Mother Nature’s Playing Jokes On Us

As in many places, high temps and humidities have been the norm.  Until yesterday.  I bopped out the door, heading for my walk and stopped.  It was COLD!!!  I had to change into long pants and put on a windbreaker to walk.  Mr Weather, a close friend of Mr. Google, told me that it was 58F.  During that day it barely cracked the 60s.  Today it’s very windy and rainy so I’m indoors.

 

Stillman & BIrn Alpha, Pilot Falcon, DeAtramentis Document Black, Daniel Smith watercolors

I’ve decided to post a sketch I did last week.  I wasn’t going to share it because there are many things wrong with it, some due to my shortcomings and others due to the fact that it was so hot I had a hard time getting into it.

The sketch suffers a bit but the real problem is with the watercolor, which is too flat, with not enough contrast.  By the time the brush came out my shady perch had become open sun and I was burning up, so this was more slop and dash watercolor and it shows.

Good Year For Flowers In Quebec City

I don’t know if high humidity and almost daily rain is a new normal for Quebec City but this summer has been a frustration because of it.  That said, the plant world is having a great time.  Everything is more lush, a lot greener, and flowers are everywhere.

I’m trying to fit my powerwalks (old man power walks mean distance, not speed) into our renovation work and I found myself in Parc de l’Amerique Latin, which is a park that features a bunch of statues of famous people from Latin America.

It was hot and I needed a break so I sat down to practice drawing flower blossoms.  I love drawing plants where I try to draw an individual plant or flower, leaf by leaf or petal by petal.  This is great practice in size/orientation relationships of organic subjects.  Here’s what I came up with on that day.

Find A Piece Of Shade And Draw

It’s hot.  It’s humid.  Too hot for an old man to be out walking, that’s for sure.  So, I put my stool in a shady spot in the yard and drew a small “scene” designed by Chantal.  I thought these little guys were going to be hosta-guarding soldiers (wrote about that), but Chantal had other ideas.  As usual, hers was a better one.

Resting Next To A Friendly Birch

I’m trying to get back to a daily walk routine.  It’s been hard this spring/summer because of all the rain and a bunch of house stuff we’ve been doing, but I was out the other day and stopped to sit in a park near my house.  There was a birch tree there to keep me company and I decided to draw it, or at least its feet and legs.

Stillman & Birn Alpha (9×6 softcover), Kaweco Lilliput pen, DeAtramentis Document Black, Daniel Smith watercolors

Our New Strawberry Field

Once upon a time, someone got the bright idea to plant a bunch of bamboo as a hedgerow between our house and the one next door.  When done it probably looked like a good idea.  The problem is that over time, the bamboo takes over EVERYTHING because its roots propogate the plant(s) into a persistent monster plant.

So, ever since we bought the place we’ve been fighting it by cutting it back continually.  We seem to be winning the battle as this year we don’t have much of it along our driveway (its last stand), leaving a sort of grassless, bamboo-less area.

What’s happened, though is a big surprise.  We’ve got a “field” of tiny strawberry plants.  There are hundreds of them, most less than two inches high and sporting 3 distinct leaves.  Normally we’d be mowing and/or planting something but I’m going to let things go to see what happens.  I don’t think that these plants are going to get much taller and I could find only a couple flowers.  But I did find one plant that had two microscopic strawberries.  They even tasted like strawberries, though you’d need a couple hundred of them to make a handful.  I had to draw the little guy.  Full size this plant measure just over 1″ high.

Stillman & Birn Alpha (9×6 softcover), Micron 01.