Today was gorgeous so I set out for a nice long trek on my farm property. There is a lane that runs the length of my property called “Long Lane” and halfway along it is “The Maze”, an area that I cut circular paths on with a brush hog, that intersect and create a sort of ‘maze’. My boys liked to use it years ago for paint ball games, but I find that it’s a great place to see certain birds. The “Maze” is surrounded by relatively new bush growth and two tree lines, one containing old growth oaks. I have found the Rose Breasted Grosbeaks like it, and every Spring I can find the Rufus Sided Towhee singing there. Just along the “Oak Lane” bordering the “Maze” I hear the wonderful melodies of the Wood Thrush and sometimes a Veery.
Long Lane Farm Hike pg2 5-22-09
I’ve been searching for that elusive Wood Thrush to catch his picture, but it’s much easier to hear him than see him. Today I saw and or heard 26 different birds! I have them all listed on my sketch page, I use a dot showing I’ve heard it, a check mark for those I’ve actually seen.
Long Lane Farm Hike pg3 5-22-09
I do have photos I took while sitting at the Maze; the great thing about sketching or painting in nature is as you sit quietly birds can surprise you out of nowhere. Here are a variety of photos from my hike though some may be a bit blurry, I was so excited to be able to zoom in so close with my camera, but hand holding a big lens when zooming is tough. But I have found that when I look at them on my computer I can see so much more than in the field, and they’re great to use for painting references. Enjoy!
Dandilion
Eastern Kingbird
Field Sparrow
Field Sparrow 2
Song Sparrow
The Eastern Kingbird was sooo far up in a huge oak tree that I wasn’t sure what it was at first…so beautiful to watch; he’d fly right up into the sky from the tree top and do some acrobatics to catch his bug dinner, then back to the tree top. The Field Sparrow has such a pretty song, a song to me that means summer. The Song Sparrow just sat on the branch for a bit, all fluffed up, then he settled down even more and puffed like a fat little plumpkin!
Hawthorn in Bloom
Ginger Resting at the Maze
Yellow Warbler 1
Yellow Warbler 2
After our time at the Maze we walked out to the “Enchanted Forest”, sometimes called “The Emerald Forest”; the trees there are so mystical almost, it’s so green and beautiful. It’s there that I saw the Veery, wow! , I caught sight of it on the tree not far from me, and I think it was trying to hide by not moving. It didn’t sing, but moved around a bit, I can’t tell you how lucky I was to snap a few pictures!
Enchanted Forest
Veery
I hope you enjoyed this beautiful walk with me today! Please leave me comments and don’t forget to visit my shop to see my paintings, sketches and photographs on note cards, mugs, t-shirts…many gift items!
I thought I’d start out this post by letting my sketch page tell you what’s happening. You can read about the awful mosquitoes and tiny flies that bite and try constantly to get into your eyes, oh what a bother they were. I also started a list of birds as I heard or saw them. I did a fast sketch of a yellow wildflower that I still havd to look up, fast I say because of the bugs. Sometimes this can be good training, working quickly and just going for overall shapes of things. I gesture sketched the placement of the ‘ball’ shaped flower clusters, and drew one in detail, then later sitting at my kitchen table added details and colored it. Here’s a photo of the flower:
yellow-wildflower
So Ginger (my dog and hiking companion) and I pushed onward…away from the bugs! As we made our way to the Maze (I’ll have to post a map of my land so you can follow where all these places are!) I took some photos of more birds.
yellow-warbler
yellow-warbler-4
Above you can see two pictures of a Yellow Warbler, what a beautiful bird with the reddish streaks on his breast. I found him at the Maze and my next blog post you’ll see even nicer pictures of him. After I caught him on film (ahem…digital) I turned and did a sketch of the “Sister Trees” along side Long Lane in the Maze. First I drew a simple rectangle and then sketched the part of the trees I wanted into the box. Later I doodled around and added the frame look, see it below. It is not a drawing of the trees in the photo below it.
sketch-page-2-5-16-09
And then there’s my wonderful old oak trees; one growing along my property line in the field, the other is part of a long line of oaks along the other property line with a path called Oak Lane. Oak Lane is my favorite part of my property besides the Enchanted Forest. We call it that and at times it’s the Emerald Forest. Yes, it’s a magical place!
oak-trees
old-oak
You can see in this photo the sky was getting grey, and the air got cooler, a rain storm was coming. Ginger and I hurried our pace down Oak Lane then up Memory Lane…We made it home just in time to run across the yard in a downpour, my camera tucked under my fleece jacket. I don’t mind getting wet but NOT my camera!
