lost and found

Luna takes . . . and Luna gives back. Sort of.

Apparently our kitten stole this Lumos Duo pen from the bookshelf and chased it around in the middle of the night. Yesterday, we saw her trying to reach under the loveseat recliner — Bill lifted it and there was my pen, along with bits of pet hair and dust bunnies.

I saw a dragonfly perched on a wire fence and snapped a quick fuzzy photo. It was holding its wings strangely. It flew away as I stood there — as we came back from our walk, I noticed it had returned to the same spot.

painting with Neocolor II crayons

Probably my final sketch of our granddaughter’s cow, Sierra — she goes to her new home tomorrow. Mikala raised the blue roan mix Short Horn during her senior year in high school and showed her at the Houston Livestock & Rodeo. Since then, she has lived on this wee farm with F.F.A. rescue goats and 2 rescue donkeys.

Recently we had some maintenance done on our RV by a man and his son, Jimmy, who owns a red-brown Short Horn and was immediately drawn to Sierra. He wants her to go with his other cow but also intends to breed her, something Mikala had always wanted for her but it just didn’t work out. So she is selling her to Jimmy. Sierra is very sociable and, though the goats and donkeys are companions, she gets excited when she hears other cows in the neighborhood. We all think she’ll be much happier with other cows and hopefully a calf or two of her own.

This is the second spread done in my little toned paper pocket sketchbook I made for doing nature studies. The first spread, seen in the last photo, is done from Art Toolkit’s workshop “Pollonators in Ink” (HERE) — worked in Pentel Pocketbrush pen and Neocolor II watercolor crayons. I have played with the crayons before, but never exclusively lifting color from them with a damp brush. Colors were even mixed in this way, touching the brush to 2 or 3 crayons before applying to paper.

(Those smudges are because I wrote the text with a fountain pen filled with water-soluble ink — then forgot that fact and laid my damp hand on the page.)

That’s our barn-house in the background, with 3 of the goats beyond Sierra.

sketching wildflowers

This past Friday, a friend and I got together to sketch and chat. She lives on land currently covered with windflowers — I drew some bluebonnets, a primrose, and false dandelion in a glass yogurt container that were sitting in front of me. 

This crazy jumping spider kept coming near me so I added him (her?) to the page.

The local bluebonnets have been outdone by Indian paintbrush this year. Oceans of orange have overtaken the usual blue. A. and I both took photos (her iPhone camera is newer and much better than mine!) — I plan on trying to sketch a landscape of wildflowers later this week.

This is a photo I took looking towards a neighboring farm . . .

And this is a photo A. took recently. I absolutely love Texas wildflowers!

random nature bits

Bill found the remains of this butterfly in his woodshop, so of course he brought it to me to sketch. It must have been trying to escape a recent freeze but possibly got caught by one of our barn cats.

After drawing the butterfly, I added a few of this year’s bumper crop of acorns. These are from a water oak and a live oak.

yes, Bill, bumblebees sting!

Large bumblebees love hanging out in the chaste tree near the swimming pool. Bill keeps telling us not to worry, they won’t sting us.

After swimming on Thursday suits and towels were hung out on the clothesline. Friday morning I gathered them in my arms, bringing them inside to fold and put away. I folded my own suit, which has an attached skirt, loosely and just laid it on top of my dresser.

Friday afternoon, I pulled my swimsuit back on to go swimming again. Before I got to the front door, I heard a loud buzzing. Then screamed as I realized it was coming from my suit! Batting at it wildly, I found a bumblebee hiding between the body and skirt of the suit — and she did sting me, though through the fabric so it did not hurt much. She flew across the room as I called Bill in to “TAKE CARE OF THIS BEASTIE!” as the cats were now after her and I didn’t want them hurt.

And he did . . . He went after the angry bee with whatever he had in his hand. His pocketknife! And he dispatched the thing.

I have no doubt he would fight off dragons with the same weapon.

(Both queen and worker bumblebees can sting. Unlike honeybees, their stinger lacks barbs so it is not left in the wound and the bee is not injured; it can in fact sting repeatedly — until a dragon slayer comes after it.)

fire ant bites . . . again

Bill called me outside to ask my opinion on part of the barndominium construction. I had already been out to feed the donkeys some hay and turn the goats out to pasture, wearing my rubber mucking boots. After going inside, I switched to some slip-on sandals I wear inside — the farmhouse floors are tile over concrete slab and walking barefoot on that hardness makes my feet hurt.

Anyway, I went outside with Bill, forgetting to change shoes. And was bitten right away by those nasty, scheming fire ants lurking in the damp grass. As I knocked them off of my toes, they turned around and bit my fingers. So back to the house for antihistamines and to wash the bites with apple cider vinegar. Most of the time, the vinegar takes the burning sting out and helps reduce swelling — if it’s applied right away.

