Autumn Nature Journal

I traveled recently to a wedding, and had a few hours of time before the ceremony. I took my nature journal for a stroll around the hotel grounds.  

The hotel was bordered by an undeveloped meadow with old orchard trees, creating space for an impressive array of native wildflowers -- from familiar goldenrods and white clover to Virginia Mountain Mint, an icy, peppermint-scented plant that makes me feel as though I've been swept away to the Arctic wilderness when I smell it.

Here's the list of plants I found:

wild strawberries

coneflowers( Rudbeckia)

Dogwood red osier?

Goldenrod

St. John's wort

Wild dogbane

Shaggy mane mushroom

Queen Anne's Lace

Mountain mint

Horse Gentian (honeysuckle family)

White clover

Cottonwood

Pear trees

crabapple trees

apple trees

Liatris?

Thistle

Wild grape

Privet

Red oak

New england aster

Willow

I sketched as I went, and found a windblown cottonwood twig with golden leaves to take back to our hotel room and draw.

There's nothing so grounding to me as drawing plants. I notice as many details as I can and sketch them in.  The dance between using two or three different shades of yellow colored pencils to create the hues to match the cottonwood leaves feels a little like a workout.  When it's done, there's a quiet satisfaction that rises up.

Now when I look back, I see little reminders of our time away from home.  I feel grateful to the wildflowers, trees, and geese for making me feel connected to nature. 

Sketching an Autumn Scene

A crisp Autumn day dawned clear and lovely, and I set out to capture a bit of the season's color with my paintbrush.  

I started with a pencil sketch and then painted a wet-in-wet sky using Phthalo blue and French Ultramarine Blue.

After the sky dried, I mixed pyrrol red and Azo yellow to create the orange hues of the sassafras foliage.  I laid in a wash of sap green muted with a touch of alizarin crimson.

I got lost in laying in the greenery along the fenceline (foreground) and in the midground hill.  I used Hooker's green muted with alizarin crimson for the field beyond the fenceline trees.

Finally, I mixed French Ultramarine blue with burnt umber to create a dark gray for the tree trunks and limbs. Yellow ochre muted with burnt umber created the dried grasses.  After the wash was dry, I added in grass stalks in burnt Sienna.

I used the same tree branch gray, lightened for the shadows.  Here's a look at my palette at the end of painting this scene.

This is a great time of year for color!  Even finding a single, vivid leaf or other nature treasure invites sketching, painting and nature journaling time. 

I hope you get a chance soon to record the vibrancy of Autumn in your sketchbook or nature journal.

Happy Creating!

Book Review: Discover the Art of Field Sketching

I just got this wonderful guide to field sketching by Kristin Link, and every time I pick it up, I feel the tingle of new possibilities.

Her photos of the Alaskan backcountry and of her nature journal pages make me feel as if I have been instantly transported to the pristine wilderness that she calls home.  The book itself feels like an adventure.

Link shares her love of nature journaling, remarking, "Sketching combines art, place and nature.  Developing a sketching practice helps us slow down and be present in the places we inhabit... Sketching can be a tool for grounding, reflection and noticing at a slower pace."  

She walks the reader through the process of sketching a natural subject in pencil, then ink & watercolor with 30 photographs and step-by-step sketches of her own.  

The book is chock-full of photographs of Link's beautiful illustrations, journal pages, creative experiments and natural scenes.  She also includes tips for creating shadows and texture, watercolor basics, and how to measure to create an accurate drawing.

I've already started using her approach of listing 5 things she sees, 4 things she hears, 3 things she feels, 2 things she smells and even something she tastes.  I find it slows me down, and gives my busy brain something to do as I slip into the pace of nature.

I highly recommend Discover the Art of Field Sketching.  I hope you get a chance to pick up a copy at your local bookstore or library!

Nature Journal: The First Colors of Autumn

The Autumn colors have begun to come in. I spent an hour with a grand old Sugar Maple tree recently, recording the sights and sounds of the season in my nature journal.

