Winter Nature Journal: A Deer Friend

Last autumn, we noticed a particularly friendly young deer who was unafraid of us.  As I hiked our farm, I'd often encounter this guy.  When the other deer ran off, he lingered. I always kept my distance, but was charmed by his curiosity.

Hunger brought him up close to the house to eat where other critters didn't dare, giving me good photo opportunities.

This winter, he's been visiting my birdfeeding station and dining on sunflower seeds, so I decided to include him in my nature journal.

Here's the reference photo I used for my drawing.

I started with a graphite pencil sketch, then inked in the lines and added color with my Derwent Drawing Pencils.  I touched in some spots --his ears & around his eyes -- with a Posca paint marker that I wanted to be bold white.

 

I hope you'll use these reference photos to make drawings and paintings.

Happy Creating!

Nature Journal Update

Over the last few weeks, I've been getting out on hikes and finding spots to sit and sketch wintry scenes like the one above of a young sycamore tree against an evergreen down by a snowy lake.

Have you ever noticed how your fastest drawings are often the ones you like the best?

On hikes in the park with David, my body warms up while moving. When we stop for a break, I find something small or simple to sketch.  Soon enough, it's time to get back to hiking, but the little breaks give me just enough time to make a quick drawing.  I love these quick ones as they show the energy of discovery.

When it's truly cold, I sit inside by the birdfeeder and make quick sketches of the visitors. I hurriedly drew the chickadee at the top right from observing a live bird.  Frustrated when the chickadee flew away, I looked up a photo online and made a watercolor sketch at the bottom left from that reference.

Most recently, I found a tiny mud coccoon inside a hollowed out acorn -- probably the work of a mud dauber wasp in the warmer months.  I made several drawings of the cozy little bug home.

I took a photo of the coccoon acorn with some of the other empty nut hulls in the shelter where we took our mid-hike snack break.

What are you finding to draw in your nature journal? Do you prefer drawing big-picture landscapes or smaller details?  Plants? Animals? What's your favorite thing in nature to draw these days?

I hope you take some time to sketch your favorite things!

Happy Creating!

Turning a Bad Photo into Good Art

The image above is not a good photo.  The lighting is dull, and there's too much clutter distracting your eye from the beauty of the creek snaking through the hilly woodland. 

Yet, photos like this one still have an artistic purpose.  They make good reference photos for art, especially when it's too cold to sit outside and draw in person!

I started with a sketch of the main elements in the scene, and began adding in areas of color.

The photo was taken just before 6" of snow fell, so I wanted to get the white-gray appearance of the sky. 

I turned the pencil on its side to create a soft, uniform area of color for the snow clouds.

With the sky and the icy creek laid in, I began adding detail to the woods - the weeds & grasses on the forest floor, the distant trees, and the details in the tree trunk on the left.

I stepped back to study the composition, and felt it needed more vitality on the right hand side.

I added in the wobbly tree on the right, and am happy with the sketch. 

As the artist, you get to decide what you include in a drawing.  You can edit out the parts you don't like and add in bits you prefer. Choosing to draw the parts of a scene that inspire and excite you is more fun, and creates a better drawing.

Happy Creating!

The Winter Nature Journal: Icicles!

After 6 months of drought in our area, abundant rain and snow have created a new landscape.  The creeks run musically, and massive icicles formed in the Frankfort Mineral Springs area of Raccoon Creek State Park.

David & I hiked to the falls, he with his cameras and me with my nature journal. 

Though the trail to the falls was treacherous with wet ice and packed snow, the warm air and sunshine felt like spring.

 

I sat in the snow on top of my heavy winter gloves, and felt like an early naturalist illustrating a new land. I sketched with a brown ink fountain pen and added watercolor washes.

I've always felt that Nature puts on a perpetual show, and the price of a "ticket" is simply taking the time and effort to get outside and be still for a moment. 

