Molly Hashimoto

More Art from North Cascades Weekend

I'm including more of the lovely sketches sent me by Beverly Choltco-Devlin. She painted this on the shores of Diablo Lake on our last morning with skies beginning cloudy and clearing up as the morning advanced.
Beverly painted these thumbnails of Pyramid Peak and the shifting clouds, which I wrote about earlier here. Her cells of sketches remind me of film stills, and give that cinematic feel that I like so much in a sketchbook...a sense of movement and time passing on a two dimensional page. I thik artists have been working towards this for centuries--when I think of multi-panel altarpieces, predellas, diptychs, triptychs, I get that same sense of drama and figures in action and motion. 
 
 

Student Work from North Cascades Institute Weekend

Beverly Choltco-Devlin just sent me some beautiful work that she created during our weekend at the North Cascades Institute's Environmental Learning Center on Diablo Lake. She included this small monochrome thumbnail done with the Stylist pen.I enjoy how the black line dissolves into a lovely blue. On our first day we painted from the Lily Shelter; Beverly focused on the light of the late spring forest and the dramatic trunks of alders. 
 

Grebe at Union Bay continued

 
Yesterday we visited the grebe nest again and hooray, the chick had hatched. It was so much fun watching the chick, first sitting atop his or her mother's back hidden by feathers and then hopping off now and then to swim alongside. And then begging for food!

Cinnabar Moth at Union Bay

 Thanks to my friend Marilyn McGuire, and comments on my previous post from Ellen, I learned the name of this moth. It's the cinnabar moth, introduced from the UK decades ago, to control ragwort. Marilyn suggested I look at the online site  
Bug Guide and there was all the information. I learned that this moth does not stray far from its home base, so I hope next time I am at Union Bay I'll see it again.

Summer Solstice at Union Bay Natural Area

Yesterday we visited Union Bay Natural Area in honor of the summer solstice and witnessed a whirlwind of activity, including this beautiful red flying insect which I have not been able to identify.  We also saw a grebe swimming beside her nest--a friend had pointed it out to me a few days ago, and we learned from another visitor yesterday that she had to rebuild the nest after a storm destroyed the first one she built. Incidentally, yesterday in the New York Times there was a review of a new book on bird nest-building, and grebes have one of the simpler nests in the bird world--it's basically just a pile of debris!

 For the first time yesterday we saw a barn swallow, near the bridge over the canal that runs from University Village to Union Bay. 

 
 

North Cascades Institute Weekend

 Last weekend I saw a number of birds, including this hairy woodpecker early one morning when I was out walking along the Peninsula Trail, drinking tea, and listening for birds. First I heard the bird tapping away and later watched for several minutes. I've never before had such a good view of their long toes!

Student Art from North Cascades Weekend

 Marian Jones painted this sketch from the forest just outside the classroom at the North Cascades Institute's Environmental Learning Center. She used several different techniques in this sketch, wet into wet, masking fluid for the alders and delicate leaves, and dry brushing for the large boulder.

Diablo Lake Overlook

 On Saturday at the North Cascades Institute workshop that I taught, we drove up a few miles from the Environmental Learning Center to the Diablo Lake Overlook, one of the most beautiful sites just off Highway 20 in North Cascades National Park. It's fun to think that this sidewalk we painted on would have been the old valley bottom in geological time--before the Ice Age, when the rivers all ran to the north to the Fraser River in Canada. During the Ice Age, Cordilleran ice blocked the river's northward course and the dammed water spilled south to erode the Skagit Gorge.  During the high point of glaciation, the valley was filled with ice over a mile thick.  The advancing and retreating ice wore away the landforms, and helped create Thunder Knob, just to the south of where we are seated here. Learn more in Rowland Tabor and Ralph Haugrud's book Geology of the North Cascades: A Mountain Mosaic. You can locate various sites off of highway 20 in the book and discover the geologic history of those places.

Summer Glory in the North Cascades

 
    
   This past weekend I taught a watercolor landscape workshop at the North Cascades Institute's Environmental Learning Center. One of the most interesting things we painted was this view of Pyramid Peak from the campus. The mountain changed minute by minute, and it was almost cinematic watching it.  And of course painting it was a good challenge, as the mist and clouds obscured, then parted to reveal the towering peak.

Wood Duck at Union Bay

 Last fall I photographed an elusive male wood duck at Union Bay, near the Husky Boat Launch area. The water was placid, reflective, and bubbles floated on the surface, which made a beautiful backdrop for this most showy of waterfowl. The markings and coloration are almost unbelievable in their beauty. I used masking fluid for the bubbles, and for the duck's head I chose phthalo green to capture the brilliance and iridescence of the hue.