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The little mice of Long Lane don’t sleep in the winter like some other animals do. They still go out into the snowy land and look for food or visit each other. They have cozy little homes, deep under ground or inside of great old trees. (please click pictures for clearer view)
 “Home Cozy Home” They like to light candles that cast a warm light and even a little warmth to their small rooms. The flame flickers and the hot wax melting smells good!
 Warm candle light flickers on the walls. They like to have creamy hot cups of cocoa by the fireside waiting on the warm hearth.
 Oh what a cozy scene, I can almost smell the wood fire! Some of the mice have learned how to use snowshoes, finding they don’t sink into the deep snow as easily. Here’s a pair that just came in from the cold!
 A trusty pair of snowshoes getting dry by the fire. Those snowshoes belong to this mouse, he’s taking all his wet layers off by the warm fire.
 Little snowshoe mouse getting warm. First he takes off his snowshoes and sets them by the fire, then he takes off his boots, hat, mittens and scarf. He knows his mom has made hot cocoa for them both to enjoy.
 And here’s the whole scene, mouse getting warm by his cozy fire. I did this watercolor after I was out snowshoeing myself this winter. I like getting out using them, they’re good exercise especially when you’re cooped up indoors. I found it difficult this winter because we had awful flooding around Christmas time and then it all froze. Walking out on the lanes was not a great idea so I didn’t get to go snowshoeing much like this little mouse! 🙁
Maybe it was wishful thinking creating this little sketch? It’s not really big but I like how it came out for a sketch. I have redrawn it on ‘good’ paper and will see if I can paint it again and still keep that freshness I love about a sketch.
I hope you enjoyed it! Hopefully it won’t be long and we’ll be looking at spring blooms instead of snow at Long Lane Farm! 😉
I created some beautiful glossy note cards have a look! (Click the pictures) They would make a cozy winter greeting to send someone. You can put any color you want around the painting.
Green background.
Golden orange background.
Red background, this would look great as a Christmas Card!
 "Winter Field Sketch" This is a little (5 x 7″) oil painting I did “en plein air”, or translation… “while standing in the snowy field freezing my fingers off”! What I wanted to do was study the colors in oil and not get too caught up in the finished look of a painting. It was a good exercise in study of color for me, it would not have been as successful if I did it from a photograph.
 My oil field kit, closed. I rigged up a little field kit for oil painting, just for taking out on hikes. Here’s a picture of the kit closed, it’s a plastic case you can buy at an office supply department. I’ve only used it this once but hope to work with it more and ‘tweek’ it. The main objective was to keep it as light as possible.
 Here it is open to show you the metal pencil case and use of 'sticky tack'. This shows the kit open with two areas of gessoed canvas ready to use. Notice the four dots of ‘sticky tack’ on the left, they’ll hold the lid of the metal pencil case when I want to paint, using the lid for mixing. I used tape to make loops to hold brushes; just put tape sticky sides together to make it ‘not’ sticky in the middle.
 I created a loop of tape to slide my medium cup into. I used the tape in the same way here, keeping it sticky on the ends but not in the middle, I created a loop that my medium cup would slot onto. At the angle I would hold the kit, the cup would not come off! It was then held from behind with a dab of ‘sticky tack’.
 Here is my field kit in action! I held the homemade kit in one hand, using my arm for support, and painted with my right hand. It’s all in my reach and I brought no tubes of paint. Notice my fingers are holding one brush at the ready and the other ‘dirty’ or ‘in use’ brushes are kept on the left of the hinge, clean ones to the right in the loop.
 Of course Ginger was along for the adventure and waits patiently to continue with our walk! I put a squeeze of my colors in a metal pencil case and put some in a pill box from the pharmacy before I left the house. The pill box was an experiment and I wasn’t really satisfied with it, it gets too messy on the lids and doesn’t keep the paint really airtight. Since then I’ve moved to using contact lens cases that screw shut…we’ll see how the paint lasts in them as they’re all back in England and I won’t see them until spring!
 This shows you my view of the field as I worked. The above picture shows you the view I had as I worked, it also illustrates how dull the colors look on a photograph and how I perceived the colors with my eyes to be a bit more vivid. This is why working in the field is so important whether you are oil painting, using watercolors, pastels…etc.
When I came back home, I stuck the little study up on a wood post in my living room using ‘Loctite” sticky tack. I hung there for ages and I enjoyed looking at it whenever I walked by. It wasn’t until I found a great frame and laid it on top that it popped out and said “HEY…I’m a good little painting!” hahah…yes sometimes my paintings talk to me…don’t yours? It also told me to stop ignoring it and get it framed so it could have a proper place on the wall! Yes…yes, the voice of guilt, this painting actually was done last year (12/31/10) and since I traveled to England it got sort of forgotten!
Click to see photos enlarged:
 How it looks framed on the wall  "Winter Field Sketch" framed and in cool daylight Original framed painting $165 contact me
Go here to see all my Landscape Paintings in the Gallery.
I also made some nice products in my Zazzle Gift Shop with this, please click on the pictures to have a look!
