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This morning at 9:30 am we surprised a coyote hugging the edge of the small woods at Union Bay. The coyote gave me several minutes to fumble with my camera--I never did quite manage to get it focused, but am still pleased to have captured the coyote in the light of early morning.
Just a little later we saw this pair of hooded mergansers on a small pond on the west side of the natural area. Earlier in the week I saw teals and a wood duck there.
My favorite birding site in Seattle is the Union Bay Natural Area. I used my new camera, a Nikon Cool Pix P80 to take these photos. I visited twice this week, each time rewarded with sights of these beautiful birds. I can't wait to paint them! I'll be offering a library program on Sketching Birds in Watercolor for the Stanwood Library (in conjunction with the Snow Goose Festival) in late February at Four Springs House on Camano Island.
Seen above is a Wood Duck and to the right a Great Blue Heron. Every time I visit Union Bay I see at least one heron, and this one yesterday was on the alert as an eagle flew by.
Below is a telephot shot of Mt. Rainier--I didn't even realize there was a duck taking off when I took this photo. A happy accident!
THE MEADOW AT SITKA CENTER offers a view of the sea stacks just north of Lincoln City, Oregon. This sketch from my watercolor journal shows meadow grasses, several large Sitka spruces and smaller deciduous trees and shrubs. Students have joined me in the meadow to paint this view on each of my previous workshops for Sitka Center. In fall of 2008, Sitka Center published a series of cards representing the work of several of their workshop instructors and I was happy to see them publish this image. If you are interested in the packet of cards, you can contact them at Sitka Center for Art & Ecology.
The Japanese lantern creates a focal point in this sketch of the Seattle Japanese Garden. This is one half of a two page sketch I created in my Arches journal. I discovered in painting garden scenes that masses of shrubs, trees and flowering plants can overwhelm the eye, presenting a chaotic image with no organization and no hierarchy of form. Not always a bad thing! But if the eye is to rest, it can be helpful to anchor the competing trees and shrubs to a structure or hardscape of some kind. This is well-understood by landscape designers.
Hole-in-the-Wall is at Mile 63 on the Wild and Scenic Upper Missouri River in Montana. These rock formations are of Eagle Sandstone and erode into fantastical shapes. Meriwether Lewis described "scenes of visionary enchantment" in this stretch of the river.
I used a triad of Daniel Smith watercolors to paint them: Yellow Ochre, Hematite and Phthalo Blue Red Shade.
Liberty Bell Mountain towers over Highway 20 in the North Cascades. Last June my landscape watercolor class and I travelled up from the North Cascades Institute Environmental Learning Center on Diablo Lake to paint the view of Liberty Bell and the Early Winters Spires, the most impressive peaks of the Golden Horn Batholith in the North Cascades.
At the Daniel Smith workshop, I'll be talking about how to use journals for plein air sketching. Steps from the car, or miles into a hike, I love the Arches watercolor journals for this, with their hardcovers and 140 lb. cold press watercolor paper.
WATER SKETCHES help me to teach students methods for paintng water. Still lakes are great fun to paint, and not difficult at all. Fast moving water offers more challenges for painters, but a close look at currents and rock placement helps alot.
TECHNIQUES used include wet-into-wet, drybrushing and masking areas prior to painting.
FREE DEMONSTRATION to be offered next Saturday, January 10th at the Bellevue Daniel Smith store. Times are 11am and 1:45pm.
Landscape Watercolor Journal
Sunday, January 18, 2009 I will be offering a one day workshop at Daniel Smith Artist Materials in Seattle from 11am to 4pm. In it we will discover how to work outdoors in a journal, capturing essential information that you can later use in your studio paintings. We'll focus on landscape elements like trees, water and rocks. I will also discuss my palette and other possibilities for Northwest and western landscape subjects. In the workshop we will be working from photos and I'll bring many, but if you have your own preferences, please bring those.
Pictured here is a sketch I did on the the summit of Skyscraper Mountain in Mt. Rainier National Park. A very airy perch indeed! It was exhilarating looking across about 2 miles of empty air to Little Tahoma and the moraine below it. Perhaps vertiginous is a better word--but painting the view helped me feel more anchored to the mountain.
