Legacy of the Land Through Art Exhibit - Artwork Finished! Part I - Jack in the Pulpit

Update 11/8/13: SOLD! Thank you to the purchaser!

Update 10/11/13: Auction Site for Legacy of the Land Through Art is up!  

Visit the site to view, bid on and/or purchase artwork from the exhibit!

It has been quite some time since I updated you on my pieces for the Legacy of the Land Through Art Exhibit (via Legacy Land Conservancy) coming up next month. I spent a good deal of time working on sketches this summer and ended up with two final pieces for the exhibit by the September 9th deadline. This post covers the process for finishing the first of the two, my Jack in the Pulpit portrait in ink and colored pencil.

Jack in the Pulpit is a woodland perennial that I encountered quite a bit in my forays to Creekshead Nature Preserve, my assigned project property. Creekshead is known for its spring wildflower display, and I made a number of trips out there in April, May and June to explore the area.

Ironically, due to some tight scheduling in the spring and weather-related delays, I actually missed peak bloom! Luckily, my focus is on plant portraits and details. There were still a number of individual plants blooming during my explorations that I was able to get a broad picture of what species were in the preserve and which I might want to depict on paper. Jack in the pulpit was one of the species that was present in great numbers, right alongside the trail, each time I went to the preserve. Its distinctive flower, a large, cylindrical, hooded flower with beautiful maroon/brown stripes, made it top on my list for a plant portrait.

I was able to observe and photograph the jack in the pulpit through early spring when the leaves were just starting to form and unfurl through mid-late summer when the berries were present in green, before the fall turn to bright red. I worked mainly from my photographs as my time in the field was very limited.

Studies and Sketches

Here are some of my initial sketches and studies as I began to get a feel for the plant:

Field study - sketches and notes.                             Graphite study from reference photos.

  Color study - using Faber-Castell Polychromos colored pencils.  

Composition
 
I struggled with what exactly to show in my finished piece. I wanted to depict the different stages of the plant as I observed it, but also wanted to show both the male and female of the species, the former with one set of three leaves, the latter with two sets of three leaves, each with one of the unique, pitcher-like flowers. I played around with sketches on tracing paper and also printed and cut out sketches so that I could move them around, trying out different layouts.

I played with the idea of making more of a composed floral piece vs. showing the plants in a more linear fashion in order to better see the features of the striping on the flower and hood as well as the mottling on the stems. 

Above is a test composition that I liked as it shows the broad, mature, umbrella-like leaves above the flower, as well as the female plant and some of the early spring versions of the plant with leaves unfurling. However, I felt like the composition was hiding some of the details of each of those and I also thought that if I rendered them all in color, they might blend together too much.

 



Here is another composition that I felt showed the plants more clearly, but it seemed to be a bit too busy, without a clear path for the eye. I also started running out of time and with the level of detail I wanted to give each plant, I wasn't sure I could complete it by the deadline!

Ultimately, I decided on a more linear composition with fewer plants - just one male and one female. In one of my last trips to the preserve, I did get a chance to photograph the fruit directly, so I used that to fill in the last bit of the portrait, showing more of the life cycle of the plant, which is what I wanted to achieve.

I worked with a local gallery, Dexter Picture Frame Company, to get both this and the other piece framed professionally for the exhibit. I chose to go with a natural wood frame, in keeping with the organic nature of the piece. I also kept the ties local by choosing a Paul Hickman frame from his Urban Ashes line which uses salvaged or deconstructed wood from here in Michigan. This is the clear cherry wood, and I thought it complimented the colors in the stem very well.
 

Stay tuned for Part II for details on the second piece that I completed for the exhibit!

Vacation! Myrtle Beach, SC

It's been awhile since I have posted! Summer is flying by and I am still plugging away on my drawing project for Legacy Land Conservancy.

