Skip to main content

In Life and Art

A couple of weeks ago, I bought a new sketch pad and some pencils, sure that with a little practice, I'd be able to steady my hand enough to produce a few somewhat recognizable drawings to go along with some of my writings about nature and outdoor experiences.
I loved drawing in a past life, though I was never really any good. Back then, it was superheroes or comic book characters, something I'd do rather than studying for a history exam, or doing my Algebra homework. I drew some animals and fish, but they were always cartoonish. Sometimes my drawings were good, but I never took it seriously. Same thing with writing. Had I known then, what I want to know now.
My first sketch the other day was of a rainbow trout. It wasn't perfect, but I was satisfied with it. I took my time and paid attention to detail, and found the whole thing both relaxing and invigorating. I was tickled that it actually favored a fish, much less a trout. I spent a while shading in the right colors. I was the proudest first grader ever. I woke my wife to show her, and she was delighted with it. I thought she would hang it on the fridge, but she hasn't yet.

Sunday morning, I took my new art supplies outside, and searched the skies and treeline for something to draw. After a long stretch of sketcher's block, I felt something touch my ankle. My first thought was a fire ant or beetle, but no. When I looked down I saw my subject staring me right in the face. It was a weed.
I reached down and pulled the weed from a crack in the brick and noted the details. I saw the veins in the tiny leaves, the shades of greens and purples and yellows. The subtle white flowers that were starting to bloom. The fine hairs of the remaining root system. I held the thing in my hand and began to sketch. The weed didn't have a name yet, and halfway through the sketch, I was researching the plant, trying to identify it.( Thank goodness for Google) I wanted to know the taxonomy, the natural history of my subject. I was doing the work of a naturalist.
It would take a lifetime for me to identify half of the plant life in my back yard, much less, draw them. But I learned what a Hairy bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta) is, and I sketched something that somewhat resembles one. Now, every time I notice one in the yard, I can call it by name, and remember how the leaves and stems felt in my hand as I transferred it's image to the page.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Point Through Time

Occasionally, the Earth will give up some of her secrets. If one should be so lucky as to stumble across one of those secrets, it can have a lasting impact on how that individual sees himself, and the world around him. History is not just the past, but our past. On my way to a hunting stand one morning, my headlamp caught a glint of white, protruding from the red clay on the bank that I was crossing. I laid my recurve bow on the ground and took great care digging the point out of the mud, then wiped it off on my shirt tail. The serrated edge was as sharp as the day it was made, long before Europeans set foot in North America. Over the years, I have found several points, each unique, bearing the mark of the one who made it. The smaller ones being bird-points, or true arrowheads, the larger were no doubt spear points, used with an atlatl, a device used to hurl the spear at game, or enemy in time of war. They turn up in field edges after heavy rains, or on old logging roads. Sometimes
Post a Comment
Read more

River Walk

Through clear water you see the first leaves of early fall lying scattered on the smooth river stones on the bottom. The slick rock reflect glints of sunlight in the shallows. Everything takes on the hues of russet and amber and somewhere in there are flecks of gold and flashes of silver swirling in the eddies and riffles, gliding down into the deep pockets along steep banks rife with ferns and alder trees and jewelweed. As far as you can see up the river, trees form a canopy over the water, all bending toward the other side, all lacing their branches together to form a tunnel for an occasional cool breeze to flow through, loosening dead leaves and pieces of dried branches that fall into the current and end up gathering around your legs as you make your way upstream. A river birch growing right on the bank is canted over at an angle across your path, it's root ball pulling out of the soil and rock near the water. At the base of this tree, the river has deposited fallen limbs and
2 comments
Read more

A Kindred Spirit

That morning, I paddled the cove, searching around fallen timber and boat docks for bass. The first one I hung into pulled my kayak around like a bathtub toy, even though he was no more than two pounds. I took a good look at the fish, then flipped him back into the tangled mass of brush that I'd pulled him out of. When I paddled back out away from the bank, I saw a man in a red kayak, working the shoreline toward me, although his only fishing rod was upright in the rod holder, and his hands were prodding the rocks, as if he was searching for something. I just watched him, wondering what he was looking for, and then when he pulled up a wad of mono with a Carolina rig attached to it, I knew he was a treasure hunter. He looked to be around 70-- slender and tall with a white goatee and ponytail, earrings and tattoos, a stubby pipe puffing smoke as he paddled on around the bend to find another jewel. When he looked up, I threw up my hand. He took the pipe from his teeth and said, &quo
Post a Comment
Read more