Before we left for our hike, I took a few bird pictures around the yard and barn.
song-sparrow
One of my favorites the Song Sparrow, he loves this one particular post to sit upon.
tree-swallow-on-branch
And here’s Mr. Swallow in the tree above his nest box home, he sat there preening for a bit.
tree-swallow-in-box
And here’s the happy home, a Blue Bird nest box that the swallows are very happy to use. This is the third year at least they’ve nested here. If you walk near they will fly circles around you and come quiet close depending on how close you are to their box. Last year I assisted them in chasing away a pair of very pushy (and not very nice) House Sparrows that were aggressively trying to take the box.
house-sparrow-male
Here’s Mr. House sparrow, he and the misses decided to nest in a metal pole left from an old satellite dish. At least this year all the birds seem to be getting along, within feet of each other there’s a Starling nest in the wall of the barn, the House Sparrows next to that, then Starlings in one of my blue bird houses and the Tree Swallows in that other. I have two nest boxes out in my field, one has Tree Swallows and the other I think the Blue Birds were able to get. Pictures of them coming up soon! Hope you enjoyed the photos, soon I’ll start some small paintings of the birds.
It was a gorgeous day so after my walk with my dog Ginger I sat on the old picnic table in the center of the yard and played around with my watercolor pencils and watercolors. I still prefer to use my watercolors as I can make any color I like as to the watercolor pencils where you can sketch areas quickly but the color is so very different when you wet it. You really have to practice and maybe do some small test areas (as I did at the bottom of the page) to see what it will look like.
"May Field sketch page"
The first picture is my whole sketchbook page including some little sketches of an unfinished Barn Owl and the Tree Swallows who were swooping over me. I sat on the table in the middle of the yard and was attacked by darn black flies! You can read my note, I even left out a word I was SO distracted by them trying to bite me and fly into my eyes.
"May Field close-up"
There’s a close up of the field sketch, the thing I do like about watercolor pencils is that you can show your lines; it can be very expressive.
"May Trees"
This picture above shows a watercolor study of trees far off in my field. I was using just one waterbrush for this, as the paint dried fast working in the sun outdoors, I found that I could actually put some bright yellow dots over dark areas.
"Watercolor Pencil color test"
This picture is really what I set out to practice today, color swatches in watercolor pencils to match the grass I was seeing. I laid down one color and labeled it then tested putting one color over the top area and labeled it too. When you wet it the color changes quite a bit, that’s why I wanted to play around with it. You can hold your sketchbook up and look directly at the grass (or whatever you’re trying to match) in front of you, next to the sketchbook. Look back and forth and ask yourself if it’s too yellow?, too bright green? Does the chroma need to be dulled down? I find that the watercolor pencils are very bright in chroma, that’s why I’m practicing with them.
I started this busy day by meeting my host Patrick and spent the entire morning walking the property with him. We left my backpack in a tiny little room with a tiny door to the outside of the castle and a spiral staircase that went up. Here he is standing in front of the castle looking out over the valley.
Below is the view we had that morning of the valley below the castle.
We went out into the garden, then into the woods and followed many paths and sometimes left it for the woods, Patrick knew it all like the back of his hand. This 1800 acres was his backyard!
A beautiful magical path.
Above a most gigantic Sycamore tree, the trees here are old and immense. Their canopy spans huge areas that Patrick said was a problem for the Rhododendrons trying to get light from below!
Below Patrick showed me that to tell the type of Rhododendron you flip the leaves over and look at the underside! His Rhododendrons are from all over the world and he keeps records of all their growth habits, failures and successes. He is a true master gardener.
We wound our way up the mountain, sometimes catching a glimpse of the valley through the trees, and then before you knew it a gate appeared before us.
This is the gate from the other side…it’s called a kissing gate and is designed to keep livestock from pushing the gate open but people can easily swing it one way the back the other to allow them through.
Then I looked up and this is what I saw! The Irish Sea!! Wow, how amazing it was…this part of England looks out to the Isle of Man and past it Ireland. It was such a wonderful surprise to come out of the woods and an open expanse of beaches and water!
This is a road that leads to an old church on the castle grounds.
This is a view looking back down the terrace at the castle, it was extremely wide and immensely long.
This view is looking up the valley away from the castle, it gives me a chill even now to remember how it felt to stand there looking at such beauty.
These pictures of the paintings I actually took this morning as we prepared to leave the castle. Patrick had some things to attend to and I took some shots while I waited. I love portraits and these were incredible, some were by Gainsborough, Titian and Reynolds.
Just look at how dark and rich the colors in this man’s face looks! I think he was a Pennington.