I did get a chance for some travel this month with a trip to Myrtle Beach, SC. In addition to our usual beach trips, we made a brief visit to my favorite Brookgreen Gardens. I really must try to get there when it isn't blazing hot! Though I didn't do much sketching, I did get some photos:

Captured a dragonfly sitting still in one of the beautiful fountains.

Lilies in the children's garden.

Live Oak Allee with gorgeous, colorful caladiums underneath.

And, of course, lots of magnolias, some with their fruits forming.

I loved this curly plant, also in the children's garden. No idea what it is, but it is wonderfully whimsical!














We also had a chance to visit Alligator Adventure, which had quite a lot to see! Alligators, crocodiles, birds, and other reptiles. We even saw them do an alligator feeding.
 

Baby alligator sunning on some roots.

Lots of young alligators hanging out in the hot weather.

We even saw albino alligators!








It was another great trip, and I look forward to going again! Now, back to the drawing board... :)

Artwork for Land Conservation - a new project!

I am excited to be one of approximately 40 artists chosen to participate in the "Legacy of the Land Through Art" mixed-media art exhibit to be on display later this year. 

The exhibit is being hosted by Legacy Land Conservancy, in association with the University of Michigan, Matthaei Botanical Gardens, and the Nichols Arboretum. The first exhibit will be at Matthaei Botanical Gardens this fall and a second exhibit will be at Sandhill Crane Vineyards in the spring of 2014. Fostering recognition of the connection between land and people is a key component of Legacy’s mission, so this exhibit is one way to bring this connection to the public.

Each participating artist is given a land assignment in Washtenaw or Jackson counties to explore. Some are assigned to a preserve managed by Legacy Land Conservancy, while others are assigned to private properties of interest in those two southeastern Michigan counties. The artist is to experience the land directly and create 1 to 3 pieces of art inspired by their interaction. 

I have been assigned to Creekshead Nature Preserve, a 27 acre mature beech-maple-basswood forest with spectacular spring wildflower blooms. I have made about 4 or 5 trips out to Creekshead this spring. Ironically, due to a scheduling problem of my own right at the peak, I missed the height of the spring wildflower blooms. Yikes! I nearly panicked, but in my trips to the preserve, I did manage to see and identify a number of species of wildflowers, including:

• spring beauty
• jack-in-the-pulpit
• large white trillium
• nodding trillium
• baneberry
• cut-leaved toothwort
• bloodroot
• mayapple
• trout lily 
• wild geranium

My trips out were sometimes brief and other times with my husband and young kids, so I only did a few field sketches. I took nearly 250 reference photos, though, and am currently working on more detailed studies from my photos. Some of these preliminary studies are below:

Jack-in-the-pulpit field sketches and notes.

Jack-in-the-pulpit study in graphite. This was done in my sketchbook which is Stonehenge paper, so it has a slightly rough texture.

This is a study of wild geranium that I just started. It's in graphite (apologies for the quick photo, rather than a scan). The lower right corner has a small color study (ink and colored pencil) of the flower buds. This was done on Fabriano Artistico Extra White Hot Press watercolor paper. It takes layers of pencil well and also has a nice, smooth texture for blending.



 






This is a graphite study of a mayapple blossom done in my Stonehenge sketchbook.

And here is an experiment on tan, toned paper. This is a white trillium (Trillium grandiflorium) study. I used graphite and then layered some colored pencil on top. The paper did not take the layers of pencil well, so I only did a partial study. Still, interesting to get a feel for the subject.









I am looking forward to doing additional studies and then deciding on what my final pieces will contain. I found it very intriguing to be in the preserve past-peak, wondering what the different plants were without an identifying blossom attached, so I am considering doing a piece of just leaves from different plants.  

What do you think might make a compelling piece? What would you be curious to see in an exhibit like this?

I will keep posting with my progress as I continue drawing and making composition decisions. I do also post updated sketches on my Facebook page and Flickr account, so feel free to check those more frequently. 

