Tucan swim

So here Kim is the post you were wanting!

Strange things can happen when you are in Florida.   The kids have some floaties in the pool that completely take over the pool and do their own thing all night! They did not see me sketching in the shadows....    I was sitting outside in the cool air, taking a short break.

Doing drawings after dark is a lot of fun and can help you practice the reduction of tones to just the necessary few.

Sawtooth, huh?

Yes, the Saw Tooth Sunflower was 'sposta be in bloom in early September. You can see by the title and my notes that I was not sure about this one.     This was a good specimen with one flower opened and one not quite yet. The petals look like they are reaching for something.  It was still that time of year when they were leaning into the trail. Though I did not show it in the drawing, the leaves did have a saw tooth margin.

Coneflower

Not much info on this drawing. But it musta been a good day for a walk through the park to catch some coneflowers in bloom. Cannot say what coneflower this one is. Narrow ray floretts with the small diameter center disc should be a clue....
The shapes and the colors of these guys are never static. They are always changing from early bud to dried seed head. The weather always shows them differently as well. Sun or shade, wind or calm, seldom do you find the conditions or the flowers the same.
But it is interesting when you find some displaying at this angle.  I can't tell if these were a compilation of different views or mostly one view.
Drawings like this one I do in ink from the get go. No sense fiddling around. The images are fairly straight forward, not a lot of overlaping on a grand scale.
And black ink is good for old coneflower heads.

"Molis decline 7:45 am -  9/18/17"
The trail cutting uphill northwest through the bigger prairie from where it crosses the creek at the north end of the lake on to the Nature Center was almost impassable at times. And it is mid September- way to early for snow to impede your progress...  But there were so many heavy-headed flowers leaning way over into the trail from both sides that it was not possible to avoid brushing them as you passed..  Seems like most of those leaning flowers were coneflowers although this is the Hoary Sunflower. It was getting along in their season, and they could no longer hold their heads high. Yet to me their beauty is undiminished.
That explains the orientation of the drawing.
Now that it is winter, you can see where they get there name. as they are in large patches of gray tones that are distinct in the winter landscape.
This drawing also shows somewhat the attachement of their leaves to the stem. No petiole at all.
In the summer the stems show the "hairs" that give the flowere its other name - Hairy sunflower.

Maybe the initial pencil outline in this one is a bit too obvious, huh?
Done in a Canson 5" x 9" sketch pad with paper substantial enough for the ink to not bleed through...

Anuus and the butterfly

Here is another anual sunflower done a month later than yesterday's. The butterflies were not as plentiful, but still around. .....The wind was not as strong.

annual sunflower and butterflies

It was a dry and breezy day in early August. We had not been home long from family camp and we were expecting company in a day or so. But this day we were sorta caught up and so I was able to take a walk that landed me in the middle of the wetlands. The anual sunflowers were in full bloom, and the butterflies were thick. It was later that I was able to identify the butterflies as the Painted Lady. Apparently very common this time of year in this part of Kansas, and is one of the most widely spread butterflies.                
The wind kept the flowers pointed south and constantly moving. So it made a good study -to draw the entire scene while nothing was holdiing still!   The wind that whips the sunflowers around spreads the seeds.
The wind that resists the painted ladies going one direction, carries them without effort the other.

Hoary sunflower.

Not much info on this little ink drawing. No location. No date. And no indication of the weather. But the Hoary Sunflowers were in bloom so I suppose it was near the end of August, as were the other 2 drawings in this group, the Arrowhead, and the hosta.I had been waiting since last winter when much of the south end of the big prairie at the park had a gray cast to it from the dry remians of these flower stalks. The original pencil sketch is clearly seen in this photo. For some reason when I added the ink for the comment, I put it in a more central place, hence the shaddowy double notation- "hoary-  hoary...."      
It seemed to me at the time when I finished this sketch that the leaves did not give very good impression of their habbit of hugging the  stem. Oh well, maybe next time.  Actually you can see a bit of that hugging at the top of the stem.

Prairie Park Coneflower

Guess you would call this the dead of winter, huh?
Eight degrees and a good bit of ice over everything for the second day.
So lets have a good dose of sunflowers, and their near kin, as we remember summer flowers for awhile.