Last night as I walked out to the barn, I paused to admire the stars, it being a clear night with a small crescent moon. My dog Ginger was bouncing around me waiting for me to continue to the barn for feeding time, I had to watch awhile. I watched them twinkling and thought again about how people all over the world are connected when they look up at the stars and moon. I noticed too how the light cast from the barn made the trees glow against the dark sky, the lighting from below was haunting. It was just then I saw a bright shooting star fly over the trees…with bright sparkling colors behind it; it didn’t have a long tail, but a very brilliant short one.
This is the painting taped to the table (it’s 5″x7″), I used a liquid friskit with the pen tip to quickly sketch the trees on. They are a little clumsy but I meant to do it as a quick sketch, and have some liveliness to it. The stars came out a bit too big so later I had to paint them in a bit.
After the liquid friskit is dry and only then, is it ok to do liberal washes over it. The friskit keeps the paper white, I should have taken a photo to show you how bright and ‘garish’ it looked when I rubbed it off. My son Paul loved the look, kind of modern but a bit too stark for me. I brushed over the trees liberally with browns and then used a damp brush to lift color around the tree tops…a softening effect to suggest the finer branches and glow.
This is my tiny kit with the Altoids tin of watercolors, I mixed my paints on the metal pencil case. The last thing I did was put a little color in behind the shooting star, I took note of this right when I saw it and that’s what I found fascinating about it.
So that’s it, a little sketch of a shooting star…and oh yes…I DID WISH UPON IT!! (but I’m not telling!
This is a tiny little watercolor painting I did on New Year’s Eve morning, while drinking my coffee and looking out the back studio window. It measures a mere 2.5 x 3.5″. You can see below a photo I took while working, but I put the tin down to take the photo. I painted it while standing and holding this little set-up in my left hand. It’s a pencil case that I stick my “Altoids” watercolor kit in using blue tack or sticky tack, and the same for the tiny watercup. I also use the tack to hold two brushes at the ready on the side; I use the metal area under the paint kit to mix colors. This set up works well for small paintings and studies.
This is a little oil pastel I did while eating breakfast on my back deck, I started it the other day and finished it today. Done on canvas paper, I laid down the first layer by drawing sky color and grass and then scrubbing lightly with a bristle brush and mineral spirits. I then sketched in the tree trunks as thinly as I could in greys and light browns. I added clumps of light green for the leaves and then added darker green under to make them stand out. I put the grass colors on, and the dry grass color, which I then used the rubber pastel blender to drag the grass up into the green. I also used the rubber blender to smooth over the tree trunks, this helped to get rid of the canvas texture.
The sky was laid in darker colors at the top and lighter towards the bottom, I put white very heavy where the clouds would be, then I was able to blend into the cloud with sky color a bit. This was all a very ‘back and forth’ process, I thought it was finished then picked up another color and added leaves, then added back to the sky, and so on. I used a paper clip to scratch grass into the field, and then my initials into the painting.
I used my tiny Olympus camera to take pictures of this so I could upload it with my laptop. This is to test how I can update my blog while I’m traveling, so far so good!
Hope you enjoyed todays updates!
It was a very hot day when I decided to scoot outside to do a quick little painting. I used my a square sketchpad because it’s a fun change. The painting is only 5″x5″ big. I first sketched with a micron pen then I used my tiny watercolor kit. Because the day was so hot, it dried very quickly as I worked. I like the stroked look of the sky, it gives it movement. Of course Ginger had to be right next to me! She was smart and hide from the hot sun under the table! I stood at the picnic table and put one foot up on the seat, resting my sketchbook and arm on my knee. This little painting is of Birds Foot Trefoil, it grows wild here and there in my, ahem…kind of wild yard! It has lovely little yellow flowers and it’s called ‘bird’s foot’ because the pod cluster that grows looks like a bird foot. This flower grows in Europe and that’s where it came from, now quite common here. The painting is a bit pale because I painted it in full sun, it got hard to look at the white paper after awhile. I used a little trick to make it go faster, I held the flower so the shadow fell onto my paper and then drew the stem lightly with a pencil. Then I was able to just look at the flower and work on my drawing, fixing the details and proportions.
Well here I am the last day, the last hours of my time at the Allegany Nature Pilgrimage, spending it at the most beautiful place I found all weekend, Thunderocks. Before I left the park I drove up by myself to visit this wonder I kept hearing about, wow! it was well worth it. You drive up the hill, make a left turn at the four corners and just ahead, very easy parking and you are right there. It’s quite accessable for everyone.