Mixed media experiment - tulip study in watercolor and colored pencil

I have some gorgeous red and yellow tulips in a vase this week. One of my very favorite flowers, I have always wanted to draw them, but get intimidated by the feathery red that blends into the yellow on the petals. I tend to use colored pencil and sometimes get too heavy-handed with it. I often end up with a muddy mix, rather than a delicate layering.

Clearly, I could practice just using a lighter touch and sharper pencils! However, today I wanted to try out a little mixed media technique and lay down a watercolor wash to give me some background on top of which to add pencil.

One of my retreat friends used this technique beautifully this weekend while painting a skunk cabbage in all of its maroon and cream glory. It reminded me that although I have not done much painting with watercolor, I could definitely use it as a base for a detailed colored pencil drawing, especially when layering very light colors with darker ones.

I started out with a light graphite pencil sketch to get the shapes. I have a small Windsor & Newton travel watercolor kit and used one of my travel watercolor brushes to grab a little bit of yellow and do a light wash on the petals. I also did the same with a light wash of green on the stem and leaves.

I painted on Fabriano Artistico Extra White hot press watercolor paper. I took some quick snapshots to show the process, but apologize for the poor quality of the photos! It should give you an idea of how I worked through the study, at least.

Next, I started adding in layers of colored pencil. I use Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils. For this particular study, I used dark red for the deepest shadows in the petals and layered deep scarlet red and pale geranium lake on top for the red sections. For the yellow, I added some shadows with light yellow ochre and dark naples ochre. I kept layering, attempting to capture the subtle texture of these silky petals.
 

 


  
















I used light green, permanent green, may green, and pine green for the leaves and stem. 

As you can see below in the photo of my whole page, I did some test patches for each pencil before I used them to make sure I had the right colors. I need to do a color chart of all of my pencils to use as a reference! Those can be fun to make and good pencil practice - perhaps another blog post?

When I finished, I set the drawing aside for a few minutes and came back to it, darkening some shadows for definition and adding some highlights with my kneaded eraser. Here is the final. It's a photo (couldn't get the scan to look right) and even this doesn't quite show the darker reds as much as the actual.

Overall, I really liked using a watercolor wash as a base. I have more practicing to do, but look forward to using this technique again. 

Do you use mixed media in your work? What combinations do you like and why?

Pierce Cedar Creek Institute Retreat 2013! Afternoon of hiking and sketching...

If you have been following along, you know that I had the opportunity to spend a wonderful day at Pierce Cedar Creek Institute yesterday at an art retreat. I, along with about 8 other nature artists, spent time together catching up and creating some new artwork. We had a fantastic introductory class in etching with PCCI's first artist-in-residence, Doet Boersma. Read about it in my previous post.

After our etching class and a tasty lunch, we all spent the afternoon hiking the many trails at PCCI, sketching and painting whatever caught our attention. After such a long winter, it was a pleasure to have temperatures in the 60s and lots of sun! The woods are just starting to bud and spring plants are beginning to bloom.

I decided to hike one of the easier trails so I had plenty of time for drawing as I spotted wildflowers or other interesting subjects.

Three of us headed down toward the boardwalk behind the visitor's center, passing many,  pretty little spring beauties (Claytonia virginica) along the trail. These delicate, pink-striped flowers are among the first to pop up through the leaf litter each spring.

 


As we headed onto the boardwalk, I spotted a few blooming marsh marigolds (Caltha palustris). I missed the chance to sketch them last time I was here, so I set my gear down and decided to do a little drawing.

 

















Marsh marigold sketches are in graphite at the top of the page. Another plant that we saw everywhere was skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus). They have some really interesting shapes and colors, so I had to stop and capture those, too. I ended up doing graphite and added colored pencil on top. Not the best combo, since it gets muddy and smears. But I wanted to add some color to indicate the deep maroon next to the light yellow-green in the same plant. 

In the swampy area near the rest of the skunk cabbage, I did a quick sketch of a tree with bright green moss growing by the roots. I chose to use gray toned paper for this one.

