Winter Nature Journal Observations

The snow falls; the temperatures drop, and I turn to my wild relations and my nature journal, brew up a pot of tea, and sit by the window to sketch birds.  

Song Sparrows & Juncos hop just the other side of my window, and feed on the tiny Basil seeds in my planters.  Is that a spicy meal?  Is it warming? I count the songbirds another reason to leave my Basil plants to go to seed rather than nip the flower buds as the gardening books instruct.  

Bumblebees love the flowers in the summer, and now I know the seeds feed my wild bird friends, too.

I trod through the snow down the hill to where a cottonwood sapling grows among spruces and pines.  Drawing with colored pencils allows me to really see the colors and branching patterns in the trees that catch my eye.  Twenty minutes of sketching passes in a moment, and I find myself calmer, more grounded.

Now I have captured a piece of winter between the pages of my journal, a moment in my life that I can come back to next August when I am dripping with sweat.  The more I draw in my nature journal, the more I realize how important sketching nature is to my self care. 

A Simple Winter Watercolor Landscape

I'm currently reading Cathy Johnson's book First Steps: Watercolor Painting (North Light Books, 1995).  She shares her step-by-step approach for beginners to simplifying a landscape.  I tend to get lost in details, wanting to include every knobby tree trunk and bowing weed stalk in a scene.  I am happiest when I can fall into the tiniest features of some bit of nature -- an acorn or autumn leaf, for instance.  

But with an entire landscape, I am learning to see & paint the larger forms first.  What a relief not to expect myself to trace every bramble and bough in the landscape, but just to capture the spirit of the moment.

Saturday morning, I sat down with my paints at the kitchen counter and looked out the sliding glass door to the image above.  The morning mists made the distant trees look hazy, and I focused mainly on Grandmother Sugar Maple -- the bushy looking tree on the left.  

In years past, Grandmother Sugar Maple has provided us with gallons of sap to boil down into delicious, golden maple syrup. I have a special reverence for her, which deepened my painting experience.

Each painting is a learning opportunity. A chance to connect with nature.  A chance to slow down. A chance to express ourselves.  

I hope you will keep painting -- it leads to delightful discoveries!

Artist in a Snowstorm

 

I've been seeking enrichment -- something different in all the sameness of a life lived in this quarantine.  Nature cooperated and provided me with the beauty of a snowstorm.

Art Journaling as a Stress-Break

Taking the cats for their veterinary check-up is both important to me and stressful.  Three furry friends in their cat carriers buckled into my little Elantra created a symphony of mewling misery as we headed 10 minutes down the road to our vet the other day.  I'm grateful for our team of wonderful, caring & kind vets, but because I have empathy for my kitties, I can feel their distress in the process as they are examined, wormed and vaccinated. 

Thankfully, our cat friends got a good health report.  When I pulled up our driveway, safely home and done, all I could think was I need to make some art.  Once I had the cats out of their carriers and settled back into their familiar space, I grabbed my nature journal and colored pencils, and wandered down the hill from my home to plop on the grass and connect.

Sitting with a stand of nodding grasses and weeds and sketching them felt like magic.  I relaxed.  One of my cats sat at my feet, and we simply took in the beautiful afternoon sunshine playing over the grass fronds.  Deep evergreens in the background created a shadowed contrast to the November weeds.  I began to feel calmer, more grounded, peaceful.  The simple act of sitting with scrabbly weeds and scratching sketches in a journal felt deeply healing.

A Rainy Sunday Sketch

What do you do with a sleepy, cold, rainy, quiet Sunday morning in Autumn?  Sip a pot of hot black tea, and sketch the essence of fall -- a colorful leaf.  This bristle-tipped oak leaf caught my eye on a recent hike, so I scooped it up and set it on the table where I have my morning tea.  Finally a moment to sketch it, I fell into that timeless time, the meditative state we drop into when we draw.  Art connects us to nature and heals us.

Nature Journal Update: A Walk in a Closed Campground

The last sunny day before a rainy, cold spell luckily fell on a day off for me, and I took a backpack loaded with art supplies out to our local state park.  Sunny autumn Saturdays are often busy in the park, but I found that tucking away into the closed campground gives me a quiet space I share only with the White-Tailed Deer and oak trees.  Peace abounds, and picnic tables offer easy places to set up my supplies to sketch or paint the afternoon away.  

