Low Water

charcoal
08-26-14

Moon & Miscellaney

Supermoon…almost
08-07-14
watercolor, lithographic tusche

More inkiness: mallards & geese
08-09-14

Big trout
08-09-14

Dabbling mallards
08-11-14
charcoal

Dabbling mallards near rocks
08-11-14
charcoal

Current Events

Three mallards feeding in the river
July 16, 2014
charcoal

Mallards and Herons and Sandpipers, Oh My!

Mallard on top of the dam
Aug. 22, 2013
conté pencil

Mallards and a heron below the dam
Aug. 25, 2013
colored pencil

The mallard ducks have returned. With the low water now, they are able to rest and dabble on the top of the dam. And below the dam. And all along the river. They are frequently joined by a Great Blue Heron and a charming but shy sandpiper. It's nice to have all the birds back!

Sandpiper
Aug. 22, 2013
colored pencil

Great Blue Heron
Aug. 28, 2013
conté pencil

Midsummer

Bastille Day 2013

The heat wave continues and it's been hard to get motivated to get out and sketch. But then a few days go by and I feel like I've lost touch with the passage of the season. It's summer, with a vengeance.

The river is at seasonably low water levels. The floods are over for the time being. Rocks are visible and rapids and yesterday I saw a young family of mallards dabbling near the island as in seasons past. It was nice and reminded me of old times.

Mallard and ducklings
07-18-13
colored pencil

As I sat on the park bench and drew this small family, I was surprised by a young raccoon who approached me from the bushes near the river. He seemed to have just remembered the not-quite-licked-clean food container that someone had left by the bench the day before. We chatted and the masked animal scuttled off bewildered no doubt.

The sun effects us all. A few days before this encounter, as I was walking to the dam after dinner I spied (or nearly tripped over!) a large family of skunks. The nine kits were sniffing and jostling about in some bushes very close the road. They tumbled one over the other and made low chortling trills. Their mother was nervously waiting and scolding them from the foundation plantings of a house. I warned the oncoming traffic of the skunk peril and the drivers slowed down and smiled. I even tossed a few pebbles and sticks to warn the exuberant babies back in the direction of Mom and safety.  That must have been Sunday, Bastille Day and the moon floating high above the park next to the river.

The herons are hunting again now that the water level is lower.

A view of the South Natick Dam
07-11-13
chalk

Another view of the dam from about the same spot. You can see the rocks emerging from the shallows below the dam.
07-18-13

The canicule will break briefly this weekend. That may bring some thunderstorms. I'll be traveling though. I hope it doesn't seriously alter my plans. And I hope you have a peaceful and relaxing weekend too.

The Nub Of It

In my hand, I'm holding a colored pencil. You can see that the tip is worn down flat to the wooden sheath that surrounds it. I drew a picture and used up all the lead. I didn't have a penknife with me to sharpen it again.

It took one pencil tip to make the drawing below. It's a drawing of the dam and the bridge beyond it. I like the way the edge of the dam makes a clear horizontal break in the image. Ducks really did swim across the pool as I have drawn it. As the pencil gave out, I had to scrub hard to finish the water swirls in the foreground.

I'm not certain what the current income tax requirements are for calculating a deduction for donating art to charities. In the past, they've only allowed artists to deduct the cost of their materials. So in this case I've used one sheet of paper and about 3/8" of an inferior brand of colored pencil. I'm not complaining really but it ignores the intellectual poetry behind the entire effort.

There's something weirdly satisfying about using up art materials. I have to say (perhaps implying that it's not always true) that it is more satisfying than acquiring art supplies. My studio is full of materials and if all it takes is 3/8" of a pencil to make a drawing, I'd better get to work because I have a lot of pencils and paper floating around! And then there's the paint, magic markers, chalk, glue, crayons and the endless potential of the digital tools. It's daunting if you let it get to you. Better not then.

two lovely pairs of mallards

In this high contrast photo you can see the white incised lines of the wooden part of the pencil point

Rainy Day

sketchbook doodle

It's raining in Boston today. I understand that these are the tattered remains of Hurricane Isaac which battered New Orleans a week ago. There are periods of warm, humid stickiness and then blinding drenching downpours.  This morning after getting my kids off to high school, reading the newspaper and washing the dishes, I walked down to the river during a lull in the rain.

A cormorant (a rare visitor at the dam) perched on a log on top of the dam. A single mallard scuttled back and forth along the edge dabbling for breakfast. A social flock of mallards could be seen downriver just past the island. They were just doing normal duck things: eating, dabbling, bathing and bickering.

However, as soon as I pulled out my charcoal pencil, the heavens opened up and soon rivulets were running down my pages. I was drawing in the rain. Have you ever done that? It's kind of fun and it forces a certain economy of means and method. I was completely soaked. When I got home, I took a hair dryer to the poor little sketch book. Here are my few drawings, still a little damp.

sketchbook spread: The Pleasant Street bridge
charcoal

sketchbook spread: duck silhouettes
charcoal

Rain is pouring down and my charcoal pencil breaks so I pulled out a litho crayon. The top duck here is charcoal and litho crayon

I like this one.

