Spatterdock

Spatterdock, Yellow Pond Lily
(Nuphar lutea)
June 17, 2014
colored pencil, watercolor, ink

Looking for Spring

This is the winter with no end. But there are tantalizing glimpses here and there of warmer weather. I've seen flocks of robins for weeks. Last week I saw my first red-wing blackbirds and grackles. Great Blue Herons are fishing wherever they can find open water. Crocuses, tulips and day lilies are elbowing their way up into the sunshine. The sap is flowing!

It was sunny and Spring-like last Sunday so I gathered my sketchbook, put some pencils in my pocket and biked a few miles to Broadmoor Wildlife Sanctuary. I had "spring fever." It looked like Spring but it felt like Winter: I wish I'd brought gloves! By the end of the excursion my fingers were stiff and had to be pried off the bike's handlebars. I made two drawings (how to choose from a the myriad of motifs??). The first one (below) is of an old beech tree grove. I added a bit of color to it the following morning. 

Beech Grove, Broadmoor March 23, 2014
crayon, watercolor

The added watercolor on the right helps the forms emerge from the confusion of the drawing

Stream with beaver dam, Broadmoor 3/23/2014
charcoal, watercolor

original drawing on left. I added some watercolor washes the following day (on right) 

This drawing (above) was done where a stream flows out of a pond that a beaver dam have created. I love moving water! It's hard to draw however. I need a system I suppose. Paradoxically, my ineptness pleases me and forces me to observe and take note of what's in front of me and also what inside of me is resisting the active process of really Seeing. It's a problem I live with. Fortunately, a little touch of watercolor can help clarify the tangle of lines and smudges.

The Week That Was

Marathon Monday: I focus on a pool surrounded by bright green leaves

Tuesday: aftermath of the explosions, hard reflections come through the bridge's archways.

Wednesday: the city is reeling, victims are dying and the toll of injured rises

Thursday: later in the day, surveillance videos and photos are released

Friday: one bomber is dead, the other escapes. The cormorants have returned to Lake Waban.

Friday: the young men will never see this beauty

Saturday: the remaining bomber is caught after a day-long siege of Boston. The city rejoices, the news crews sleep and a gentle rain settles in.

Saturday: Some discord lingers relieved only by the circular rhythms of the rain.

Drawing Exhibition

OBSERVATIONS  Drawing Show

July 6 - 31, 2012

Broadmoor Wildlife Sanctuary, South Natick, MA

vernissage: Sunday, July 8, 2 - 4 p.m.

I'll have about 25 drawings on exhibit and for sale. Stop by if you're in the area. Broadmoor is a beautiful nature sanctuary with many trails and things to see.

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

More Reflections

vernal pool, Broadmoor Audubon Sanctuary, 12-04-11
colored pencil, crayon

Lake Waban from the boathouse
crayon. charcoal 12-05-11

still water above the dam, drizzle starting to fall
12-06-11 crayon

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.

Thinking about Ducks

A few mallards at Broadmoor Audubon Sanctuary
brown pencil
© 2011 Rob Dunlavey

detail

At last! Ducks!! They've been scared away from the South Natick Dam and all its rushing and unpredictable water. At Broadmoor, a wildlife sanctuary a few miles from my house, the water level in the marsh is at seasonal (lower) level and the wetlands are populated with dabbling mallards and crazy, easily-frightened Wood Ducks. Wood Ducks are really beautiful birds. If they weren't so skittish, I'd be able to show you a drawing. I did hear them a lot this morning at the far end of the marsh making their plaintive "Let's get outta here!" cries.

In order to get a good look at Wood Ducks, I think you just have to sit still and be very patient. Then they probably will put on quite a show. Early in the Spring. I was down at one of the vernal pools drawing maple blossoms and trying to keep warm when, lo and behold, a pair of Wood Ducks started going for a little walk: up in the trees (that's one reason they're called Wood Ducks). They nest in trees and this pair was, perhaps, looking for a good spot to get started making more Wood Ducks (for my benefit no doubt).

Now here's the honest-to-God truth: Two years ago, I was present at the moment when a brood of Wood Duck ducklings left their nest (in a tree cavity twenty feet above the ground and a 30-40 foot waddle to the river). One by one they flapped/plopped to the soft leaf litter below, collected their wits and were quickly hustled over to the bank. Mom and gravity did the rest of the work getting them out onto the relative safety of the water and on with life. I saw it with my own four eyes. I did!

Broadmoor: June 3

I drew this witha blue pencil; you just have to imagine that everything is green!

I've been trying to get over to Broadmoor once or twice a week to sketch. This drawing was done yesterday morning. The view is from a boardwalk across the marsh, not far from the nature center. A cold front had come through the day before (bringing tornadoes to western Massachusetts) so the weather was sunny, crystalline and breezy. I felt like I was at a higher latitude.

The pointed leaves of aquatic Broadleaf Arrowhead (Sagittaria latifolia) are brilliant green and they cross swords at consistent angles as they set to work harvesting the sun's energy. These angles and the resulting patches of light and shadow are the dominant impression to be seen. Swifts also darted constantly back and forth across the marsh from one end to the other feeding on the sun-dazed mosquitoes. Some geese meandered by and a Great Blue Heron soared overhead, wheeled and landed in the upper reaches of the marsh.  A few photographers, as sun-dazzled as the mosquitoes, traipsed across the boardwalk in search of prey. But it was early and I pretty much had the place to myself.

