Finished/Unfinished

A quick, partially finished sketch of the dam this morning
(6 April, 2011)

I found my blue crayon. It was in the pocket of some pants that I hadn't worn in a while. I missed it (!) and wanted to try it out again. Yeah, I missed a crayon. Life is weird; just let your imagination go wild!

Spring is definitely here --in a coy way to be sure. In a month or two, these drawings will have come full circle and I might be drawing this damn dam less frequently.  I will miss the herons and the families of ducks. I'll also miss the white noise of the water spilling over the dam and the coffee at the coffee shop.
Next summer (July 2012)  I have a small show at a nearby nature sanctuary and I plan to devote the year before it to work done in that place. So, if you can stand it, I'll be posting work from that upcoming series here as well. See? win-win! Here are some more recent renderings of this lovely place as it makes the transition from winter to spring.

another quickie done in conté pencil (30 March, 2011)

I like this one. It was done on one of the first slightly warmer days of the demi-saison. I curled up in some dry leaves, my back against a stone wall and just relaxed… and drew.
Colored pencil (18 March 2011)

a rare action shot

There's this Black Walnut tree here. Its lower branches are a magnet for fishermen's hooks and bobbers. By the end of the summer it looks like a Christmas Tree!
(25 March 2011, litho crayon)

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…

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".