Glossy Note Cards- 2 sizes
Glossy Post Cards
 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!
Today as the sun shone and the temperatures climbed to a balmy 30 or so degrees, I felt a very strong urge to just grab my field kit and go for a hike with Ginger. I notice whenever I go out field sketching or work on a painting in the studio, it’s like having a visit to the therapist! I feel like I’ve just had some kind of adjustment, and all is right in my world! Troubles melt away as I stop to catch my breath and listen to the wind gusting through the trees. Today was no different. (click on any picture to see enlarged view)
 First small sketch done with a micron 05 permanent marker, it’s along the path that’s called “Long Lane” on my farm. To warm up and to see if drawing with my fingerless mittens would feel comfortable, I did the top of a small oak tree, then turned and looked down the lane where Ginger was disappearing down, and did a quickly scrawled sketch. It’s ok that it’s not beautiful and meticulously drawn, I can remember the scene in my mind just be looking at it. Sometimes the field sketch can have more movement and show more excitement than a carefully executed studio drawing. I also find that being able to work loosely in the field keeps my studio painting fresh and lively looking.  Just me in my dad’s old wool hunting coat that I treasure, using the fingerless mitten ok. I picked up this pair in England at a regular clothes store at the mall, I made sure they had wool in them, and I like the dark brown color (to hide the dirt of course silly!). At this point I think my fingers were cold, sometimes I worked with the top pulled back and sometimes closed. I’m using a waterbrush here and watercolors, I put my kit in a new bag to try out, an over the shoulder binder type thing, but no room for apples or water bottles. Extra things had to go in the back secret pouch on the hunting jacket, made for carrying dead birds that the hunter (dad) would shoot. It’s actually a handy pouch…I slid my sketchbook in there when I would get moving on my hike.  This is a page with a simple color study of the red bark on bushes and the little fern heads coming up through the snow. Their forms, almost silhouette because they’re so dark, are wonderful to study.  The photo above shows a leaf I found in a tiny birds nest that was tucked into a tangled bush. It’s small things like this that if you take time to notice the subtle beauty your enjoyment of the natural world and simple walks would be much more memorable. This leaf is a simple shape, but I love the mixture of subtle colors, there’s a promise of green there that makes me think of spring, it’s almost as if the green was frozen from the fresh times of summer. The pattern of the veins and cells is really something too, the wet sheen on it’s surface reflecting a cool light.  Then turn the same leaf over and it’s a whole other leaf! This side has a network of raised veins showing, like fine meshwork netting and the contrast of the color of vein to leaf is at once noticed. The fall like colors are not showing on this side. When you pick something up, turn it over and explore everything about it; if you draw it, you will study it deeply, noting it’s every interesting detail. Sometimes this is good to do once you get back home and can sit in the warmth and take time to study it.  Here’s another nest I found that almost looks like it has an ice cream scoop for an egg waiting to be hatched by the warm spring sun. (It’ll have to wait awhile still!) Walking in winter is a good time to look for birds nests, just look at bushes or trees for clumps of dark areas, usually made by leaves and small branches. It’s fun to look closely at them, how the tiny branches are laid criss cross and woven, and imagine two birds picked up ever single twig and made that. Some nests are tiny things..some larger and could even be for grey squirrels. I don’t ever disturb the nests…I feel they are there to be used somehow by other creatures, mice, bugs, etc. and I just let it alone. I will carefully pull some leaves out of a nest to see what the cup might look like.  Now this page has notes you can read, but I’ll explain a bit more. I went to a part of my land that has huge old oak trees on it, and one in particular that is dead. This dead tree had all kinds of funguses growing on it and was great to study.  I learned something new that I didn’t expect, there was an interesting type of fungus growing on the underside of all the large branches. It was a beautiful natural yellow with some orangey colors in it, but very muted. The funny thing was I noticed the snow beneath it had yellow spots following the branches, NO Ginger didn’t do that! haha…but as the snow piled on top of the branches melted, the yellow color in the fungus was dripping down to the ground. I wonder if the Indians or settlers used that as a color for something?  Here’s a close up, if anyone can help me identify this I’d be grateful. I looked it up in my mushroom and fungus books but can’t find it specifically.  This fungus is as far as I can tell, a “Redbelt” shelf fungus. I did a painting in the field while looking at it and looked it up when I got home. (The painting is below). The odd thing was, as closely as I thought I looked at this, I still missed something interesting. When I got home and uploaded my photos, I noticed on some close ups there were little blackish bugs crawling all over the place!! Ewww….I have to admit, I like studying bugs, but the idea that there were bugs all over this fungus and tree and I didn’t know it kind of made me uneasy! But the fascinating thing was that there were bugs out doing their thing in the middle of the winter! You would be surprised at what you’ll see on a mild winter day!  At this point, at the end of my hike after being out two hours, my toes were frozen and getting numb. This is when the idea of hot cocoa creeps into my mind and Ginger’s happy face asking, “Can we go home yet?” starts to distract me.  This last page I finished at home while drinking that hot cocoa; the tree and fungus I did in the field. I brought home a stick with neat fungus growing on it, the leaf I photographed and a dead leaf. This stick was very interesting to look at under a magnifying glass, the black fungus was shiny and the rose colored had a velvety sheen almost. I made a stab at identifying the rose colored as Hypoxylon Fragiforme, any experts out there can verify this? I added color notes too so you could see what paints I used.
