Make It Small

Sometimes, the big picture is easy to capture and I sketch along happily. Other times, like last week, I can't seem to wrap my brain around perspective or proportions, and I have to make do with making it small. Dave & I spent a few hours of a hot sunny afternoon at the Cowichan Bay fishermen's warf, me sketching & photographing, Dave just looking around (which he enjoys doing and, bless him, he's got lots of patience for me when the inspiration to make art rarely rears its head).

Fishing Gear - pen sketch
© Amie Roman

Inspired by Dean Russell Thompson's recent exhibition of his "hidden landscapes" of machinery & industrial artifacts, I thought I'd focus in on some of the more interesting paraphernalia liberally strewn about the decks of the various fishing vessels.

Float - conté watermedia crayon on paper
© Amie Roman

I took heaps of photos, though, so I'm hoping to get at least a few prints eventually out of the trip. There were some great shapes & colours that would translate beautifully into block printing.

Sketching While the Sun Shines

This is supposed to be the last beautiful day for a while, so I decided we'd do some sketching down at Cowichan Bay this afternoon. There are always sailboats, often fishing boats, and usually these two tug boats, which are used for moving and rafting log booms. I have been wanting to do something with them for years, so I finally plonked myself down, protected from the wind and warmed by the sun, on my little three-toed stool, and sketched away. Here's the pen sketch:

and here's with watercolours:

Mom came too, and did a couple of little landscape sketches:

Sketching on a Sunny Winter Day

Last week I grabbed advantage of the beautiful weather, grabbed my sketchbook, and did some stuff. I started with a few (crappy!) watercolour washes, let them dry, then drew on top. The goal was to get the "feel" of what I was looking at, not so much be precise in representing it accurately.

This first one was done beside the little seasonal trickle of water that skirts our wetland; the melt is causing a lot of runoff, so the trickle was burbling along very merrily. Clockwise from upper left (interpreting my chicken-scratch) are the reflections off the moving water with reeds & grasses at the edges, then the movement of water across a rill, submerged pebbles where I just drew the dark areas kind of around the pebbles (not exactly negative space drawing, but it kind of worked out that way), then finally the reflection of a twig as the water moved the reflection.
Next is a stand of alders at the edge of our little pond, with conifers in the background. This is pretty much all about interpreting the negative spaces.
Once again, the weather was beautiful today, but it looks like it's changing, so I wanted to get out and get some more sketches done.

This first one is of the winter aconite (or Acontium) poking up through the leaf litter in a little patch of sunny garden out front. They, together with snowdrops, are probably the earliest little flowers to poke up out of the ground around here, and even then, they're quite late this year because of the heavy snow load we had around Christmas and New Years (there is still snow on our field). Anyway, I did a semi-blind contour drawing with sepia-coloured Pigma pen, then built up the painting. I was trying to keep the glow and delicacy of the flowers, and the loose and messy nature of the leaf litter.
Next up was the hazelnut outside our living room window. I parked my stool by the bird feeder and was scolded a few times for interrupting the dinner party, but they continued without a bother nonetheless. I loved the way the flowers of the hazelnut glow in the winter sun, especially against the deep darks of the conifers in the background. Plus, the shadows on the snow were just delicious; I had a lot of fun mixing the colours for them.
Finally (and I was getting kind of cold by now, so I didn't spend as much time on this one), the old Gravenstein apple tree, all gnarly, pock-marked and in need of a winter hair-cut (Dave's not been over in time yet to do so). Mostly, I had fun dropping wet colours into wet.
Now, I am definitely not comfortable with watercolours, and am not someone to follow when it comes to using this media, but I sure like to use them in the field for sketching, and adding colour.

Oceans of Art - Days 3 & 4

The weather was absolutely spectacular on the morning of our third day in Bamfield. I spent the first part of the morning working on more sketches in the Whale Lab:

Then our group headed out on one of the Marine Station's research vessels to do a little sight-seeing, and to do a bottom drag. We used a small basket that was pulled along the bottom for a short distance, then pulled up and washed the contents into a viewing tray. The Station uses the same, disturbed location for their drags, and it seems to be constantly re-colonizing, because there is amazing variety of critters each time they come out.