Water Over the Dam

South Natick dam
charcoal
© Rob Dunlavey 2012

I think it's been a one of the drier summers but when I look back through my drawings from previous seasons, I see plenty of views of the bare stones and gravel in the river below the dam.  At this time of year, the low water allows ducks free access to all that flowing water affords: mobility and lots of forage to sample in the swirling currents. They busily dabble in all places and attitudes. I've seen them wantonly follow their beaks as they inch down the dam's face surveying the passing water. At a certain point, gravity gets their attention and they scuttle upward or are forced to abort and fly away.

They are always earnest and good natured about these small predicaments. If only me and my kind could show such equanimity in the face of such inevitable slights! It's funny, ducks get aggressive and nip at each other's tails and napes but they quickly settle their feathers and get on with the business at hand. The emotional lives of animals seems so much less-stressful than humans. But this is a wistful digression!

Mallards at the algae salad bar
charcoal, ink
© Rob Dunlavey 2012

Rocks below the dam
charcoal, ink wash
© Rob Dunlavey 2012

Sandpiper
charcoal, ink, ink wash
© Rob Dunlavey 2012

This sandpiper has set up housekeeping at the dam in the last few weeks. It is fun to watch. He bobs and dips his tail and is in near-constant motion prospecting for little bugs to dine on. Don't you love his bright eye?

The End of Summer

Enjoy the end of the summer. It's a long period of low light, busy birds, singing crickets and school buses.

Watercolor sketches

A sandpiper. He skitters along the top of the dam and the fish ladder and is in constant motion.

The dam rendered in colored pencil and a light gray ink wash

mallard in & out of the water

three mallards dabbling at a drier algae-encrusted spot on the face of the dam.

mallards and riffles

A duck's life: foraging and preening!

The Return

03-27-12
colored pencil

A pair of mallards paddle upstream below the dam. Later, I saw them on top of the dam looking for good things to eat and preening themselves. The locals slowly return to their old haunts.

I'm lonely for the ducks and the herons. But there's some nameless comfort in it all. A bracing reminder of childhood that never grows old. Like the feel of your toes sinking into the squishy sand as the sparkling ocean waves recede. A feeling of stability and still an off-kilter giddiness. For some reason, I'm reminded of that tonight when I think of the time passing and the animals returning.
Bonne nuit!

Petit Dejeuner

Two mallards having a small meal
21 Nov. 2011
china marker on paper

There were more ducks in this group. I only drew two of them as they dabbled in the shallow water. I was sitting at a viewing platform at Broadmoor Audubon Sanctuary and the wetland was full of activity. At one point, another male dropped out of the sky and joined the boisterous group. A pair of Canada geese kept their distance.

The Log

Recent heavy rains have rearranged the driftwood at the dam. One log was swept away and another has gotten stuck at the top. Four mallards and one busy sandpiper like the change. The rate of change seems to accelerate at this time of the Summer… Autumn is a little more than an idea.

A big log has become stranded on the top of the dam. Four mallards rest and preen on top of it. The partial shape in the foreground is a "fish ladder" for migratory fish to swim upriver.
© 2011 Rob Dunlavey

This morning I saw a tiny sandpiper poking around in the riffles just below the log.
© 2011 Rob Dunlavey

A Walk Around the Lake at Sunset

I took at walk around a lake before dusk the other evening. Before setting out, I frittered away my time (at the computer no doubt) so that when I left the house, even though it was very light outside, I knew that I'd be returning in the dark --probably. I'm an optimist and it gets me into trouble. Of course, there was no trouble; there was just a lack of light and a nagging feeling that someone would worry a little about me.

I bumped into an old acquaintance along the way and we chatted halfway around the lake and through the college campus. By the time I got back to the shoreline it was apparent that I'd be walking back in the dark. My feet on the path would be my eyes. The sky was clear and I could see Venus glittering to the west in a sky in deepening shades of a Maxfield Parrish blue.

Then I saw where all the ducks and geese were hanging out. It was nearly 9:00 p.m. The sun was down and the stars were starting to twinkle. There was still a lot of light in the sky but any shadows were just a suggestion rather than cast by any distinct light source. Everything was reflected or hinted at.

But the birds were busy as ever: scouting this way and that, tipping up and dabbling at something below or bossing each other around. As I write this, two days later, it's 06h45 and I know they are all up and at it: feeding, squawking and reacting to the life of a duck or a goose in the waning days of summer 2010. It's seamless really, a bird's life. Sleep but an interlude between the waking, wandering and wondering until the big bell clangs and it's time to go.

I felt my way home and avoided looking into the sky or even over to the lake because my light-deprived eyes were so attuned to to varying degrees of gray and black. A looming dark shape could be a mass of bushes in the distance or a tree trunk about the collide with my forehead. My depth perception was not dependable so I used the sounds of my footsteps to tell me whether I was on the trail. The lights were on at the college and they reflected off the lake's surface. A pair of black silhouetted mallards whooshed overhead to join their friends in the cove.

I made it home fine. The lights were on. I had to squint in order to see.

colored pencil, ink