It was at Prairie Park on September 15th, a Friday afternoon. I call the park "The hundred acre wood" as a nod to A. A.  Milne, Winnie the Pooh, and especially "James, James Morrison, Morrison Weatherby George Dupree."
The flowers in the park are spontaneous and as varied as creation itself....and you will see here only a few of them- a person cannot draw them all, as much as he would like.
I was calling these the "triloba" coneflower, but I think maybe it is actually the sweet coneflower - Rudbeckia subtomentosa.

pack 'n chairs

The boys were getting out the door for school.   So office chairs and packs scattered about...
With two teen boys leaving at the same time -- thingsesses can gets interesting!    It was nice to be able to find something holding still long enough to sketch...
Chairs always have a distinct pattern; back packs always have fluid lines, and the two together turn out pretty interesting.

November cup plant

        The weather had not changed yet. It was warm and I was trying to get some walking in this day. This is the "trail" on the south of Baker Wetlands that borders the Wakarusa River woods. Even before the earlly freezes, these guys were looking a bit haggard; now their leathery leaves dry and beaten by the wind provide a light gray contrast to the darker brown of the stems. The stems are sometimes an inch across and they are perfectly square. The remainder of the dry leaves here still wrap completely around all 4 corners of the stems.
        You can see what this plant looked like in the late summer from my post of 11/15/16.  As well as earlier ones of the leaves themselves.

Redbud & rain

        There is a small circular sidewalk just south of the Natrue Center, which, from the west, is on the way to what I refer to as the "Big Prairie."  It is here in the circle on a drizzly day in early October that I found this redbud sticking up in the air.  It seems every day, every change of weather or lighting, there are new things to observe.   And new ways to see old things.    The day was wet enough that I could stand drawing in the middle of the walk and be in no one's way.
        I have seen birds here often enough that it is surprising that I get any drawing done. I identified my first Olive-sided Flycatcher sitting high on a dead tree in the middle of this circle.  He sat there long enough over a couple days that at one point we could park in the lot to the north and I could show him to Stephanie.
        Seems like a lot of saplings like this one adopt this pose - jogging side to side between the leaves. Elms do it for sure, and you can often spot them from some distance sticking up above an overgrown fence row. But this redbud there that day in the fine mist of a rain was begging "interpreted" - so I pulled a sketch pad from my bag and got to work. Maybe I risked getting a good sketch pad wet, but the rain had nearly stopped.
        This ink-over-pencil drawing took maybe a half hour start to finish. Yah, I know you probably say it looks like it too!

Faces

The guy got a bit self conscious after a bit. As you can see, it was a pretty quick drawing. And he shifted possitions so I was not seeing the same thing. That's a good test of your memory and adaptability.

Faces. There are not always people around that don't mind you sketching 'em. The lobby of the library or the airport are good places, where people are pretty much anonymous. Or as in this case the waiting room of a large busy office.

Westby sketches

We were staying in Westby for a week, and although we had lots of fun, that was not the only reason we were there. One of the few sketches done while we were there was this of the place we walked past at least 2 times a day on our way between Fred & Sue's and Phil and Katie's. This was done in ink directly in a 5" x 9' Canson pad.

This is the view straight east of Scott's garage in the early morning on a frosty day. My fingers got chilly.

Done in pencil in the same pad.

sketches of people

Quick sketches done at the dr. office as we were waiting. They often as these two, have a case of "phoneitis."

                                                                                                                              Drawing like this probably works best in a big room full of people so that no one feels uncomfortable.

 

Steph's flowers

It was not long enough after her birthday for the flowers to have faded.    The reflections and the transparency with the dark elements behind make for an nice composition. Still took me a couple trys to be happy with the result.

behind the bait shop

I have been trying to get enough walking in to keep the heart and bones working together. I have been walking for some years to the south and to the east, taking in the nature park and the wetlands. But sometimes you need a change. Plus some evenings it has been after dark when I finally get going. In this case though, I took my sketch pad and in broad daylight was able to get some drawing done. This was in a 7 x 10 pad of heavier paper. An ink drawing of all the trucks in various stages of dis-repair looked like a good way to test my mettle.