Most of the trees around are now leafless. Time always feels to me that it accelerates, or at least the passage of time becomes more apparent, when the leaves are falling. But now that the trees are bare, everything slows down again. Except for the dark. That comes quicker.
I used to draw a lot of things straight out of my head. I was in grade school and it was usually during math class. Something about art school in college knocked that out of me and I got tangled up in the need for reference, the need to try to make it right and I lost the ability to draw my stream of conciousness and became horrifically self-conscious about the whole thing. I find it really frustrating now – sitting down to draw and finding there is nothing there. I think in images continually – dream in them too – to the point of exhaustion, but they flee as soon as I pick up a drawing tool. I’m trying to fix that. I’m also trying to be ok with bad drawing – hoping that once I’ve fixed the thought process behind it, the drawing will come.
A jellyfish interlude blog post while my crazy huge file slooowly saves.
Things learned today:
1. Photoshop won’t save files over 2 Gigs as .psds. You have to save them in a special format reserved for files in the smackingly large range. They are called .psb’s. For pretty stupidly big. I have never ventured into this range before. And having had a long and arduous romp over the last two days with a couple of them 4 times that size, I think I’ll try to avoid them in the future.
2. I am too old to pull an all-nighter. Even the thought of it makes me queasy.
Orkney, in one word, fabulous.
Rounding the corner during the first 10 minutes on the island to see in the distance my cousin (once or twice removed – I can never get that straight)’s house in the distance topped with a Canadian flag that was barely hanging on in the typical Orkney wind was also fabulous.
Over the course of the next week we visited neolithic ruins (both above and below ground), dropped in on Stromness shopping week, explored the now decrepit but hopefully soon to be refurbished ruins of John Rae’s boyhood house, survived a gull-lead hedgehog carrion bombing and spent many a wonderful evening in the company of relatives I barely knew I had.
Orkney repaid my gushing admiration with a day of little wind but still pounding seas and I was able to do a little bit of painting of the cliffs at Yesnaby.
Alas, we never did see the Primula scotica but we did see a whole lot of other things.
Orkney, I miss you already.
This was painted from the front seat of our rental car because it was way too windy to paint outside.
Painting in Scotland is an exercise in painting fast because the light changes so quickly from minute to minute. And in this case, the tide was also coming in and covering up some of the landscape…
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Things have been very quiet on this blog for the past month as I’ve been away. I just got back today from a month in Scotland, Wales and Paris – and although the trip was fantastic, it is fabulous to be home. I did a few paintings/drawings on location while I was away. Here are a couple of them from the beginning of the trip. I’ve been up for almost 24 hours at this point so the rest of them will have to wait until another time.
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The drawing is from the archives (10 years ago – 22 and fresh out of school); the digital colouring is fresh (in the last week – pushing 32..).
This post is for Fiona who I know checks in on my blog for the sketches despite her dial-up. Which is such a lovely compliment. And I’m sorry my sketch blogging has been so spotty recently, Fiona. So here are two images. (Sorry! It’ll be a little dial-up intensive but I hope it’s worth it).
Fiona wrote a lovely review of her book bag haul from the CWILL BC Spring Book Hatching this past weekend. Looking for Loons was one of the books. Thanks Fiona!
And more great Looking for Loons news – my friend and former agent now literary consultant, Leona Trainer, wrote to tell me that LfL is listed as one of the Canadian Children’s Book Centre’s Best Books of 2008! I need to track down a physical copy of the journal as the list doesn’t seem to exist on line – or at least it has eluded my google-assisted snooping and my rock-turning on the ccbc site.
On the May long weekend I left the city for a bit of island recovery away from work/stress/city/noise. I took my sketching kit into the park there and wandered off the path, looking for things to draw. It was early evening and the end of an unseasonably hot, muggy day. The forest was warm and all the scents of all the green things were mingling with the smell of mud and moisture. Even the the little plants by the path that, on their own, smell acrid, had wrapped their scent up with the mosses, ferns and cottonwood sticky buds to create the most beautiful perfume. There is nothing humans can make that smells so good.
It was one of those perfect, slightly mystical evenings where everything seems that much more and wonderful things happen. Like the owl.
Barred owls (Strix varia) make, in addition to a typically owlish hoot, an odd scream. I swear this sound was the model for the ambient noise in the movie The Ring.
I was climbing up as small hill, covered in loose rock when I heard the scream. I looked up, and there was the owl, sitting halfway up a maple tree, directly in front of me. I climbed a little higher up the hill until I was more at the level of the owl and then did a few quick sketches of it while is screamed and preened and swiveled its neck around every time it heard the crows calling. The sun was going down and was filtering in brilliant yellow patches through the trees, back-lighting the bird. In that light it was a little difficult to make out too many details.
After about 10 minutes it launched itself off its perch and flew toward and past me, about a foot above my head and 5 feet beyond the edge of the cliff I was sitting on. There was no noise as it glided past me, into the darker trees beyond.
As I climbed down the hill another owl gave a loud hoot as it flew to a tree a little further down the path and then turned on its perch to watch me. With its grey and brown feathers it was almost invisible against the trunk. Without the sound I would never have seen it.
Further along, at the edge of the lake is a fallen tree that protrudes like a pier into the water. Yellow water lilies (Nuphar polysepala) grow all around – perfect places to find the shed skins of dragonfly larvae as well as small green treefrogs.
As I sat sketching, loons called across the lake and the bats came out to hunt the insects. Tree frogs sang in the surrounding forest and a noisy pair of geese crashed into the water close to where I was sitting. Little things surfaced and splashed in the still water.
When the sun finally disappeared completely the lake and trails were lit by a bright almost full moon. On my way back to the parking lot I stopped in at the meadow to see if there were any deer grazing in the dark. At the edge of the meadow stood a large doe – the mass of her body, slightly paler against the trees.
I went back the next evening. The air was different. The day hadn’t been as humid and warm and forest smelled less. I went searching up the hill for the owls and caught sight of one winging through the trees. In the distance I could hear it calling but couldn’t find where it was roosting.
I went back to the same fallen tree to draw the water lilies. Partway through the drawing there was a loud splash. It made me jump. Ripples radiated from a position in the lake 12 feet from where I was sitting. A few moments and a dozen feet on a beaver popped up and dove down with a slap of its tail. It did this for a while before spending the next 20 minutes cruising back and forth through the lilies and submerged stumps – edging closer and closer to me before it finally disappeared.
Once again the pair of Canada Geese landed in the lake and began their noisy claim of the partially submerged real estate. Over just two evenings I had already begun to recognise the schedule of the lake’s wildlife – what time the frogs started to sing, what time the bats came out, when the loons stopped calling and the Canada Geese arrived. Before the sun went down, I drove home with the windows open so I could hear the Swainson’s Thrushes singing somewhere among the trees. This a long, moist, echoing trill is one of my favourite bird songs.
Finally – it’s sunny out and everything is growing and green and busy doing spring things. There is an army of crows marching across the lawn, retrieving large sticks and cut grass for their nests. One of them just did a strange, contorted ant-bath on the boulevard – one wing in, one wing out, head twisted to the side, beak open.
pencil & charcoal
Kirsti Wakelin 