Undistinguished

I drew this sheet of robins while having coffee at Peet's this morning. A blank piece of paper, a black litho crayon and a red pencil equal robins. The place was crowded with weekend cyclists and Wellesley's finest catching up with each other. A few cranks and academic types like me, rounded out the throng. Perhaps we're all just robins playing mind games with each other and the worms just under the grass.

But, getting back to that blank piece of paper: I draw all the time. I've made it into a compulsion, an addiction of sorts. It makes me feel happy and at peace if I've put in an honest effort. That's all that matters. A shark has to keep moving they say. So, have I learned how to draw robins? Did I pass the test? My daughter who is 15 and is wise in the ways of the world says that Jackson Pollack just doesn't work for her because it looks so easy. "I could do that" she says. She actually has (sort of) in a fit of decorative creativity.

OK, so I'll just throw this out there (it's completely speculation) Pollack's work is Art because he was acquainted with drawing and representation. He knew there was always something more to the game. Once you become facile and draw a lot (compulsively even), the process of drawing and evaluating your drawings tugs you down the rabbit hole of why and why not. It leads to abstraction. It leads to taking some sort of stand. The artist tries to put himself into the work and leave it there as a testimony to the particular uniqueness of witnessing to his own existence as flawed or lopsided it may be.

I drew this image on the walk home: a lone cormorant drying out and occasionally preening its feathers. I was there. The bird was there. The lake was there. It was all real. I didn't imagine it. And now, I can draw these birds from memory (and have). This drawing is some combination of the real bird and the imagined  bird then! Observation and Imagination. Gathering Data and Analyzing Information. Practicing and Performing. Indistinguishable!

The Hungry Heron

This Great Blue Heron was feeding just below the dam. Imagine, his ears are filled with the white noise of the cascade and it has to tip its head this way and that to see the fish in the river. While one eye peers into the swirling water the other is glaring skyward --here he's saw a few people just above at the railing at the top of the retaining wall and has craned his neck to get a better look.

Sometimes he gets spooked and swoops over to the small island in the middle of the river below the dam. But this time he was agitated and returned quickly to hunting. Soon he had a small bluegill in his beak. This fish was a manageable size that was soon on its way, still wiggling, down his long throat. Then it was time to retreat to the island for digestion and drying out.

On the island, the Great Blue Heron flares out its wings to dry and warm up and imitates a statue of a heron. 

several studies of the heron
(graphite, conté pencil)

quick studies of the heron
(graphite, conté pencil)

Great Blue Heron, South Natick, MA May 23, 2012
(charcoal, conté pencil)

Here's a quick sketch of the Great Blue Heron using the water

and the natural buoyancy of the fish to position it in his mouth.

I came to the dam today and the heron was back at work. Maybe this will be his summer hunting ground.

When I approached, he flew over to the safety of the island but was soon prowling the currents in the middle of the river. A mother and her young child observed from the railing. After they left to look for frogs and turtles, the heron caught a truly large fish; a bass or trout that must have been 12-14 inches long. Somehow, it managed to position the fish just so and in one long protracted gulp, swallowed it. It looked a little stunned as gravity allowed breakfast to slide down to the harsh chemical factory that is a heron's stomach.

Because of some driftwood lodged at the top of the dam this Spring, an eddy has formed at the base of the dam. Fish congregate here before attempting to scale the dam. If the heron doesn't eat them all, a few will discover the fish ladder (in the background) and spawn further upstream.

(charcoal, conté pencil)

A Prince of a Frog

detail

Mother's Day Bullfrog
May 13, 2012
conté pencil

Early Sunday morning: The South Natick Dam has been quiet so far this spring. I've seen a few pairs of mallards; they visit and then move on. The fishermen and fishing families are out so I guess there are fish in the river. The Great Blue herons have no predictable hunting pattern yet as far as I can tell. But the trees are all leafed out and small birds are making their nests and the place is rather noisy with all their flitting and chasing. The yellow irises are blooming along the retaining wall above the dam. And that is where I spied this patient bullfrog yesterday morning. This being Massachusetts, perhaps he waited, in vain, for me to kiss him and thus be transformed. Sorry Monsieur Frog, one miraculous transformation is all you get!

One Fish, Two Fish

Spawning Bass, Leach Brook, Natick, MA
04-29-12
charcoal

detail

I own waterfront property! Well, I do when there's water flowing and this year, there has been enough flow lately can accommodates several spawning Large Mouth Bass (I'm not positive that's what kind of fish these are). I have to do a bit more research to determine the species but they are big and brown and very conspicuous in the shallow water where Leach Brook flows under the lane. The fish are a mottled brown color and are approximately 12-18 inches long. They thrash around in the shallow stream and then rest sometimes side by side with another fish.

The local kids are fascinated by them. The small bridge over the brook is kid-magnet and all the cars have to slow down as the children muck around or drop sticks on one side of the road and race over to see them emerge from the culvert on the other side. And then, voilà! there's this big prehistoric blimp of a fish lumbering along. It's all very exciting.

