A Wonderful Year

Sometimes I get frustrated and discouraged.  Sometimes I feel that the world is full of terrible catastrophes.   I keep this cartoon on my refrigerator door to remind me of what is really important.  Thank you, Patrick McDonnell, creator of the cartoon strip, Mutts.

                                             

I hope you had good things happen in your part of the world in 2011 and I hope that good things continue to happen in your part of the world in 2012.

Playing with Glazing Techniques.

I took this photo at Charleston Falls in 2010.  I was hiking in the afternoon and the sun was bright.  Everywhere the shadows were interesting.

Yesterday I decided to use this as a reference photo for an 10 inch by 8 inch painting.  I did enough of a sketch to position the various components and then began laying down pale washes of color using a Stephen Quiller No. 12 brush made by Richeson.  Naming the manufacturer of the brush is important because all No. 12 brushes are not the same size.  The No. 12 brush is the largest brush in the photo below. Its full body holds a lot of water and color.

With it are some of the other brushes I use.  I rarely use the smallest bodied one, a No. 2 Escoda.  Instead, I use the No. 4 Escoda for most of the detail work.  That is the second brush in the line-up.

Rain, Rain, Rain

It is not raining at the moment.  Wonderful.  After the rains this past week, our area  has a new record for the second highest amount of precipitation in a year since records have been kept...54.75 inches.  Our average precipitation ranges from a little over 37 to 40 inches.  In first place for the most rain ever recorded  is 1990 with 59.75 inches.

Since 2011 is nearly over, that record is not likely to be broken.  That's fine with me.  When we came home from the Christmas program at the high school on December 15, we drove home through rain.  That's life.  But when we arrived in our plat, the electricity was off.  That's bad.  The sump pumps that keep our basement dry run on electricity.

Sure enough, there was water at the foot of the basement stairs.  Between Tom and me, we started the emergency generator and within a half hour, the sump pumps had pumped out the water.  Of course, I had a few soaked rugs to deal with. 

If the electricity does not go off ,or, if it does and we are home, our basement has been staying dry.  Earlier this year when the back basement wall was leaking, that was not the case.  Since then we have had the sump pump hole near the back wall deepened.  That turned out to be a bigger job than expected since the original hole's depth was down as far as the bedrock.  The handy men had to use a tool that is the baby brother of a jack hammer to deepen the hole.

I drive past the  new extension to to the bike trail on my way to Charleston Falls.  Yesterday the trail was  partly underwater. 

                                    

To the left and right the floodplain waters threaten more of the trail.

But a floodplain filling with water means the falls are beautiful to see.  At the right on the upper viewing area a man is taking a photograph.

The intermittent falls that sometimes doesn't flow all year was splashing over its ledge.

The trails were soggy.  This puddle extends into the prairie grasses on either side of the trail.

I had the choice of backtracking and taking another trail or wading through along the edge.  Guess which option I chose.

Finishing the Yellow Waterlily

Yellow Waterlily...13.5 inches by 10.5 inches...watercolor

This is the way the painting looked in September.  I had matted, framed it and exhibited it a year earlier.  I was disappointed in the painting.  I had finished it at the last minute and it just didn't shine the way I wanted it to. 

This is the photo Tom took at Biltmore Estates in October of 2009 which was my reference photo.

The day was dreary and rainy and the flower was a bright spot.  I tried to make it brighter by strengthening the yellows but it still didn't pop out from the background.  This time I put several washes of Antwerp blue over the background and washed a little yellow into the area behind the lily.  I laid washes of Antwerp blue, Winsor green, New Gamboge, and Magenta mingled in various ways over the nearest lily pad.

I like the painting better now that the lily has become more prominent.  Still the painting is very different in coloring from the photo I used for my inspiration.  Playing with colors is part of the fun of painting.

The white mat was a distraction on the original painting.  Now a white mat looks better.  I also experimented with two other matting possibilities.  All three possibilities are below.

The colors in the final example are the closest to the mats and also the painting.

