This mountain bluebird is my entry for Everyday Matters challenge #125: draw a bird.
Drawn from a photograph in the book Born Wild by Henry H. Holdsworth; a photo book of young animals in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks.
Archive for the ‘Nature’ Category
Mountain Bluebird
Sunday, December 13th, 2009Yellowstone Campsite
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
My artistic output this past month has been–shall we say–light. In part, this was due to the planning and preparation for a two-week camping trip out west.
I had great plans for drawing and painting for hours at a time. But the reality of camping in Yellowstone and Custer State Park (South Dakota) was that we were either driving, hiking, sight-seeing, or cooking/eating/washing-up almost every waking hour. We did manage to shoot close to 1400 photographs while we were out there (hooray for digital photography! I would NOT want to pay for all that film to be developed), so maybe I’ll try drawing from some of the pics we snapped.
I did manage to spend one afternoon painting at our campsite. This was our home for most of the trip.
One of the Residents of Oz Park
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009
I stopped on my way home from work this evening to sketch parts of this tree in Oz Park.
Oz Park was commissioned in honor of L. Frank Baum who wrote the Wizard of Oz , and also lived in the area at the end of the 19th century. It has statues of the Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Lion throughout the park, and is a nice place to go watch people play with their dogs.
This sketch was the result of some recent advice I offered to an aspriring sketcher who was trying to deal with a paralyzing case of fear of failure. One of those bits of advice was “set a timer for two minutes; go!”. It occurred to me that the same advice could also be used to overcome the ‘I don’t have time’ excuse that I like to use. So this is my two-minutes worth (well, actually, the line drawing was two minutes; adding the color was probably only another five or ten minutes after that).
There are plenty of things wrong with it. Certainly, the colors are completely wrong, because I didn’t have any paint with me at the time; so it was ‘get home, get out the paint, and fake it as best I could’. And that’s all fine. The point of this exercise was not to be realistic. It was just to keep the creative juices flowing.
I’ll tackle something a little more serious when I have more time. When I don’t have that kind of time, I have to make myself do more of these quickies. Sometimes quantity is just as valuable as quality.
The Beach at Saginaw Bay
Monday, June 8th, 2009
This is a quick charcoal painting of a photo I took at the beach over the weekend. It was too cold to go in the water, but the sun was out and the beach was picturesque.
Diversey Harbor
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009
Those of you who stop by here regularly were probably wondering where I’d gone. Well, let’s just say that between a hectic work schedule, a nagging back injury, playoff hockey, less-than-seasonable weather, and a general artistic funk, I haven’t been making much art (if you can call it that) lately.
This drawing was done Saturday morning — EARLY saturday morning. The cat decided that 5:30 AM is a good time for humans to be awake, so she made it a point to ensure that I was. The sun was out, so I chugged a cup of coffee and headed down to the harbor with my sketchbook.
Of course, I got down there, got settled, and started drawing, and the weather turned. You can see the effects of high humidity and drizzle if you look closely: the charcoal started to cake, and the paper stopped taking it very well.
The bridge in this picture is where Lakeshore Drive crosses over the waterway between the harbor and Lake Michigan. When I was running every day, this was part of my normal route; I miss seeing it every morning.
Busse Woods Boat Launch
Monday, February 9th, 2009
I’ve been carrying my sketchbook back and forth to work every day for the past few months. I wake up in the morning, get ready for work, and dutifully drop the sketchbook and pencil bag into my laptop case; then off to work I go. I’ve purposely avoided setting any goals like, “I’m going to draw at lunch today,” or “I’m going to stop somewhere on the way to work and sketch the people going by.” Instead, I just wanted to have my sketchbook with me; you know, just in case I get the urge.
Well, today I got the urge.
So, on my way back to the office after lunch, I stopped by a forest preserve along my route. I drove a long way around the lake looking for something nice to look at. Finally, I got to the boat launch and thought, “that’ll do.”
I was only able to spend about 15 minutes on this. Overall, I’m fairly pleased with the outcome (except for the apparent halo around the signpost; but that could be fixed quite easily).