Lately, the sun feels stronger and brighter each day; the world feels more inviting.  I think keeping a nature journal helps me to see these things.  It wasn't long ago that I watched outside for a little vole to peek out of its hole under the birdfeeders just outside my studio window.  I could count on it to show up about 4:50 PM as the sun set.

After watching this vole several nights in a row, I would think of the little creature every day just before 5 PM. No matter where I was, I knew the creature was hungrily scavenging seeds.

I haven't seen this critter in weeks now.  We've both changed our routines.  Just the other evening, I tidied up some garden beds in the relative warmth until the daylight ebbed.

These are the sorts of tiny adventures that keeping a nature journal can lead you on.

What's going on outside where you live right now?  What in nature's detailed show would you like to witness?  I hope you take the time to sit and enjoy the show, and make a few notes in a sketchbook.

Happy Creating!

Cold Weather Nature Journaling

In the depths of winter, when the polar vortex chases us indoors, we can still keep a nature journal.  I made this colored pencil sketch at breakfast one morning from the photo below.

I have always loved goldenrods, even when they lose their bright yellow blossoms and take on wintry gray and umber hues.  The fluffy texture of the remaining seeds against the crystalline snow often stops me in my tracks when I walk my farm.  Simply beautiful.

What do you find beautiful out in nature this time of year?  A quick photo snapped with your phone can become a sketch in your nature journal, something to remind you of those bitterly cold days at 5 degrees F some sweltering August afternoon.

Tips for using a cell phone for drawing reference:

• Transfer your photo file from the phone to a laptop or other larger viewing screen to help you to better see what you're drawing.
• Try a B&W filter on your photo. Most cell phones have different ways to process a photo, including a grayscale and a black & white filter.  Eliminating the colors and focusing only on values will help you clearly see where the lightest light and darkest dark areas are ,and the shapes of each shadow, highlight, & midtone.  
• Cell phones are good at photographing small things like flowers and insects, etc. Try the Macro function on your cell phone camera to bring really tiny things into view.
• Cell phones show wide angle views in their normal mode. The distance between you and your subject looks farther in a cell phone picture, so you may need to crop the larger image if you're looking at landscapes for instance.

Happy Creating! 

Mixed Media Concertina Sketchbook

My cat, Grover, kindly posed for sketches in my latest accordion-fold sketchbook.

I love to read in the evenings, and have been delving into Jane Stobart's Extraordinary Sketchbooks, where I got the idea to make a collaged sketchbook like architect Karen Butti.

I used a base of 140 pound watercolor paper, and glued on painted papers & old maps with Yes! Paste. 

Below is the cover of the sketchbook, decorated with music sheeting that's been painted with several thin layers of acrylic paint.

 

 The surface of these papers is slick, which would make it difficult to draw on top of them with graphite, charcoal or colored pencils.  I applied clear gesso over both sides of the sketchbook to add a layer of grit without obscuring the designs underneath it.   

My cats were hanging out in the studio when I started sketching, so they fill the first pages.

I love that I can sketch with rich, black charcoal and white pastel pencils.  The painted paper underneath adds another layer of pattern and color.  It feels exciting to have a new sketchbook with a variety of colorful papers

The songbirds hunting seeds in the flower box outside my studio window fit perfectly on the map of Glacier Bay, Alaska.  

Dark-Eyed Juncos scratch on the earth for seeds, so I put black oiler sunflower seeds in my flower beds for them. It's a protected spot, and it brings them closer for me to draw.

Collaging colorful papers onto a plain sketchbook adds a playfulness and imperfection that invites doodling.  If you're feeling anxiety facing the blank page, maybe a collaged page would help you push past that feeling and make drawings.

The beauty of drawing in a sketchbook is that your artwork doesn't have to be "pretty" or "perfect."  Truly in this world, there is no such thing as perfect, so try looking at drawing as an exploration, a voyage of discovery. Every drawing teaches you something.

Happy Creating!

Winter Sunset

On an evening hike, I marveled at this sunset.