Skunk Cabbage

Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus)

You have to imagine that the dominant color here is GREEN.
It is an intense early morning sun-infused yellow-green. And this plant Skunk Cabbage, which is abundant, soaks up that sun and scatters a brilliant emerald color to all fields. Its shaded parts are deep green with a suggestion of blue, purple and sienna. Where the sunlight glances off the broad rolling leaf tops it is a fluorescent lime-jello yellow color with bits of pale blue and yellow from the bits of sky that accompany the errant photons that find a resting place on your green-hungry winter-starved retinas.

Skunk Cabbage IS Spring. It pushes its way out of the cold muddy wetlands while there is still ice and snow. The inconspicuous fetid-smelling flowers actually generate a little heat which must make their flowering structures that much more irresistible to the flies and other insects. The flower is very sexy in a way: a short flower-encrusted club is encased in a mahogany colored hood. The veil is parted, if you're a fly it's probably quite cozy (but not exactly what you were expecting - rotting flesh perhaps). The leaves come later. And they keep coming. The unfurl to their bright green state well before the other vegetation. Skunk Cabbage is easy to spot.

If you do become an aficionado of this plant, it probably means that you have crossed a certain line that separates you from casual naturalists and those who like an occasional stroll. It might only mean that you are desperate for winter to end and will grasp at any indication that Spring is lingering somewhere just out of sight. OR, it may mean that you've decided that dry socks are not a fabulous priority and that flowers that are not fragrant or appealing in a conventional sense, flowers that display the boudoir more than the lace curtains leading to it are rather "to the point". Well, what Skunk Cabbage is about then is as plain as the nose on your face!

Seeing Deer

A whitetail deer at Broadmoor

"[Stewart Edward] White was an excellent observer, and devoted an entire chapter of The Mountains to the subject of seeing deer: “As soon as you can forget the naturally obvious and construct an artificial obvious, then you too will see deer.”

But the artificial obvious is hard to see. My eyes account for less than one percent of the weight of my head; I’m bony and dense; I see what I expect. I once spent a full three minutes looking at a bullfrog that was so unexpectedly large I couldn’t see it even though a dozen enthusiastic campers were shouting directions. Finally I asked, “What color am I looking for?” and a fellow said, “Green.” When at last I picked out the frog, I saw what painters are up against: the thing wasn’t green at all, but the color of wet hickory bark.

The lover can see, and the knowledgeable."

–Annie Dillard "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek", 1994

I was walking under the spell of the early morning light yesterday. It was damp and cold from the previous day's rain as I followed the trail around the head of the marsh. I surprised strange ducks, numerous chipmunks and several whitetail deer. This fellow stopped and stood and allowed me to sketch the basics of his aspect. After it ambled away I stood there for another twenty minutes trying to render the vegetation and general visual static of the new growth in the open forest. But there was so much that I didn't draw!

Walking in the woods as an artist requires the delicate management of one's patience, one's knowledge about what is or should be there, and, as Dillard says: "the artificially obvious",  the imagination that anticipates things we are seeking. Things like deer or even things that are not visible.

Keeping Turtles

two painted turtles

I had a lot of wild animals as pets when I was a boy. Turtles came from the pet store though. They were Eastern Red Eared Sliders and were often about the size of a quarter. Their shells were about as flexible as a fingernail. They ate different things that were usually slimy: worms, meal worms, lettuce, and scraps of bologna.

I don't know how my parents put up with it. It was our responsibility to keep the aquariums clean but like most children, this was accomplished only with some duress. But the love of unconventional pets persisted up through college. My twin brother and I kept other types of turtles, a gopher tortoise who loved strawberries, two boa constrictors (and a colony of mice and rats to keep them happy). We also had gerbils and ground squirrels. I've raised injured birds and orphaned raccoons.

One winter, my stepmother returned from a Florida vacation with two small iguanas. Why? Simply because we had asked and she wanted us to be happy. Now there's a lesson in that act of giving that I carry with me to this day: childhood is a greedy little train and it has to be fed and stoked so it can get over the mountains to where the child will make eventually his place in the world as an adult. We are always growing and at some point one of those seeds planted in the heart of a child bears a unique, marvelous and wild fruit.

We weren't the best zookeepers but our hearts were in it and we were curious about all living things. This fascination transformed into an appreciation for the places where animals lived and, by natural extension, the whole of Creation --as far as we could imagine it. My pets today are more conventional (two cats) but I still never tire of imagining the emotional life of animals as I watch them. Animals and Nature are never very far away from me and my Art now.

After the Royal Wedding

Emergent fiddleheads (4/29/11)

Broadmoor Sanctuary 4/29/11

After Prince William and Kate Middleton's beautiful ceremony this morning, I went to Broadmoor Audubon Sanctuary to see what natural spectacle might be in the offing. The weather was fabulous: clear skies, early morning raking sunlight, not hot and just a hint of cool.

Ferns are emerging in the forest now and the fiddle heads grow very quickly. I captured several clumps of them in the drawing above. While drawing this (about 45 minutes) I saw a water snake glide past and a small turtle sunning on an exposed "tuffet" out in the water. Grackles had a spiraling aerial combat overhead and geese filled the air with their cacophony. The snake returned and retraced its route back to the other corner of the shore.

I did a second drawing at the end of the boardwalk (in purple pencil). I liked the reflections and the new plants, pencil-thin, arrowing up out of the still water. Geese zoomed overhead in both directions where nuptial parties were happening in the marsh. At one point I was surprised by a Merganser rocketing low over the water from one end and over the bridge where I was stationed.

Slowly, the process gets underway: The process of getting to know this place.

Scouting

maple flowers

Skunk Cabbage

a tangle with birds

I'm scouting a new location for landscape drawings. These are from the Broadmoor Audubon Sanctuary in South Natick. It will take a few months of work to find my favorite motifs. Nice work if you can get it!