The weather turned decidedly less congenial: the wind picked up, the sun went into hiding, and we even got a few flakes of snow. The group braved the elements to have a wee wander along Pachena Bay, sketching and photographing, and a bonfire and schmooze with some local Bamfield artists.


There was time for a little more sketching before dinner:

Then off to an evening of entertainment! Many of the artists collected in the fireplace lounge and Mark Hobson brought out his guitar, and we all had a wonderful time singing and laughing, and sampling some beautiful blackberry wine. We also had a final lab where we all trouped over to the Rix Centre to look at plankton under the microscope. We all found that absolutely fascinating, and many stayed longer than we were meant to.

Our final night was just delightful, and we were all reluctant to depart on our final day. We woke up to a dusting of snow, and we trudged through the slush to breakfast, then back again to load up our gear for transfer to the docks. Some took the time waiting for the return of the MV Frances Barkley with art, some with networking, and some of us with just being lazy. We loaded up onto the ship when she arrived, and had a lovely, friendship-filled trip back to Port Alberni.

We all await with great anticipation the Oceans of Art exhibition to be held at the Nanaimo Art Gallery, 150 Commercial Street, from June 11 - 29, 2009, opening reception on Thursday, June 11 (time to be announced, but likely in the evening). Work will be for sale during that exhibition, and proceeds will go towards the Public Education Program at the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre.

More Sketches

These tulips are actually from our trip to Mom's earlier last month; I've just been away from my computer/scanner for so long that I'd not yet had a chance to scan them in and post to the blog. I go for a month with nothing, and now you're inundated with stuff!!!

I'm really happy with the tulip colour in the first one, but I got carried away trying to get the right colour in the second one, and lost the highlights and obfuscated the line work more than I would have preferred.

Tulips - Watercolour & pen, approximately 7"x10"

Rococo Parrot Tulip - Watercolour & pen, approximately 7"x10"

This one is from my Dad's - it's definitely not at all what I had in mind; this is why I hate watercolour. I don't have the patience to spend the time learning how to use the medium, hence I won't ever really get any good at it. I really had liked the way the dark greens of the spruces made the bright aspen trunks & their brand-new spring green leaves leap out. I was planning on doing a lot of negative painting on that left-hand side, but got a wicked headache from the reflection of the sun off the white paper; how do artist's deal with that? Probably don't arse around as long as I do with their work! Needless to say, this is not one of my stellar moments in art...

Tree sketch - watercolour, approximately 7"x10"

These next ones are from two separate birds that schmucked themselves against Dad's window; both on the same day! Poor things. So I took advantage of their stillness. The watercolours in the second one aren't quite as disappointing as the above tree sketch, but still not quite right. At least the colours are relatively accurate.

Brown-headed Cowbird, male - graphite, approximately 8"x11"

Western Tanager, female - graphite & watercolours
approximately8"x4" and 3"x3", respectively

Autumn Blooms

We spent all day Tuesday gardening: digging up spuds, pulling beans & shelling them, weeding. So I didn't get any art done. Thursday afternoon found me again in the garden, this time equipped with my paintbrush & sketch pad. The sun was warm and beautiful, and the garden was a-buzz with insects. There was one huge dragonfly that spent a lot of time hovering around, I suspect hunting for lunch.

So this post's offerings (again, click on an image to open enlarged into another window):

California poppies

Autumn crocus

The colours in both the poppies & crocus were so lovely. I had a bit of trouble with the colours in the crocus, but I'm pleased overall. There are some really nice passages in both pieces.

On a Roll

It seems that I've got the outdoor watercolour sketching bug! Yesterday was POURING with rain, but today it cleared up and was beautiful and sunny. One drawback though: the heat evaporated the moisture on the plants & ground, and made the atmosphere quite muggy, so the watercolours took a wee bit longer to dry.

I'm still captivated by the beautiful merging/blending colours of ripening fruit, so here are some more sketches done along that theme.

Feral apple tree by side of the road. The passing traffic caused the leaves to be in constant dancing motion, and the branches to sway.


