Sketch/Journal in Progress

I've been up to my nostrils in preparing my latest sketch journal tutorial, but I wanted to surface for a minute to say hi, that I'm really still here, not disappeared down Alice's rabbit hole.

The weather has finally changed from long, cold, rainy, snitty spring (record cold temperatures and record rainfall, BOTH) to a still fairly cool but sunny summer. The vetch is out on the hillsides in glorious profusion (see above right). The bigleaf maples (at left) have just finished flowering (did you know some people pick these flower clumps and fry them in batter like fritters? I haven't tried that yet...)

Temperatures haven't even hit 90 yet, but that makes it great when I go down to Plant Oregon, Dan's native plant nursery, to weed every afternoon at 4 or 5pm. While the sun is still hot and the temperature varies between 60 and 80+, I weed in the shady spots, or alternate with sunny rows to warm up again. Then when the sun goes behind the western row of trees along the creek, I carry my weeding stool over to the once-sunny rows to weed. Birds are singing, bees are buzzing, it's nice.

But in the mornings I am at my computer, sorting out which photos (of some 730 of them) to use in the tutorial, which means I'm reliving my vacation in Kauai again, day by day, beach-crawl by beach-crawl, satisfying day by day. I'll experience the whole thing again when I put it together and write the tutorial. And then every time I pull the original journal down off the shelf to read it. How could you top that?!

But ya sure wouldn't want to do a tutorial for a BAD trip! Ouch!

Anyway, I thought you might be interested in how it's coming along, although I haven't yet started writing the tutorials.


For the Sea Biscuit tutorial page, I wanted to set the scene with what the beach morning glory vine looked like as I sat sketching. Here are the two photos I'll use for that, plus one I found later in bloom. It's a gorgeous, lush plant, growing on a hot sandy beach you wouldn't think could support such luxuriant growth.








The "sea biscuit" is so exquisite I spent about two hours drawing it. I was so entranced and sat so long my bum got numb. If you look at it close up, you'll see lots of little raised white dots. There was probably a spine attached to each one. I wonder if this is the remains of the spiny black sea urchin I saw earlier washed up onshore.....I don't have a good guide for sea urchin tests (a test is this calcareous skeleton left behind when the animal goes to meet its maker).

Then, since I journaled about the yummy mango that washed up on shore and ended up in my tummy (most of it) and Daniel's (the ridiculously small amount I could bear to be a generous person and share...), I'll include a photo of that, too. The crabs had eaten part of it, the pigs. Best mango I ever tasted!

This will all be accompanied with a discussion of how I approached the page, dealt with setbacks, worked out the symmetry of the test, and did the decorative Hawaiian style border on the right side of the page.

Another page, with brilliant red African Tulip Tree blossoms, posed entirely different challenges.
















The original view from the window was too far away for drawing with any clarity, so I worked partially from a photo. Working from the screen of a digital camera allows you to magnify detail a lot, but even so, the details of that flower cluster were ambiguous, so I had to examine a fallen bloom from a different tree to see how the flowers were constructed.

The tutorial will discuss the possible pitfalls of working from photos, and also how to get strong, vibrant color with watercolor pencils ~ which many artists have avoided because they thought it couldn't be accomplished. It can be, as you can see.

So I'm working busily away in my studio looking out into the oh-so-green woods. That rainy spring may have been depressing, but it engendered some of the most riotous greens I've ever seen. The very air is tinted green, even in my studio!

I'm almost finished sorting through the photos in Photoshop, correcting the lighting, making dull, cloudy day pictures sparkle (yes, we had several cloudy days, and those pictures look a LOT better if I brighten them up a bit), and rescuing underexposed photos (hey, check out the before-and-after photo here ~ there's a lot of information you can rescue if you know how to find it, although some of it, color mostly, is lost). It's fun, and I love it.

I'll be done preparing in a couple of days, then I'll start assembling everything into the book in InDesign, the Adobe desktop publishing program I use for all my books, and you'll be able to download it in a month or so, I hope.

If you have put your name in the little bitty box near the end of the right column above, you'll be notified when I blog about uploading it so you can get your copy.

Until then, Aloha! And have a good summer!

Costa Rica Nature Journal/Sketching Workshop ~ 7

Day 3 of our workshop. COLOR ~ the workshop day we've been building up to!

Before it even began, starting at 5:45am, Jocelyn, Marilyn and I went with Gerardo on a birding trip while Kathy caught up on her beachcombing. (Kathy would have to leave early the next morning, missing the last day of class, and she hadn't spent enough time with the waves.)