The whole area is a bit unique as it was untouched by the glaciers so I’ve been told. The rocks are enormous, some as big as houses, and what a great place to bring your kids to let them marvel at this natural sight! (and climb a little!) You can see I’m wearing my binoculars and my sketchbag, I also had a video camera with me and took some nice videos. The little clip at the end is just with my tiny digital camera.
Here you can see a family climbing up, which helps to show the immense size of the rocks.
I just love the dapple effect of the sun on the rocks. It’d either be a painters dream or nightmare. The views are gorgeous, but the sun dapples ever moving and disappearing.
Though the ground was well worn around the rocks, there were still many pockets of wildflowers and ferns. I saw Clintonia, Wild Lily of the Valley, Star Flowers, and ferns.
Another beautiful view, showing mosses, ferns and trees. I’d love to sit up on one of those big rocks in the middle of the night and just listen to everything around me. I wonder what the Indians thought of these rocks? Did they use them as landmarks? Climb around on them as children too? Who knows.
This one reminds me of a green waterfall~ so lush!
I took the time to do a really quick little sketch before I left. You can see I put notes about a bird and bird song on the page. Below a short, corny video clip for you…but what can I say? I loved being there and didn’t want to leave!
Today I felt like I just had to get out of the house! There was a bit of snow on the ground so before winter weather leaves us completley I decided to go snowshoeing with my dog Ginger. I decided to leave all the colors behind (watercolors, color pencils etc.) and just bring some non permanent ink, micron permanent pens and my waterbrush. I really like sketching with a NON permanent pen because you can create some nice effects with a little water and a brush after. You can rework or redraw on top of it after to add details or more value. The ink I’m using is called Brilliant Brown by Pellican. I put it into an expensive little Rapidograph pen, it has a very fine tip for details. The ink is nice though it gets a bit ‘pinkish’ when you wet it, but I still like it.
Page one of my sketchbook I talk about wearing my dad’s old hunting coat, oh I love that coat but mostly because it makes me think of him! When we were kids he’d dress up in the red plaid overalls and coat and chuckle like Santa! We’d all laugh!
The sketch shows a little deer path across my field that the foxes have been using. Then I used ‘comparative measurements’ to draw an exact size of the track. This is something I teach in my Nature Sketching classes. The branches were rubbing in the wind and they sounded like frogs calling! The picture of me I took myself! I experiment all the time with my camera, this time using my trusty Olympus FE230. I hung it in a tree, on a branch, by it’s little strap. I turned it on, and checked to see if it was pointed in the right general direction and then set the auto timer. Once you set it RUN!! and get in the picture. Then you can check to see if it came out. I was lucky and this one came out first try! haha…
Page two of my sketchbook (click to enlarge) shows a drawing of Ginger’s footprint. I did this to compare to the other print I drew, and to show that a dog will have claw marks. The other print I couldn’t see any. The other drawings on the page were done with a Graphitint water soluble pencil (cocoa). I like the color of this a lot! The clouds were high and puffy, I tried to draw them, but it was hard! Then I sketched a flock of geese going over, at first they sounded like yipping coyotes in the distance.
Page three I switched back to my rapidograph pen and non perm. ink. I found a tiny nest and on the page I indicated it’s actual size by measuring with my pen. Then using my sketchbook, starting at the ground and going up I counted how many sketchbooks tall it was. Knowing the size of my sketchbook I was able to very closely estimate how far off the ground it is. 21″. This is using comparative measurements in another way. The oak leaves are still hanging on, still pretty in their dry form.
The two photos (click to enlarge) are from my return walk home. The one shows a view of what it looks like when you hug a tree and look up! It’s pretty cool!! TRY IT! The other is a view of Long Lane on my way back home. Ginger is actually up ahead in the bushes on the left, can you spot her? I have a video clip that I’m goint to attach, lets hope it works! I really enjoyed sharing this walk with you, please leave me your comments and questions. I have classes starting in May for Nature Sketching, please email me for more information mary@marymcandrew.com
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Today I felt like I just had to get out of the house! There was a bit of snow on the ground so before winter weather leaves us completley I decided to go snowshoeing with my dog Ginger. I decided to leave all the colors behind (watercolors, color pencils etc.) and just bring some non permanent ink, micron permanent pens and my waterbrush. I really like sketching with a NON permanent pen because you can create some nice effects with a little water and a brush after. You can rework or redraw on top of it after to add details or more value. The ink I’m using is called Brilliant Brown by Pellican. I put it into an expensive little Rapidograph pen, it has a very fine tip for details. The ink is nice though it gets a bit ‘pinkish’ when you wet it, but I still like it.
