Back around 2003 we were visiting Alexis in Minneapolis and went to a sculpture garden. There was a sculpture of a horse made of tree limbs. Every angle you looked at it was an entirely different perspective. So I decided to do quick sketches of each view with a different brush-pen.
I thought that this would be a simple post, then I was paging through a different journal and came up with an idea variations in what each page (with sketches) had to offer. Most of the following were from 1995-6 in that journal.
Black alder along the Huron River.
We followed a river otter, one of five as it started chirping to four others. Soon one dove into the Tahquamenon River and came up onto the sand covered ice with a fish. We watched it eat some of the fish then descend back into the cold river. Everything on the page was done in less than 30 minutes.
Back in Ann Arbor at Scarlet-Mitchell Woods I sketched the pussy willow with a gall at the tip (on the left) and the shelf fungus on the right. Just as today, I was completely taken with the fungus.
As a naturalist, prickly ash is both a bane and a beauty. This is one of the few plants used by giant swallowtail caterpillars. Again, this was somewhere along the Huron in Ann Arbor.
It was a slow day for birds on a weekend at Whitefish Point in 1996 so I spent some time so I spent some time doing quick watercolor sketches of a moss and a lichen. One day I’ll pull out the journal filled with lichen sketches.
Even a Canada Goose thought the day was not nice. This is one of the few drawings I have of a goose.
Finally, a raccoon jaw. I as always attracted to bones, both drawing and photographing them.
A pile of bear bones from Florida. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll try drawing these.
That’s all for variations. Tomorrow the challenge is nocturnal, and I think I know where that will take me.
Until then…
Michael's Place 