Back in the warmth of my studio, I made a pencil sketch in my accordion fold nature journal (started here).

I added permanent ink with my Lamy fountain pen

and erased the pencil lines when the ink had dried.

I made a wash of phthalo blue mixed with ultramarine blue for the sky, and mixed ultramarine blue and permanent blue violet to create the distant hills.

After those areas dried, I washed in azo yellow & permanent rose, being careful not to mix yellow paint into the blue sky.  I didn't want any green in my sky.  A touch of permanent blue violet created the distant lavender clouds. 

Phthalo blue mixed with burnt sienna made a rich pine green for the midground evergreens.

The dead grass color is a mixture of white gouache and azo yellow.

 Sap green mixed with yellow ochre created a muted green for the grass, and the rest of the scene was completed with a variety of earth tones, including yellow ochre, burnt sienna, burnt umber, and and a dark brown-gray made with ultramarine blue and burnt umber.

I find that lingering on the colors of sunset, and exaggerating the blue violet glow in the hills brings me joy.  

As the artist, you get to find what delights you about a scene, and emphasize it.  What makes you happy to regard?  What would you relish dwelling on?  I hope you paint it!

Happy Creating!

Winter Nature Journaling

Turning the page on my new mini watercolor nature journal (begun here), David and I took a hike in the state park lake on a bitterly cold afternoon.  The fresh air was exhilarating, and time in nature is always uplifting to me, no matter what the weather.

We dropped down off the ridge into the shadows along the water, where I made an ink sketch of this lovely, shadowy scene. Bundling up and hiking had kept us warm.

But, my watercolors froze right on the page.  The little dark clumps are where the watercolor iced up into flat crystals in the 27 degree weather.

Back in the studio, I finished the painting from a reference photo. 

I used a white Crayola crayon before painting to create the white-limbed sycamore trees in the background.  The wax acts as a resist, so you can paint right over the area with a light wash and keep the white of the paper.  After the paint dried, I added finer limbs with a Sakura Gelly Roll white gel pen.

I hope you get a chance to go out into nature and revel in the fresh air and the peace of the wild things.

Happy Creating!

Nature Journaling on a Snowy Day

A great way to spend cold, snowy, winter days is sitting by a window and sketching the beauty of the outdoors in your nature journal.

Freshly fallen snow filled up the crotches of a nearby cucumber tree, and I grabbed a black colored pencil, and several watercolor crayons to make a quick sketch.  

Next August when it's swelteringly hot, I'll look back on this day with wonder.

Do you see beauty around you? 

What would you like to remember about your life right now? 

Include it in an artwork, and you will lock in the memory to look back on it in future years.

Nature Journaling: Finding Color in Winter

A cold winter morning brought colorful birds to my feeders.  I grabbed my watercolor crayons and a black pen, and felt happy to get to splash bold colors into my nature journal.

I find that in winter, my eyes hunger for hues more vibrant than the lead-gray skies and burnt umber tree branches.  As I hike, I seek out splashes of blue, green, red, orange, purple & pink.

Where do I find these rich colors? Often in tiny pockets here and there. Here are some of my recent photos of nature's splashy colors tucked in the winter landscape.

Turkey Tail fungus boasts rows of indigo and vermillion.

Sunrises and sunsets will fill your eyes with color if only for moments.

On the rare sunny days, notice how blue the shadows are on snowy ground.

Even dead wildflowers still hold warm tones, even if they're muted.

Moss always seems incredibly green to my winter-weary eyes, but finding this fern growing out of a hole in a cherry tree lifted my spirits on a January hike.

I couldn't believe that these tiny mushrooms were still upright and not withered by the cold when I found them on January 12th.

As colorful as these scenes are, the birds at my feeder bring a special vitality.

A female Downy Woodpecker.

A Tufted Titmouse.

I hope you will take inspiration from one of these nature scenes and create art from them!

Happy Creating!