a few photos while outside and then draw from the computer images later while she is napping!

1.  I remembered how to look really closely and record in images and words characteristic botanical features in order to be able to correctly identify plants to species. Simple outline drawings and notes are enough to do this usually.  I don't have to use complicated drawing techniques to do this. 2.  I like the table format that someone else used below to organize the verbal information better.  While my page gets the job done it seems too busy and disorganized.

1. I have been playing around with watercolors for a little over a year now and it just gets more fun all the time.  I really appreciated the tips from Liz on color mixing opposing colors and using tints, tones and shades.  I have had trouble getting the right muted neutral colors that I needed before.  I did get the colors that I wanted by using a very limited palette.  I was able to mix yellow and permanent rose to get the browns that I wanted by adding Payne's gray and white.  3.  I am realizing that I can get to the same color a number of different ways i.e. browns made from red and green or yellow and purple.  I love putting different colors together and seeing what comes out.  The more that I do it the better I can get at matching the colors that I want.

This is a really valuable tool to use in the field or anywhere.  I have always struggled with getting the proportions right.  This could work well with a still subject, but not so much, for a moving one.  I feel like it is easier to do with plants in general and more difficult with any type of animals (especially humans) since we are so tuned in to how they should be portrayed accurately.  Feels like there is more room with plants and more abstract subjects like landscapes.  

Lovely!  Great subject and nicely shown.  Simple, but effective.

I was exploring and questioning the relationship of flowers to pollinators on these pages.  I also documented a predatory introduced wasp eating leaf miner caterpillars.

These look great to me.  You have really done a good job capturing the texture of the veg.  You can really feel the smooth shininess of the pepper and the dry papery onion.