Mudito

I am finished the course now and loved it.  I learned a lot and feel much more comfortable with watercolour now.  Even drawing these little bitty birds and flowers.  I feel the look of my journal is emerging.  I am heavy on the images, poetry and commentary, pretty lax on the scientific stuff. Keeping track off all the tools and equipment is a challenge for me.  Nearly every sit spot claims a pencil, eraser or a pen cap, some of which I do find at a later time.  I spend a lot of time close to home as I love my comfy folding chair but it is very awkward to carry.  So my garden and my bird feeder are the focus of my pages.  In this time of Covid 19 I am staying home a lot, most of the time in fact.  This course has greatly helped me to fill my days and to get me outdoors to do it. I continue to draw from photos but do practice the gesture drawing from time to time and it gives me ideas if not particularly good drawing that I work on to the finish.  Hope to see that improve over the summer. Forgot to take a picture of the very first bird but there is considerable improvement over the time of the course. So thanks to Liz for her really great classes.  It was especially helpful for me to see her actually doing the drawing and painting.

Mary Oliver is a dear and much favoured inspiration for me for the last several years.  Her deep connection to the natural world always touches my heart. This is a painting from my backyard and some comments that came to me as I sat in the sun doing this work. I feel that the character of my journal is gradually emerging.

Another great drawing exercise to hone the skills.   Fun to do.  Will do this exercise again.

I finally completed my comparison of the Junco and Chickadee both of which frequent our feeder.  I am still not drawing from the real thing - this is from the Sibley Field Guide but it did allow me to really see the differences in their form and to focus on differences in behaviour.  No modelling in the drawings but maybe I will do that later.  Scribbling is useful.

This is another sit spot day.  Went to a beautiful beach up the coast to get out of the house for a while.  I have not been able to make the photo thing work for days but today,it worked again.  Computers sigh! Anyhow, I continue to work through all the exercises and to enjoy the process.   I find I am not so interested in the scientific inquiry portions as I am so focused on drawing.  But I do work through them all and find that it does indeed pique my interest and sharpen my observation skills so it is all to the good. I enjoy looking at the work that others are doing and am finally getting a handle on how the submissions thing works.

Today’s exercise.  I am having some difficulty drawing at such a small scale but getting there.  This subject was heavily textured so the texture and the shading techniques were getting mixed up.

I did a reasonable if static drawing with pencil only.  It certainly makes one focus on the details that make the bird recognizable.  I have a terrible time seeing Warblers on birding walks.  They are so active and like the tree tops I think.  Haven’t mastered the process of including a photo. Time to call the grandkids. I also gave some thought to how I would structure my journal on the page.