And Bill’s question? The front porch awning is held by 2 rough cedar posts. He wanted to know if I’d like the support beams painted white to match the window frames or faced with cedar. I chose the cedar facings. Our large back patio will have the same.

If you stretch the photo, you can see Switch, the adorable dog that accompanies the head carpenter each day. He is very loving and well behaved . . . until it comes to cats. He hates them and wants to attack any and all he sees. Since our outdoor cat Stubby is roaming free, Switch has to be tethered while on the job. He loves to feel like he’s contributing to the workload.

an emerging cicada

As we were leaving one day to drive to our other property Bill noticed this cicada emerging from its old skin, which was attached to our rear tire. We needed to get going so I snapped a quick photo and we left. Not sure if the cicada was able to fly away or not. Why does that bother me?

bridal wreath and crane fly

I’ve seen spirea shrubs coming into flower before, but this Bridal Wreath Spirea in our neighbor Km’s yard caught my eye . . . . Just as the white flower buds began to open up, the large previous-growth leaves took on a gorgeous purplish-red color. Much brighter than in my sketch, but I am still sticking with the muted earth-color palette that I began this journal with, shown below.

I added a scribbled crane fly — they are rather hard to miss lately, flying around outside . . . and even in our houses! Known around here as a mosquito hawk, they do not actually kill mosquitoes (as is popularly believed), nor do they bite or sting.

beginnings

Apart from grade school attempts, the above sketch is my very first try at watercolor. Which is a bit weird given how many art classes I took in high school. My teacher, a sweet Japanese lady named Annie Lowry, taught in a self-driven style, heavy on abstract art (which I’ve never liked). This style seems to work wonderfully for those knowing what direction they wished to explore — I was totally lost, being afraid to try anything and not knowing what types of art-making were available out there. I remember doing tons of contour and blind-contour sketches!

Then in 2005, I was invited to join an informal group meeting together in a Wichita church to play with watercolor. Usually some type of subject was selected and everyone would paint it, then share each other’s work. It was fun to see our different styles! This metal bowl of fruit was the subject for my first visit; I borrowed paints from the leader, John Lokke, and worked so slow that I never actually got to the metal bowl which was the main challenge of the evening. But I became instantly fascinated with watercolor and continued to attend this group (we called ourselves the Riverside Watercolor Society) until it later disbanded as John began to teach classes for pay.

Another evening, John’s wife brought an aquarium filled with hatching butterflies for us to paint. Jill was a teacher for gifted grade school students and these were brought home from class.

In the autumn of 2007 I attended my first sketch crawl, driving to Excelsior Springs, MO. This is also the day I met my dear friend Kate (Cathy Johnson), who had invited people on her mailing list to come sketch together. This is the scene I sketched that day, the back of some downtown buildings as seen from the historic Hall of Waters. I only got the pencil part down on location, adding watercolor later at home. Did I mention I tend to work slow?

an odd bug

Lately we have been overrun with bugs of various types. Because of Bill's spraying near our home to get rid of the flea problem, all other bugs soon end up dead as well. As soon as I sweep all the dead 'love bugs' off of the patio, it is covered again. (Driving home from College Station on Thursday, they were so thick that drivers had to pull off to wash windshields!)

But this interesting yellow bug was found resting on a window screen, having recently emerged from the shell on the right. I looked him up through Google -- he (or she?) is called a Guadalupe fly, Wiley's fly, or a yellow drake mayfly. Whatever his name, he was fun to draw . . . even though I ran off the page trying to draw his _two_ long tails!

Inktober, Monday and Tuesday

On Monday, Bill brought me a dead dragonfly he found on the ground to draw. One of the unexpected pleasures we have discovered since moving to central Texas has been the swarms of dragonflies that eat up the area mosquitos. And so many colors! Red, blue, green, and even black & white zebra-colored! They are amazing creatures and it's sad to find a dead one.

Tuesday we made an unexpected drive to Nacogdoches to help our son Jeff transfer some things to the person buying it from him. His car tires are not safe for out-of-town driving and the money for the items will help pay to fix that. He's busy with his new job but it takes time to catch up for the period of time when he was unemployed. And soon he will begin grad-school.

Our favorite Mexican restaurant in Nacogdoches is La Carreta -- an old water tower grain bin (Bill informed me of my error!) perched on the roof makes it easy to find. I planned on adding watercolor to the sketch but this particular brown ink melts a bit too much even after it dries. It is a Monteverde cartridge made to fit Lamy fountain pens. A beautiful brown, but not as useful for water-soluble ink & watercolor sketching as J. Herbin Lie de The brown ink.