 

 Tree with skunk cabbage growing all around.

 My quick sketch on toned paper. I didn't do a great amount of detail, but really wanted to capture a bit of the moss.

 










I made my way up the blue trail to the Maple and Beech forest next. This is one of my favorite spots and one I visited before. The beech trees look so beautiful and delicate, especially the smaller ones, with their papery white leaves rustling in the breeze. 

Along this whole area, the forest floor is covered in leaf litter and other winter debris, but up throughout all of those leaves, sometimes growing right through them, are the spring wildflowers. I saw trout lily (Erythronium americanum) leaves everywhere, but only one blossom so far. My guess is that in the next week or two, that area will be bright with the curling stems and yellow blossoms. 


 





I also spotted more spring beauties and some clumps of light purple flowers that are slightly bigger than spring beauties. They also have a wonderful, hairy white stem. I believe these are hepatica. 
 

I found one with its three-lobed leaves intact and did some sketching on the same toned gray paper as the tree I did earlier. 

After I finished this study, I simply enjoyed walking the rest of the trail, looking for more flowers and listening to the birds singing. 

My last interesting find was right at the edge of the trail as it came out of the maple and beech forest into the prairie section. It was sunny on the path and I had my walking stick with me, as usual. I was studying the left side of the trail for wildflowers and heard a rustling off to my right. I stopped and saw a thick snake, about 14 inches long, with light tan and brown markings. 

It blended in perfectly with the surrounding leaf litter. It has stopped and was waiting for me to move on. Can you see it in the photo above? Its head is toward the top of the photo, right in between the sideways "V"-shaped tree branches and has two black patches on either side.

I took my camera out and captured a few photos before moving on. It flared its head out as it waited for me to leave, reminding me of a cobra. I thought it might be the elusive Massasauga rattlesnake, Michigan's only venomous snake. 

However, further research when I returned home revealed this to actually be an eastern hog-nosed snake. It is often mistaken for the Massasauga rattlesnake. Those dark head markings really clarified it for me - in any photos you see, the Massasauga has more of a striped appearance. Also, I read that the hog-nosed snake tends to flare its head when disturbed. Either way, a rare and beautiful sighting!

We finished the day by gathering in Doet's studio again to pick up our etching prints that we created earlier in the day and exchange business cards and contact information. I am so glad to have had the chance to visit PCCI and my artist friends, even if just for one day. I look forward to returning again!

Pierce Cedar Creek Institute Retreat 2013! How I spent the morning...

I had an opportunity to return to Pierce Cedar Creek Institute (PCCI) in Hastings, MI yesterday for an artist's retreat. I had a terrific time and met a great group of artists two years ago when we went.

Many of the same folks and a few new ones gathered again this weekend. I was only able to go for the day, but it was a gorgeous day. Temperatures were in the high 60s and the sun was shining. Fabulous after this long, cold winter! I managed to get some good sketching done and also had a surprise workshop from the first PCCI artist-in-residence, Doet Boersma. 

I arrived to PCCI at 9 a.m. and the day simply flew by. We started the day by heading to Doet's studio. She is an amazing artist and so generous to share her knowledge, time and equipment with us. A gracious host, she made sure we had our coffee or tea before we started! Then she proceeded to give us a quick class on etching (technically, drypoint - using an etching press to make prints.) We each chose a drawing or photo - either something from our sketchbook or a photo of our own from online that we printed out. I chose to work with one of my magnolia photos that I took last summer in South Carolina.

From there, we each cut a small piece of plastic binding cover material and chose an etching tool, which could be anything from a screwdriver to a scratchboard point or whatever hard-tipped scratching tool you prefer, as long as you can scratch your design into the plastic. The focus is on scratching the dark areas of the design as the print will be done in reverse, e.g., whatever you scratch the most will retain the most ink and print the darkest.

It turns out that my choice was a little ambitious since there is a good bit of dark background around the magnolia blossom and within the leaves. However, I plugged away and managed to get something decent to work with on the press.

