Last weekend I had a chance to do a little sketching in my yard. The sketch on the right is a pen and ink done at our piano teacher's kitchen table in May that I later put a color wash on. He has quite a color variety of rose bushes in his backyard and always has a few in a vase in the house. This sketch was drawn vertically but it works horizontally as well. The sketch on the left is the one from the front yard. I found some shade under our acacia tree early in the morning and sketched the yucca pods that are so heavy they are bowing over the stalk they are growing on. While painting a hummingbird came to sip from the tiny red blossoms on this stalk. She was not more than a foot away from me and she hovered long enough to take a good look at the painting. The colors must have attracted her.
Oh Lisa...a lovely sketch. And a beautiful description! I have your blog now on my blog (but I probably told you that already) as I love looking at your work, sketches and otherwise and love that you are in a different part of the country than I am. (I too did post grad work at U of WI (but at Whitewater, not Madison) and my eldest daughter (the one I blog about today) graduated from UW Madison. And my younger daughter lives in Madison.
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ReplyDeleteHi Ginny, Thank-you for your comments. The yucca pods were painted with underglazes of malachite, a new primatek color from Daniel Smith. It's basically just copper carbonate. I get a kick out of the thought that I am now painting with that mineral after so many years of mixing it into glazes for copper red pots. About Madison-what a small world the art world is! The UW art department was wonderful. Professor Reitz used to tell us make our own brushes and alter the ones we bought so our mark-making would be unique to each one of us. It was excellent advice and I am still trimming my brushes to this day. Your blog is excellent! Your paintings and sketches and the things you write about their creation are fascinating.
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