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.
This coming Saturday April 4, 2009, I’ll be giving a free talk and demonstration about nature sketching in the field. It’ll be held at the Iroquois Wildlife Refuge from 1pm, at the refuge headquarters building, 1101 Casey Road. I’ll be showing my personal sketchbooks, art supplies I use in the field, how I carry things and demonstrating some basic drawing techniques along with how to make a simple field sketchbook for yourself! Please come and meet me and see my sketchbooks and be inspired to go drawing in the field after!
Here’s some links to past entries on my Nature Sketching blog from hikes around the Iroquois Wildlife Refuge.
A Valentines Day bouquet from your sweetie is very nice…smells so sweet, warms your heart..but doesn’t last forever no matter what you do. Unless you get out your paints and do some studies! After a week of enjoying the blooms…then watching some slowly fade, I picked out the freshest ones and moved them into another vase up to my studio. As I did the tulips dropped their petals in a flourish, woosh…all over the table. I picked some up and looked at them, thinking how beautiful their individual forms and colors were.
I decided to do studies of the petals and laid them on my paper with a strong little lamp above me. I should have titled this post “How to Paint Through Pain”…that is, how to cope with painting while in pain. I painted these on the floor, my lower back has been hurting and sitting in a chair was too much to bear. So, I put it on the floor and kept moving around…kneeling, laying on my stomach…what ever I could. I got a bit messy with some areas of these studies, but then it was hard to concentrate! I started each with a basic gesture of the shape very lightly drawn with pencil. The shadows were the most fun to paint, studying the colors coming through the petals. A tip here, to keep the petals fresh until you’re ready to work, put them in a ziplock sandwich bag with a sprinkle of water, then put them in the refrigerator. Tell everyone NOT to eat them!!
Oh yes, the other thing is I did them with just my waterbrush…see above picture. You can see the petals laying on my paper and waterbrush in my hand. (PS. this was really late at night…actually I think it was 1am!)
So now I can look at the little study and always remember my Valentines surprise bouquet! I wish I had time to do more studies..I had planned to, but you know how that goes!
Today I’ll take you to the Marina at Derwent water where I stayed overnight at The Derwent Hotel. It’s a gorgeous place to stay all newly refinished, the bedroom was just sumptuous! And oh yes, I really liked that they had internet so I could catch up with the folks at home and let them know I wasn’t lost somewhere in the English countryside! This is the front lobby, coming down in the early morning to have my oatmeal made with cream and oh boy was it rich!
Then I made my way across the street and just down a driveway and there you are…the marina. A small, uncomplicated, peaceful place so early in the morning. http://www.derwentwatermarina.co.uk/Walking toward the water…I took note of birds I saw, almost all were new to me, how exciting!
I love when the mist is lower than the mountains around it, the puffs were making their way up each ‘valley’ from the lake. Small coots were chugging across the still water looking for fish…I did some small sketches of birds and wrote my bird list on the sketch page shown below.
Click the page to read my notes.
These are simple sketches done while walking around, this is typically how I draw birds in the field. Not much to them, just identification notes, and I had my Altoids watercolor kit with me and did some simple coloring. I think one of my favorite birds was the wood pidgeon; with a flash of white on his wings when he flew from the deep trees where hidden. They are quite big compared to ‘our’ rock doves or pidgeons.
Later in the day I walked up the hill behind the hotel. It was very chilly and damp as I sat and worked. I did a small sketch of the lake view over the hotel, trying to get some color notes on it so I’d remember how it looked. I think my friend Gary arrived just in time though as my fingers were getting quite stiff! Time for hot tea!
I just finished the sketch,(back home in the states) working from a dull photo because it was a dull day. I sat in a coffee/lunch area in the grocery store on a nasty snowy day and worked on it…then finished it in the comfort of my studio. I perked up the color a little trying to keep in mind the original colors I had on the paper. I signed it Lake Derwent before I learned that it’s called Derwent Water. By the way, I did the entire painting using one waterbrush and my travel palette. I’m trying to practice using the waterbrush so it’ll come naturally in the field.
I think it’s a nice little painting!
I think the painting will always mean something different to the artist who painted it in the field. As I sat and sketched, then painted…I absorbed all around me. My eyes studied the colors, my ears heard wrens and thrushes singing, the wind blowing through the pines, my fingers felt the cool rain drops and mist, my face felt the breeze and my nose smelled the wet leaves and mosses in the undergrowth behind me…and the smells of the kitchen below. As I look at that little painting…I can remember it all! THIS is what makes painting outside in nature so rewarding, and it’s why I do it. I hope you’ll join me someday in experiencing this feeling.
