Snowy Night

…Sweet dreams…

Winter Sketching

China marker and litho crayons seem to work well for sketching when it's cold and even if there is snow accumulating on my paper. The cold focuses an artist.

Just below the dam before the river flows under the bridge

Looking downstream from Elm Bank

Lake Waban, Wellesley College

My appointed rounds

South Natick Dam: ice, drizzle 12 Dec. 2010
colored pencil

I drew this quickly one morning last week in a few hours of warmer weather. It's a familiar view (link opens to a gallery of similar drawings). There were patches of fixed ice along the fringes and shards floating with the current downriver. A light drizzle was falling and it added a nice pricking to the still puddles of water on top of the ice above the lip of the dam.
This rain was not conducive to drawing al fresco so, after getting the basics down and reaching my limits of comfort, I retreated to the coffee shop and completed the sketch. I hope you like it.
I think it would be nice to meet artist friends down here, sketch for a bit and just hang out with our coffees.
For as long as we wanted…

Winter Drawing

The South Natick Dam | 7 Dec. 2010 | colored pencil

There's just a bit of ice on the fringes of the river above the dam. Icicles have formed where water leaks from the surface down through the arches of the bridge. I've seen an occasional goose or two swimming in lazy circles above the dam. No herons to speak of and just an occasional group of ducks heading somewhere else high overhead.
I promise though that I will make some snowbound sketches as soon as we get an accumulation.
There were a few flurries last night and it was cold enough that I saw the evidence this morning as I walked Ellen to her bus stop.
Life moves too fast wouldn't you say?

Water over the dam

The South Natick Dam

10-14-10

My other blogging platform has been going through some growing pains this week (it will be downsized over the course of the coming year) and it's been interesting (sobering and occasionally amusing) to observe the reactions of my fellow blogging illustrators and the public who wander in from time to time. Things are settling down for the meantime and posting will continue with an added dash of irony or urgency perhaps. If you to visit you'll catch a glimpse of how some visual communicators think or act. You can draw your own conclusions though. These are the people who boil those thousands of words down to the proverbial "one picture".

In Wildness…

The Italianate Garden at Elm Bank

Thoreau's statement "In wildness is the preservation of the world" is frequently mis-appropriated as a call for preservation of pristine areas of forest and mountainous Nature. Thoreau, in some ways I believe, had little interest in preserving Nature for Nature's sake. What he was passionately interested in was preserving that part of humanity that wants to jump fences, tangled hair flowing with dirt under its fingernails. His call for "wildness" is a plea for the original, the uncouth, the very essence of what it means to be a human and to be a living human at that.



And so with this homely preamble I present you with a sketch of a formal garden in the rain. The people who tend it are just hanging on and it's liable to disappear or go feral in the next business cycle as funding dries up. You never know. Then maybe the fountain will fill with frogs and the hedges will grow out and owls may roost in them.



That is how this artist's life shall be: an unartful dialogue between domesticity and unpredictable behavior. In between all my posts here about ducks and dams and the sublime beauty of Nature have been ridiculous doodles of alligators, foxes, men in pointed hats and imaginary landscapes. One feeds the other. And so it goes: winter is approaching and things will take a turn to the imaginary in Sketchbookland (although I was thinking of getting some fingerless gloves to prolong my outdoors sketching a bit longer).

apotheosis

birds and flying bicycles

Gathering Nuts

"Red Squirrel, Lake Waban" colored pencil

Red Squirrel, le lac Waban" crayon de couleur

Fall is definitely here. And we are harvesting different things:

Some sort of flying circus

Une sorte de Flying Circus

Fearless Fox

Le renard intrépide

Birds in flying machines

Les oiseaux dans des machines volantes

We're having a good time over here. I hope you are too.

Relaxed Ducks

These mellow September days! A shower here and there. Leaves falling and suddenly the park is bursting with activity. All the ducks are grown and feeding and preening and very busy. It must be caused by the diminishing length of the days. But the light of September and October is so precious and crystalline (when it's not obscured by torrents of rain or fog).

I drew this view of the bridge yesterday morning. I like trying to suggest the different states of the water: flowing and still, home to ducks and geese and tiny fish.

The ducks were quite busy feeding and paddling up the current. Then they would drift down sideways and across the current and start over again. They all look so relaxed! Natick: home to relaxed ducks! You heard it here first!

Bonne journée!

The End

Endings are just beginnings right?

Goodbye to Summer.

South Natick Dam: one more mallard

(colored pencil, 23 sept. 2010)

Hello to Autumn

Lake Waban: a solitary swan

(colored pencil, 24 sept. 2010)

The Bridge 2

"The Pleasant Street Bridge" July 1, 2010 colored pencil and ink spot

The picturesque Pleasant Street Bridge in South Natick was built in 1857. It replaced an earlier structure built by Rev. John Eliot and the local aboriginal inhabitants. Before that, there were Indian fishing camps on this location.



Throughout the beginning of the new millennium as American banks were destroying the world's economy, the bridge was falling into disrepair. Finally, the state of Massachusetts ordered that it be repaired. This quaint looking structure is a vital thoroughfare in this area's morning commute. There are more than a few rich bankers who probably use it every day.



A new deck was created and all the masonry was cleaned and re-pointed. They even fixed the worst, most crumbling sections of the retaining wall. The well-used park is still a bit shaggy but volunteers keep it looking tended and loved if not improved. Maybe that's the best we can hope for in a down economy: Sounds like good advice for people too: keep them tended and loved and don't worry too much about improvement.

[all drawings done in colored pencil in my sketchbook in July-September 2010]

I love the light that comes through the arch: complicated shadows and reflections all contained within a bold geometric container.

A pair of mallards, a heron and the late-summer weedy lawn.

A heron plying his trade in the shadows

two cars rushing by above the low water

I like this view looking across the river as it flows under the bridge.

I need to look for some new subjects though to keep things interesting. Stay tuned!

The ups and downs of late Summer

the lily pool and fountain, Elm Bank

© Rob Dunlavey

About a week ago, on a very hot and still morning, I headed out a bit later than usual in the morning and made this sketch at the decrepit Cheney-Baltzell mansion at Elm Bank. My soft green pencil dented the soft paper of my sketchbook as I drew. The humidity made the paper even softer. Eventually, the darn scene got drawn. Why? Why??



I guess I get some weird pleasure in representing things, more or less, as they are before my gaze. It's also a way of possessing something that I see often but yet when I see it each time, it's like it's new and never before seen. Drawing helps the neurons line up a little more amourously when I see that familiar thing again. I think the test if this is true is when I turn my attention to the faces of the people I love. And when is that likely to happen?



Here are a few more monochromatic renderings of things seen around my neighborhood. It has been a fabulous pleasure returning to the river and all these familiar haunts over the summer. I've gotten acquainted with the animals, the water's flow and the light. If you like to draw, I can't recommend it enough.

looking downstream near the bridge, heron and mallards
(© Rob Dunlavey)

reflections at the top of the dam
(© Rob Dunlavey)