Big Snow

cell phone snapshots at dusk of a small forest near my house

We have had a blizzard today. 15+ inches of snow has fallen and the kids will be home from school tomorrow too.
My wife and I took a walk down to the nearby South Natick dam, a place I've done a lot of drawing, after the worst of the storm had passed. I wish I'd had my sketchbook with me; during the summer, there were ducks, geese and herons to draw. Now that autumn and winter are here, the place has been devoid of waterfowl. But with all the snow today, the place was almost teeming with geese and mallards.
Of course, this is not very interesting to most people but to me it helps round the whole developing story out a bit.
I'll try to get out in the morning and sketch this scene

mallards on the ice above the dam

Ice Fishing

What's he fishing for?

Looking for love perhaps?

that smudgy thing in the middle of the drawing is a stick someone
had thrown to test the thickness of the ice

I too was out on the ice this morning.
Briefly.

I start my day rather early by working in my studio before the house wakes up. By 7:00 or 8:00, I'm ready for a change of scenery and I usually take a walk. Like many times before, I came down to the dam on the Charles River in South Natick. I've drawn this place many times.

It was freezing and I looked for a new vantage point to take my mind off the cold. I wandered out on the ice a bit upstream and sketched the dam as perhaps a goose might see it. It's not a very interesting drawing but I was happy that I got the trees and various architectural things in the right places and proportions in the background. Anyway, here's the drawing (and you can stop holding your breath; the ice was strong!)

Have a good week!

Cold Weather musings

5 January, 2011

A view of the dam this morning. 
It was about 20º F at 7:00 am.
Why stand still in the freezing temperature for 20 minutes drawing the ice covered river as it plunges over the dam?

There is a thread of macho that goes through American Art: the lone artist standing tall against the forces of conformity which runs counter to the notion of the artist as a sensitive pansy.

In illustration and fine art, for men at least, there's a stereotype of the hard-drinking tough cowboy. He always knows what's what and behind the façade of professionalism, there is a tough person who will not be pushed around or fooled. The artist is a gunslinger or an athlete.

I guess there's some truth in all of these stereotypes and that they are helpful as one sorts out all the competing demands of the creative life.
As an aside, I  wonder however, if women feel the same desire to "stand tall" and do extreme (or moderately extreme) things in their art. I recall seeing an exhibition of "The Dinner Party" by Judy Chicago and being wowed by the amount of painstaking detailed work involved.

Regardless of gender, artists in our now-dominant Western commercial tradition, have adopted a self-imposed requirement to express their individuality through the medium of their Art. We only have one life and artists feel compelled to give it their all and plumb the deepest recesses of their particular field of inquiry. And the results are great. Every artist is on this path of self-discovery.

Still… I miss Summer…

22 August, 2010

…and it's modest claim to simply attend to the gifts of Life.
For me, now, Art consists of these two motivations: firstly, appreciating and celebrating with my attention what is before me, and secondly, pushing and poking my unconscious, my intellect and the social fabric around me in an attempt to add something new to the chorus and the great human story.

Happy New Year to all. May you make great Art in 2011!

The Swan

This forest is down at the end of my street. After digging out after the blizzard this morning, I walked down to see the river.

I crossed over the brook and on to the main road and ended up at the park where the river goes over a small dam. I've sketched it many times in the summer and I've wanted to sketch it in winter too; just to keep the relationship alive.

Here's the Charles River in South Natick. It's flowing over the dam. The heavy snow has turned into a layer of icy slush. The blue circle is…

…a solitary swan that appears to be mired in the slush.

I drew the swan and the river. It took about 25 minutes. It moved around a little and would make a few honking sounds.

I did this drawing too. I finished it in the coffee house across the road where I warmed up. When it was time to go, the swan was still in the river looking stuck as ever. I called the Animal Control office and had to leave a message. I returned to the scene before dusk expecting the worst.

But there was no sign of the swan. It must have gotten out on its own. Maybe it just waited for the slush to get a little more solid so it could walk on it and fly away. I can imagine all kinds of scenarios; can't you?!

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.