I'm reading Kristin Link's new book, Discover the Art of Field Sketching.  Kristin has inspired me to sit with my nature journal and record what I see, hear, & smell in the moment as I make sketches.  It's a simple & grounding process that brings a page alive when you read it later.

 

I hope you get a chance soon to capture the present moment in your nature journal!

The Importance of Value in Drawings

Tonight in my Pencil Drawing Workshop, we will explore light & shadow in our drawings.  As a person who is drawn to color, I'm always amazed at how important light and shadow is to creating the illusion of 3 dimensions on a flat piece of paper.  

You can see how powerful value is when we turn a color image to black & white. Taking away the distraction of color helps to make the light & shadows apparent.

It took me years to really see shadows, to notice how they often have lighter and darker portions, and to see how light -- in this case, sunlight shining through a window on the left -- bounces off of the white part of the bowl and reflects onto the right side of the two pears on the right.

Here's an illustration of how light falls on a ball.

Seeing shadows on the ball helps us to see light & shadow on more complex shapes.

Remember, you don't have to get all of the values exactly right.  

Try giving your drawing 4 to 5 values, from brightest highlights to darkest darks.

Remember; you're not a camera, and you don't need to be perfect!  I encourage you to play around with seeing and drawing shadows.  

Making a few drawings focusing especially on values will help you to develop the ability to create depth in your artwork.  

I find that art created simply for an "assignment" like this feels less precious so it's easier to focus on the process of drawing.  You notice more, discover more, and learn more as you draw.

Happy Creating!

A Morning Hike with my Nature Journal

On a recent hike in Raccoon Creek State Park, I stopped to sketch a favorite sycamore tree.  The autumn light filtering through the forest caught on the white bark of the sycamore, setting it apart from the dark, shadowy hillside beyond.

Just 15 minutes of sketching deepened my experience of walking in the woods.

The day before, I had been helping David to photograph our friend Joe's artwork.  Looking at my drawing, I can see the inspiration Joe's work imparted.  I admire the way he captures the life in a tree, and the way he sets off a subject by sketching in the shadows behind it.  

Without being conscious of my decisions, I was drawn to sketch the shapes the sycamore tree  highlighted by the dark shadows behind it.

I now realize that I had what Julia Cameron calls an Artist's Date on the day I helped with David's photography project.  And, Joe's artwork directly inspired and improved my artwork.

Anytime we take ourselves out to see something that fascinates us, to see another person's artwork, or to experience beauty in some way, the encounter affects our creativity.  We may feel inspired.  We might create in a new way, or even take on new subjects.  I find that it's always worth the effort of fitting an artist's date into my life.

What artwork or beauty would you like to see?  I hope you put it on your schedule and have an artist's date of your own!

Drawing My Favorite Things

I have two Black Cherry trees on my hill that I love to look at and draw in any season.  Sometimes, when I go out with my nature journal, I try to find "something new and interesting" to draw, as if drawing old favorites is bad or wrong.  My Hobgoblin (inner critic) shouts that these favorite subjects are unimportant, and overdrawn.

Yet, often artists develop their craft by working in a series, taking one subject and drawing it in different seasons, in different light, with different materials, etc.

I recently read some wisdom from artist Louise Fletcher, who reminded me that the things we love are important to our art, even though other people might not appreciate them and so we feel they are unimportant too.  

We often downplay the beloved subjects our muse is just begging us to draw or paint. For me, it's scraggly weeds, little treasures like acorns and leaves, and these two Black Cherry trees.

Emboldened by Louise Fletcher, I sat in the grass Saturday and let myself revel in the beauty of these tree friends.

I used only a black colored pencil, studying the wriggly branches and the light and shadow in the scene.  A flock of starlings swooped through, so I included them in the drawing to express this season of flying leaves and migrating birds.

Simply sketching a favorite scene like this one brings me joy. As I draw, I observe closely the way the tree limbs twist and branch, the way the leaves flutter on the wind, and the shapes and shadows of the brush around the trunks.

 What do you love that you may have overlooked as being unimportant?  I hope your favorite subjects get to be the center of your creativity!