I hope you enjoyed our hike today in the winter chill! Sign up your email in the right column to recieve updates when I post new things. Happy Hiking!
 Well, as you gather from my title, it is cold outside today! The past two days it’s been in the ‘teens’…today only 10 degrees F. But it’s been awhile since I did some outdoor observations so I threw my little 5 1/2″x 81/2″ sketchbook into a gallon ziplock bag and three micron pens. NO playing with color today, I knew it’d be too cold to get into that, especially with wearing big gloves and my water freezing!
I mostly drew with a .02 micron pen, wearing huge mittens! I forgot my flipback pair that my English friend encouraged me to wear, so I was stuck with the big, cumbersome old leather pair of mittens that I wear when I do barn chores in the winter. I should post a picture of them so you could have a laugh…they have duct tape around parts because of wear! haha…
So, about my drawings, the first was a small clump of weeds by the barn with snow on top of them. It was really beautiful, even the colors were nice. Then I walked over to the garden where my flowers are all standing dead but looking interesting with their bareness of form. I especially liked the Black-Eyed Susan’s because they were almost like abstract black dots against all the white.
Then I used my micron brush pen, which I think is a bit dried out, but that can be a good thing. I sketched the Blue Spruce and some trees next to it very quickly. I was running out of space here. So then I flipped the page and did a very quick rendition of a group of trees that I like to draw in the summer. I used the brush pen again for that.
 Oh a side note here, I’m always trying out new things..today it was an old thing. I had a pair of battery operated heated socks that I pulled out of the closet. The kind that you put a huge D cell battery in the top side of the sock, I wore them today but I think they don’t work! Well they’re old, I have a new pair still in the wrapper, I plugged them in when I got back inside and they seemed to work, so next time I’ll have to try them out. They’re not the most comfortable as the battery jams against your leg if you’re wearing tall boots like I do. I’ll have to test them again to see how they work.
  “Come Walk with Me”
On Wednesday, Feb. 13, I asked my friend Sue if she wanted to come exploring Como Lake Park with me. Yes, it was cold but we both have a love of the outdoors and Sue isn’t afraid of a little snow! I even brought my snowshoes hoping to give her a lesson and get in a little snowshoe time myself, but the trail was too uneven with huge slabs of ice from Cayuga Creek. We drove through the whole park to see what was there, it’s pretty much a ‘picnicey’ type of place, not too many trails, but then we are visiting in winter and need to find out more. We explored one trail labeled “Boy Scout Trail” and I have a picture of the sign here. From the time we started out and returned it was only one hour, we didn’t get to do the whole loop, our toes were getting too cold and we started having thoughts of hot cocoa!
 There are many views at this park, where I could see I’d like to teach a landscape painting class and my nature sketching classes. The creek is great and reminds me of my walks to the Susquehanna River where I grew up, except that was MUCH larger than this creek!
You can see I’m drawing with my small sketchbook, my bag is slung across my shoulder mailman style so I can get at everything easily. (Sorry the picture is dark). My small camera is attached to the strap, as is my sandpaper block, a compass, and a tiny bottle of pepper spray! Ahhmmm yes ladies, you should be carrying this or something like it when hiking, and try to never hike alone, there are too many weirdos out there, yes I’ve met some!
 You can see on my sketchbook page, I started by drawing a square in the center of the page. I stuck a post it note in the back of my sketchbook to use for tracing a perfect square. It’s fun to add some design elements to your pages sometimes. You can then draw whatever you want to highlight in the box, and fill around it with little sketches, notes, tracks etc. I decided to sketch behind it a view of Cayuga creek looking south, you can see this view in the picture of me looking straight across the creek. Remember it’s cold, and even wearing flip back mittens (as my friend in England recommended!) I still had to draw very fast. Especially when hiking with a friend, I feel more pressured to ‘hurry up’.
I found a Hawthorne tree and noted several birds that I heard. At the end of our walk, I heard a loud woodpecker call, we stopped and watched for awhile and then saw a big Pileated Woodpecker fly out through the high branches! It was exciting! Perhaps the large, fresh woodpecker holes I took pictures of, were from this one? Here’s a link for Como Lake Park with how to get there and picnic info etc. http://www.erie.gov/parks/como.asp (if link doesn’t work, I’ve listed it in my links column to the left, under Buffalo nature links.)
 
This is a watercolor sketch I did just before the sun came up over the horizon. It took me about 30 minutes…I laid on the background sky, trees and field, then the forground trees. It’s on the pale side, I was working on sketch paper, not heavy enough to mess around on. My objective was to practice with my small kit for field work. Once the sun came up, I couldn’t work on it because it was just too bright to look at.
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