Some of the later-ripening crabapples (another tree has almost completely ripe clusters all over). This one is more in the shade and in competition with other shrubs & bushes, though.


While the fruit is definitely the most flavourful of those we have growing feral, the cut-leaved variety of blackberries are the most vicious, with back-curving thorns that dig deep and bite hard.


Here's a very late blackberry flower (it was just about the last one on this plant):


The clouds gathered around lunch time, so I headed back inside. Later in the afternoon, the sun shone forth once more, so I decided to head into the veggie patch (a.k.a. "deer Fort Knox"). I experimented with a new pen, but it's not water-proof, so it kind of smudged ink into the painting of the sunflower. I let the sketchbook face-plant in the moist dirt by accident, so there is some serious interaction with nature on this sketching page! I also had the delightful opportunity to do some sketches of a native bee working very hard at collecting pollen.


Another native bee of the same species came by and totally laid into the first one, who got knocked to the ground and lay stunned. I coaxed her gently onto my finger and got a great sketching opportunity while she rested. Here's the close-up:

Country Life

Autumn Asters

Dave & I are on visiting my mother in the Cowichan Valley, a rural/suburban/urban area of southern Vancouver Island. Mom lives in Cobble Hill, which is mostly rural, but with a bedroom community aspect; many people who live here commute each workday 45 minutes (on good days!) south to Victoria. Mom is semi-retired, and moved over Dave & I are huge fans of bees & insects that pretend to be bees, so I'm always on the lookout for any of our native bees or bee-mimics. This hoverfly looked quite a bit like a bee, until you look a little closer.


As I was sketching the cluster of asters, Dave told me he was returning the ladders borrowed for our staining job to Pat, our friend of many talents, including farming (and printmaking, house painting, orchard pruning, etc.). What a perfect opportunity for me to grab my sketchbook and get some good stuff. So here are the fruits of my quick-sketch labours (you can click on any of them to view larger in a separate window):

Pat's Chooks

Black Australorpe Rooster

I am especially pleased with the effect I achieved in this image:

Chooks

These chickens were in constant motion, and all clustered around the fence in front of me, hoping for a handout. Even though they soon figured out I didn't have any food on offer, they were still curious and watched me watching them. But of course, a chicken's attention span is short, so they soon started doing other chicken activities, and it was a blur of chicken-ness.

Pat raises chickens for eggs & meat; these were his egg chickens. Pat's also got a number of rabbits. This image was a bit of a trick to obtain, because the bunnies kept spooking. Even though I wasn't really that close, and I hardly moved a muscle, I think it was because I was watching them intently, which is certified predator behaviour, that upset them. So the colours are maybe not quite where they should be, but I'm pleased with the result.

White Bunny

The job of raising food for their own table falls mostly to Yasmeen, Pat's wife. She has a beautiful rampant veggie garden, with all sorts of lovely goodies. They've got a simple wood-and-poly hothouse which is exploding with ripening tomatoes (bunny poo is the world's best fertilizer!).

Yas' Roma Tomatoes

The greens & reds of the ripening tomatoes were a delight to try to capture in watercolour. I'm a watercolourist under duress; I don't do it very well, and haven't the patience to master it, but enjoy adding colour to field sketches and it's the best way to do so.

After I sketched for a bit, I gave their wee pony, Molly, a bit of a curry combing and hoof cleaning. She almost purred.

We headed home, and I decided (surprisingly for me!) that I'd not yet had enough sketching, so I worked on the prune plums in Mom's back yard:


I love the way the greens and purples merge together on the ripening plums. The colours are so beautiful. The knobby twigs are also very intriguing. This sketch was done in a semi-blind contour manner, which means that I spent some time looking at the sketch pad to orient my pen, but mostly looked only at the subject.

I noticed an abundance of large black slugs cruising through the un-managed field, so I thought I'd sketch a few:


I am pleased with the almost calligraphic quality of the lines on the mantle of the slugs. I watched the one on the dandelion inexorably charging towards the flower from a patch of apparently uninteresting grass. It was obviously zeroed in to the flower, as it spent a good amount of time chomping all the tasty bits out, leaving the green salad behind. Sound familiar?