The birds were very forthcoming, and Gerardo, tirelessly searching the forest fringe with both naked eye and heavy scope, showed us many special birds (see my list above ~ how about a bare-throated tiger heron? or a green-breasted mango, a hummingbird, with young at the nest!)!

Back at the lodge, after our usual gorgeous breakfast, we prepared to work. Usually my classes contain students who haven't yet worked up the nerve to color their sketches. Not this class! Kathy had arrived in class the first day with scenic watercolors in her journal. Jocelyn and Marilyn had already been watercoloring their journal sketches with great verve. But none of them had much experience working with watercolor pencils, so, after a gentle critique of the previous afternoon's homework (two or more journal pages with attached ephemera plus an improved poem) we launched into the watercolor pencil workbook, Color Your Sketches, with vigor.

Each day of my workshop has its own workbook. I have designed the workbooks to fulfil several purposes: 1) to augment and give background for the instruction I give in class, 2) to provide a place to make notes, experiment with techniques, and in some cases to actually do an assignment, and 3) to give the student a concrete resource to take home from the workshop. Often there is additional material in the workbook for the student to continue working on later. My students appreciate these workbooks a great deal. This workshop has three workbooks: Sketch in Your Journal; Journal in Your Sketchbook; and Color Your Sketches.

We began with a brief journey around the color wheel, trying out swatches and blending colors to get familiar with the use of the pencils. Then we added color to see how that changes the hue, intensity, and appearance of the colors. I showed the students some different ways to get color effects, then I handed out worksheepts and we did a step-by-step exercise adding color to a gorgeous spotted orchid.

Since the students already had experience in watercolor, this class went more quickly than usual so I handed out a sheet of foliage patterns to be pasted into their journals for quick reference. They practiced foliage patterns for awhile. Tomorrow's assignment would be a beach landscape, which would use these patterns (or take-offs on them), so the practice was useful preparation for rendering palm trees and other types of foliage.

By now, we were all well acquainted, and having a great time chatting and working together. All three of my students had joined other resort guests the night before in a raucous card game, joined by a fearless praying mantis which stole the show. I was a bit sorry I'd missed the fun, but mostly I was pleased that my students were enjoying themselves at all levels: the beautiful surroundings, the sketching and journaling opportunities, the classes themselves, and the other guests

The homework assignment for tomorrow would be to produce two or more well-designed journal pages including some foliage, with color added to at least one of the pages. I was doing the homework as well as the students ~ I'm of the opinion that an instructor's efforts can serve as good demonstrations of techniques, styles and ideas, as long as the production of it doesn't get in the way of the student's instruction. In other words, if the students need my input, I don't work on anything during class. If they are progressing nicely at their own pace and don't need help, I use that time to color my own sketches or to make examples of what is needed for the assignment

After class, I took up my journal, water bottle, and camera and headed up the Carablanca Trail (see the map) to see what I could see. There were still a couple of hours of light, and I wanted to get misted by a waterfall and see if I could spot some wildlife. Check out my journal page to see what I encountered!

Guests are given a map of the El Remanso forest trails and beach when we arrive, and I glued it onto a page in my journal so that I would always have it handy. So far on this stay at El Remanso, I'd only been down to the beach, so a forest walk was high on my list of adventures.

The forest here is beautiful, with giant buttressed trees ~ buttresses are fin-like ridges at the bases of trees . Buttresses spread out like fingers, helping to support the tree over a wider area of ground. There are lots of palms and vines. Up in the trees you are likely to see monkeys if you are out for even a little while. Agoutis, like long-legged, long-toed rabbits (see my sketch), browse in the underbrush, and peccaries (wild pigs) roam the forest in groups of up to forty or fifty. There's no need to be afraid of them if you don't threaten them.

Flashes of red in the forest are likely to be passiflora flowers. They are about 4" across and look like brilliant scarlet stars hanging on vines. Insects and frogs fill the air with chirps and buzzes and high buzzing whines ~ with ventriloquistic qualities that make them next to impossible to track down.

By now, it was almost dark, so I got out my little flashlight (it fits on the bill of a cap, and makes lots of light) I got back to the lodge in time for a mango smoothie and lots of good conversation with my estudientes and the other guests before dinner.

NOTE: Kathy, Marilyn and Jocelyn, Adriana, Gerardo and others: I'm telling this the way I recall it and from notes in my journal. I may not always get it right, or you might want to add something to the tale, so please feel free to comment on ANYthing, with observations, your own tidbits, or corrections if I'm wrong about something. I value your input.