Dark-eyed Junco, a Winter Visitor

The Dark-eyed Juncos started showing up here in October.  The birds' arrival is a sure sign of approaching winter.  This is one of the birds I never noticed until I began bird watching.  It mingles with the other sparrows at the feeders, another  nondescript bird until I looked at it closely.  Now I don't understand how I couldn't have noticed it.  It is the only one of the small sparrows  dressed in a tuxedo, dark in a neat suit of feathers except for its very white breast.   To me, now that I know it, it looks very different from most sparrows with their various  feather patterns  of browns, grays, blacks, and whites.

It is easy to pick the junco out when it flies across our yard.  Its tail is dark on the upper side, edged by a white feather on either edge.  

The juncos will be with us until April.  When they leave, we know spring has arrived.

The photos were taken by Tom from our dining room window.

Finishing Projects...Eastern Comma on Clearweed

Tom took this photo of an Eastern Comma on Clearweed several years ago at one of the county parks.  In September I showed you an unfinished 7 inch by 5 inch watercolor I had started using this photo as my starting point. 

Clearweed (Pilea pumila)  is common in the wet woods throughout our area.  Its leaves are distinctly shiny, a very pretty leaf.  The leaf has a prominent central vein and two noticeable side veins.  According to the sources I checked  it belongs to the nettle family.  Clearweed gets its name because its stems are translucent.  There are no stinging hairs on them as there are on some nettles.

Eastern Comma larvae feed on a variety of nettles which explains why Tom found it where he did.  The larvae feed at night so they are hard to find.

The Eastern Comma is a woodland butterfly.  It winters over in tree cavities or under bark or in other similar places.

It feeds on fermenting fruit, tree sap and animal droppings. 

The Eastern Comma belongs to the genus Polygonia or Anglewings.  These butterflies have irregular wing edges. 

Although the butterfly is bright with its wings spread, it is hard to see with its wings closed.  The underside has streaky dark colors, much like the bark of trees on which it often sits.  A slender silver comma brightens the middle of each hind wing on the underside which gives the butterfly its name.  You can find the comma IF you know to look for it.

This is the way the painting looked  when I last showed it to you.  I wanted to keep the focus on the butterfly.  The color did most of the job.  I also wanted to make a background that was a little sketchy.  Donna suggested adding the orangish seed head of some low lying plant that is in the photograph at the upper right to help the composition and join the right side to the left.  I decided I preferred the seed head in the lower right.  Marsha suggested leaving the left wing a little less precise than the right wing.  I like the effect and am glad she suggested it.

When I started shaping background leaves,  I lost a lot of the texture I had made by laying plastic wrap on wet watercolor.   I am not sure whether I am happy with losing it.  If you click on the painting and enlarge it  you can see a little remaining texture.

I still plan to go back and correct the ends of the antennae.  The knobs should be dark and oval with light tips.  I noticed that when I was looking at Comma butterfly photos on the Internet.  One of the problems with any photograph is that there are areas the camera sees as dark when there is really color present.  That is why I like to paint on location.  Our eyes see more color and shape than a camera records.

December 3, 2011

This is the way Charleston Falls Preserve looked about 8:30 AM.  That's frost on the ground.

By the time we returned to the parking lot the frost was gone and across the prairie I could see the tents set up for the Christmas Open House.  The Open House has been occurring for as long as I have been associated with the parks.  It's always the first Saturday in December.  You can see a corner of the overflow parking lot in the lower right hand corner.

The day was a wonderful Christmas gift to everyone.  The temperatures rose into the fifties (Fahrenheit) by afternoon and by evening were still in the upper forties.

Tom and I arrived shortly before 6 PM.  The festivities were scheduled from 6 to 9.  Portable lights were set up around the parking lots.  Already, thee overflow parking lot was filled, except for one spot close to the main lot.  We took that one.  Sheriff's deputies, park staff and volunteers guided the visitors to parking.

The trail to the falls was lit by luminaries.  Tom used time lapse photography to take the following pictures.

The lit trail

The boardwalk and sycamore tree

The falls

John is playing Christmas carols.  Across from him, one of the visitors sits, enjoying the music and the evening.

Santa Claus was at a three-sided shelter at the first bench inside the woods.  Tom didn't get a picture of that.  It would have been a long, long line of small children and parents waiting to talk to Santa.

We followed the trail across the prairie to the  tents set up beside the Education Office.


        

There were cookies and hot chocolate...

Christmas cards to decorate...

And, for those who were brave, a chance to sing Christmas carols to music played by request to a keyboard artist.