Lately, I have needed more peace in my life with the stress of the election coming up.  Nature & art feed my soul, ground me, and create an oasis of calm.

Back at home, I sketch my familiar friend.

 

Hiking Day

Doak Field is still dressed in winter colors.

Saturday afternoon the clouds cleared from the sky, and I had free hours to slip on my backpack and traipse out to the woods and fields.  I carried two nature journals -- one is 9" x 12" with plenty of white paper to fill up, and the other, 6" x 8", is filled with brown paper.  The little, brown journal is my primary nature journal -- small, friendly, and easier to balance as I walk and sketch, it provides a midtone starting place to work lighter and darker into the drawing.

From my journal:

I wander Doak Field realizing that this time in the sunshine under the Bluebirds' sky is precisely what my soul needed.  A Song Sparrow's call bids me welcome. Wish I had my tea thermos like I had back in my Oak Openings days.  

Sitting in Doak Field watching the bluebirds hunt.  Perched on a low limb of a cherry tree, their impossibly blue wings catch the sunshine as they sail to the mowed earth after their prey & then flutter back up to their branch. 

Bright sunlight made every line crisp and had me reaching for pen and ink to capture the scene. 

Quick Nature Sketches

In the evening of a quiet day at home, I spotted three White Tailed Deer close to my kitchen door, feeding on the grasses of the meadow.  They snapped to attention, ears perked at any suspicious sound, but mostly, they ate hungrily.  I found myself wishing I could sketch their elegant forms faster, but grateful for the opportunity to observe them so close by.

A Day of Sandhill Cranes and Sunshine

Today I had a rare day off.  And, serendipity granted me a lovely, sunny afternoon to sit outside on an old wool Army blanket south of my house and paint the scene before me.  The sky was clear as a Robin's egg shell, spanning ultramarine to cerulean blue, and I delighted in watching a half dozen Eastern Bluebirds hunting in the Staghorn Sumac shrubs around my home.  A gentle breeze made the dead aster stalks dance and nod, and I simply relaxed and took it all in.

This morning at just after 10 am, I stepped outside and was surprised to hear the trumpeting call of a hundred Sandhill Cranes flying high overhead.  How remarkable that I could hear their wild voices as far as they were from me.  I snapped these photos of the majestic birds on their migration, and offered up Palo Santo incense and a prayer for their safe travels south.  A charmed day.

Sandhill Cranes form two loose V's.

Pencil Sketches

Last week included travel, moving our daughter to college and moments to sit and sketch at day's end. 

I sat on the stoop of an Airbnb cottage the evening after a long day.  The shadowy woods in the dimming light of day drew me in.  

Back at home on my front porch.

Nature Journaling

A 70 ℉ spring day gave me a chance to toss my watercolors and journal into a backpack and hike the state park with my oldest, Sarah.

We hiked down to the lake, and found where the road to the swimming beach was closed to vehicle traffic.  The entire berm of the road had washed into the lake, and with it went two mature trees.  While Sarah explored the area, I sat nearby the washout, and sketched the scene with Sakura pan watercolors.  I have the Koi Pocket Field Sketch Box of 24 colors, and they delight me to no end -- very portable, with bold, bright colors in just the right hues.

A view of the beach bath house and swimming area.  The trees on the far hill seemed painted with a fine rose-colored wash -- the red maple buds beginning to awaken to spring!

A Warm (Enough) Day for Sketching Outdoors

On Monday afternoon, I went out for a hike with my oldest, Sarah, on what we call a Sketch-potition -- a sketching expedition.  The evergreen woods we strode through were carpeted with twigs and branches blown out of the trees by Sunday's wild windstorm. Ducking under fallen trees was tricky with a pack of art supplies on my back.

 The calm after the storm; the stillness after a brisk hike; the open field after a woods scramble -- yin and yang mingled.  I felt grateful for time to melt into the landscape as I sketched.  The brilliant blue sky spilled long, late rays of the sinking sun into the abandoned picnic area our family refers to as The City of Ember after the novel about a crumbling civilization whose inhabitants don't know how to maintain their infrastructure -- Sarah & I sat in acres of open meadow on top of a hill that once was actively used by park-goers, but due to shrinking state park budgets was closed.  The bluebirds, deer and we still enjoy its charms.