I’ve been trying to go back into my sketches I did on my trip to England and add some color or finish what I’ve started. On this little sketch I scribbled it out in 5min….and added some notes on color right on the page. So to keep practicing with my waterbrush and watercolors I added some color while looking at a photo I had taken that day. It’s different using the waterbrush alone and not an assortment of brushes. You have one tip to work with and a different kind of flow of water. I’m liking it more and more, but it still has it’s limitations, most especially when wanting to lay in a large wash of color. You have to mix a puddle of color first on your palette, squeezing the barrel to make drops of water come out.
The cardinals I did looking at the little feeder that is stuck to my studio window. I wasn’t concerned with a fantastic drawing, just practicing the gesture sketches of it. I added a touch of color with a waterbrush and watercolor.
Then I decided to take my sketchbook, watercolors and a simple waterbrush with me when I went out to feed the chickens. It was really cold and windy, so it was hard to draw, but I donned the flip top mittens and went to it! Ok..it was worse trying to paint, but I did some simple color studies. It’s very hard to sketch chickens as they move so much!
Then I headed outside the barn and set my pad on top of a tripod that I attached a piece of wood to, it was very windy! The mount isn’t a very strong one, it loosened up sometimes, but it allowed me to set everything down in front of me. I’m always experimenting with ideas.
Above you can see the some chickens that were roosting in the rafters. I painted them with Chinese ink…from a dry cake I keep in a tin; it used to be liquid I just let it dry and can use it like dry watercolors. Below that is the little landscape study with some notes. The hawk sketches I added today actually. I saw a hawk through the window and tried to do a sketch using my binoculars. I’m pretty sure it’s a red tailed hawk.
My landscape was pretty far away from me, but I was after the colors of the field. You can see the picture below. Oh yes…and then there’s Ginger, always waiting for me to walk on somewhere else! haha….
That’s it for now…stay tuned for more updates about my trip to England, sign up your email in the box in the right column. Bye!
photo courtesy of John Rusak-Clarence Bee News, teaching at the Burchfield Nature and Art Center Spring 2008, 5th grade class
Indoor and Field Classes
Join Naturalist Artist guide Mary McAndrew in sketching, painting and experiencing nature through art.
Mary McAndrew (716) 741-4544 mary@marymcandrew.com
Mary McAndrew, naturalist artist guide, will be giving a FREE introductory talk and lesson on “Nature Sketching in the Field” at the Iroquis National Wildlife Refuge. Please bring a sketch pad and pencils; the time of the program is 1pm at the refuge visitors center 1101 Casey Road. To read more about the Iroquois Wildlife Refuge visit their website: http://www.fws.gov/northeast/iroquois/mary@marymcandrew.com
My students trying watercolors for the first time, it was so much fun!
In the morning looking out my window, I was greeted by an unusual sight, sheep in the courtyard! I guess it would be very frustrating to have a garden here as the sheep kind of wander where they like, especially if their gate is left open. The owners of Cote Howe B+B told me it was hard to protect the garden and they try to put fencing around it.
This morning I was leaving Rydal Water, I was sad to say good-bye. I went out behind the B+B to wait for my friend Gary to come, it was chilly and damp. I climbed up on top of a big wooden gate with huge stone posts and did a balancing act as I swung my legs to the other side. The stone wall is fascinating in itself to study, notice the huge cap stone at the end on the left…I don’t know how deep it goes into the ground, but I’m sure it goes down a few feet at least. This is how the stones were set for Stonehenge and the other stone circles around England and Ireland. The big stone here is used as the post, the wall being built up against it and also gates can be hung on it. The wall has a niche in it, I forget what the owner told me it was for? Does anyone know? Above you can see some beautiful forms of fungus’s and moss. It seems anything that wasn’t moving in England this fall, was covered with mosses! I’ll try to identify these later from my field guides, if anyone has some good identification, leave me a comment please! There were sheep in the field, an occasional hiker and just a beautiful view looking towards Rydal Water and the path I took yesterday for my hike. I sat on a gate and sketched the sheep and path view, the bunny is from when I was standing by the garden and saw him there. I sat so quietly sketching that the sheep came right up under me, when I spoke to her, she was very surprised to see me! That’s the neat thing about sketching in nature, you sit so quietly engrossed that wildlife will come around you.
Below you can see my original page, this is what I did as I sat on the fence, I painted it in while looking at the photos on my computer screen, using my tiny Altoids watercolor kit and just one waterbrush. You can see my tiny color tests in the spiral area of the paper.
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