The fishermen are out by the South Natick Dam and Pleasant Street too. It's a real pecking order: there will be a hatch of some flying gnats, then the purist fly fishermen emerge like baseball players from an Iowa cornfield. Then the bait casters come down to the park early on their way to work or on a Sunday afternoon. Their families picnic while the anglers ply the waters. After all this there are the inevitable styrofoam bait containers, used tissues, malt liquor cans and the occasional young brown trout that wasn't released from the hook soon enough. Sad.

Brown Trout, South Natick Dam, MA
04-18-12
graphite

Return of the Cormorants

One by one (or is it two by two?) the summer residents make their way back to this area. Here is a pair of Double-Crested Cormorants on their favorite perch at Lake Waban. They are beautiful birds to draw because their bodies are angular and shapely and they like to hang out, dry their feathers and strike these marvelously dramatic poses.

Here are some drawings from last summer:

Hello Stranger!

A Great Blue Heron at the South Natick Dam
13 April, 2012

I spotted my first heron of the year at the dam this morning. It was sunny and cold. The river, having been warmed by yesterday's rain, was covered by a shifting layer of fog being pushed around by the breeze just above the water's surface. I settled on the retaining wall and took a sip of my coffee. I looked up and there was a  heron, "plain as the nose on your face", behind the island facing the dam. He stayed just long enough for me to open my sketchbook and draw the outlines of the rocks, his bony angular neck and and dagger-like bill. I spent the next 45 minutes trying to get the other details of the scene right.

The water is low. There are already long tendrils of algae clinging to the barely submerged boulders. Sticks and tree branches are stuck at the top of the dam. If we ever we get a spring deluge, they will be swept downriver. Last week I spoke to a fisherman who caught some small brook trout. He complained about the algae and blamed it on the suburban mania for green lawns and fertilizer. The vernal pools in the forest at the end of Front St. are dry so the spring peepers (frogs) are subdued  But it has also been cool so the flowering trees have held onto their glory a bit longer. You take the good with the bad I guess. Still, it makes me anxious about the summer… how dry will it get?

detail

detail

detail

The color in these images is a bit off as you can probably tell. The sketchbook is too big to scan so I take a snapshot under incandescent light early in the morning (hence the yellow and bluish illumination).

Watershed

The South Natick Dam & The Charles River
South Natick, Massachusetts 3/27/2012
© 2012 Rob Dunlavey
colored pencil

A view upriver with early morning reflections
South Natick, Massachusetts 4/6/2012
© 2012 Rob Dunlavey
conté pencil

A woodland stream in Broadmoor Audubon Sanctuary
South Natick, Massachusetts 4/5/2012
© 2012 Rob Dunlavey
colored pencil

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!

A Pileated Woodpecker

A fine fellow; reminds me of Woody Woodpecker.
Seen at Elm Bank the other morning.
Dryocopus pileatus
graphite in sketchbook
© 2012 Rob Dunlavey

The Hunnewell Pinetum

Early this morning (March 21, 2012), if you'd been walking around Lake Waban in Wellesley, you would have run into me sketching this marvelously pruned pine tree in the Hunnewell Pinetum. The sun had just topped the slope (to the left in my drawing) and I was down on the shadowed lake shore path. Occasionally walkers and joggers would come along. Dogs would lope along too, their collars jangling. But mostly what I heard were the birds: robins, mockingbirds, sparrows and mallards out on the water. In the distance, on the far Northwest end of the lake, a pair of swans were making a ruckus. A breeze picked up and I rolled my sleeves down and noticed the high clouds of fog retreating. Such a beautiful morning!

If you look carefully, you'll notice a bird at the very tip-top of the pine tree. What a fine observatory: "Port out, Starboard Home!" eeeeeeeeeeee!

I've included a few other drawings of the garden and a photomontage taken one rainy day last year. I wasn't dressed for the weather and  it was miserable. So I decided at the least to trespass a little :-( and take some quick photos of the Pinetum from places the public is not allowed to go.

Here's a link to a short history of the Hunnewell Pinetum (pdf file). There's also a Wikipedia entry.

If you're curious about it and want to sketch there sometime, let me know; I'd love to show it to you!

Pine Tree at the Hunnewell Pinetum, Wellesley, Massachusetts
colored pencil
© 2012 Rob Dunlavey

when? A cold day is all I remember!

drawn from Tupelo Point on the Wellesley College campus
07-16-2011

also from Tupelo Point (using a gold colored pencil)
11-25-2011

Up & Down

Here are two recent drawings of the Charles River. The top view looks downstream at a place near my home in South Natick. The other is from just below the dam.

Soon enough, the weather will warm up and we'll be off to the races: the trees will get their leaves and have a little fashion show and the orioles will set up housekeeping and construct their intricate and precarious nests.

Herons will fish below the dam again and maybe I'll have the privilege of drawing sleeping baby ducks in the shadowy and perfumed tangles on the river's fringes. And the winter that wasn't will become a memory.

I do think it was the serious lack of snow this winter that kept me away from my outdoor muse. Weird!

A view of the Charles River at the canoe launch at Elm Bank. A light breeze riffles the surface.
© 2012 Rob Dunlavey

A view of the dam and the fish ladder.  I rarely draw those houses. I should draw it all shouldn't I? I know that!
© 2012 Rob Dunlavey