Once our designs were finished being scratched into the plastic, Doet showed us how to choose various ink colors, with darker ones working best, roll them out and coat the plastic or "plate", working ink into the scratched areas with our gloved fingers, if needed. After wiping the excess ink off, we held the plates up to the light to see where we wanted to remove or add a little more ink. Using cotton swabs, I was able to take more ink off of the white flower to bring more light into the design.


Once we finished inking, we took a piece of water-soaked cotton rag paper that we prepared earlier and placed it onto a scrap piece of paper on the etching press. Carefully, I centered my etching ink-side down on the damp paper and put another scrap piece on top. I rolled the blanket layers down and then cranked the press to create a print. You can reuse the plate again and again, applying more ink, different colors, choosing to darken or lighten areas depending on how your print comes out.

My first print included mainly some green ink and turned out alright, but I wanted to tweak it some more.

 

First of 3 "magnolia" prints.

For my second print, I  added some brown ink to the background and darker areas, but clearly did not incorporate it as well!
 

 Second of 3 "magnolia" prints. 

My final print turned out the best, I think. I incorporated some reddish-brown ink and pulled out some highlights in the flower and bud a bit more. The sepia tones really compliment the magnolia as the back of the actual leaves is a rich, red-brown color.

 

  Final of 3 "magnolia" prints. 

It was such a fun process! Once we all did our first print, you could feel the creative energy rising in the room as people started thinking of how they wanted to tweak their prints, bustling about for more paint, wiping their plates to get the right amount of ink and "dirt" in the background. Everyone did at least 3, some 4 or 5. It was a productive few hours! Great to learn more about this traditional craft.

We left the prints to dry while we took a lunch break and spent the afternoon outdoors. Stay tuned for my next post with photos and sketches from the afternoon hike!

Happy Easter! And an intro to pysanky...

Happy Easter!

Khristos Voskres! (Christ is Risen!)

  

Wishing all of my readers a very Happy Easter and give you a little information on an ancient art form called pysanky. Many of you may be familiar with this beautiful tradition, but if not, there is a fantastic article that was in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recently that can give you the details:

We have been doing the regular young-kid egg dyeing projects, but this year was the first year I was able to introduce my girls (ages 5 and 3) to pysanky. I am of Ukrainian heritage and learned this from my aunt and mother when I was just a bit older than they are now. 

It's been years since I have made them myself, but I am looking forward to doing them in years to come with my kids.

Although we weren't quite ready to mess around with the permanent dyes typically used for this, I decided to dig out the kistkas (wax writing styluses) and beeswax to give my girls a little introduction into how it is done.

I started by 'writing' a few dividing lines around the egg to show them, and then let them each try a little scribbling with the wax. They loved it.

Here is my older daughter giving the kistka a try.

Do you have any Easter art traditions in your family?

I hope that you enjoy this beautiful day!

25% off Sale!

I am finally running a sale! 

Select items in my Etsy shop are currently 

25% off!

There are some great deals here, just in time for spring and short sleeves!

Check out a couple of the 20+ items currently on sale:

This gorgeous triple wrap features shimmering 4mm round Pietersite stone beads. Also known as eagle’s eye, this rare variation of tiger’s eye contains shades of rich browns, coppery reds, cream and a surprising gray/blue. The stones are wrapped in 1.8mm bronze metallic leather with an antiqued gold button closure. Fits petite to medium wrist when wrapped 3 times.

This adjustable pendant features a gorgeous, large Mookaite jasper nugget in a deep goldenrod color with dark brown markings. This earthy design is finished off with dark brown metallic and cream glass beads. The stones are attached to 1mm dark brown, waxed cotton cord with dark brown S-Lon thread and two adjustable sliding knots allow the wearer to choose up to an 18” length (36" cord) when fully extended.

So, stop on by and look around, you just might find a great bargain!

Check back often for new items, too!