November snow!

It's been an unusually cold November, so far. We've already had snow and single digit temperatures. I'm ready for the more typical weather we are expecting next week, which will allow me to get outside in the yard again!

I'm not teaching classes this month. I had a long list of things I wanted to get done during my "break," but what has happened is that I have been spending a lot of time making art! I have a backlog of botanical artwork that needs to be finished, and I am getting things done for our next Great Plains GNSI show at Lauritzen Gardens next year. While things are not going as I had planned, I am really pleased with how things are working out. I'm also coming to the conclusion that I just want to maintain this blog as my social media outreach at the moment.

I am working on several acrylic paintings for our show of plants and pollinators. After lots of drawing and colored pencil work, I am enjoying using thicker paints and brushes again. This morning, I finished a painting of a flower fly, and started work on a monarch caterpillar (I love those)!

And I've continued working on a horticultural history project for the Sarpy County Museum. This has been a fascinating research project, and I hope to share more about it at a later date.

Here is a photo of the flower fly painting before I finished it- the wings on the fly and the disk flowers are unfinished. At this point, it is about halfway done. When I first get the thought that I am almost finished, I know that it really means I have reached the halfway point, and it was definitely true for this one.

unfinished Flower Fly, © Camille Werther 2019

Using technology in traditional drawing

Most of my work is done using traditional art media: pencils, colored pencils, watercolors, acrylics, and gouache. However, I also like to use modern technology to help me do a better job with my traditional drawings and paintings. This post will explain a little bit about my strategy.


This is an *unfinished* pencil drawing of a silver maple leaf. I learned a while back to plot out my dark values first, no matter what media I am using. I don't trust myself to get beyond my initial love of color and on to value. It's a different process than traditional watercolorists use, but it's the only way I can work without producing something lacking a full value range. Incidentally, this photo is distorted- it was not taken directly over the drawing, but at an angle. That's ok for what I am doing with it, but if I were documenting a finished work, I would make sure the camera was level. You can tell it's off by the odd upward-looking angle of the leaf petiole. For what I am doing here, I'm also unconcerned about the light streak on the side.

I use a fairly soft pencil (2B or 4B) to plot in the dark values, and will have to go back later with a much harder pencil in the H range to smooth out the graininess. I have not yet done this in this drawing. It's still in a rough stage. I also have not yet begun to fill in the highlight areas you see here with a layer of 2H pencil.


When I get to this point in a drawing, I'll take a cell phone picture like the one here, and enlarge it on my screen. By doing this, I can find errant lines and inspect the margins of the drawing for stray marks. I'm finding this a lot easier than the traditional method of working with a magnifying glass. In this example, there are two stray lines that go over the midrib. I missed them when I looked at it with the magnifying glass, but caught it when I enlarged the photo on my cell phone screen. The drawing will look alarmingly grainy when enlarged this way, but I still find it useful. It reminds me that I have more work to do to smooth out those dark values.


Pencil drawings can be a slow process. I go back to these several times over the course of a couple of days to see if the picture is still working. I will also take several photos along the way to see if I can catch any more stray marks. In the case of this drawing, I know that the stray marks happened because I was working too late into the evening without my good lights turned on! My leaf was drying out, and I wasn't sure I could get another- but I am now on my third leaf specimen for this drawing.


Do you also use a cell phone camera to help you see areas to improve in your drawings?


It's the middle of summer here, and I am hearing the cicadas again. I don't know if they just started this week, or if I just became aware of them. There are years when I do a double take and smile when I hear them- but I don't know if they have been producing background music for weeks, or have just started. This is probably one of those years!

Snowy day, drawing time.

a messy desk

This week has been an adventure. My desk is full of projects, but I have to admit I am loving the mess. I'm done with the monarch caterpillar munching milkweed, and moving on to a line drawing of obtusa oak- I learned it as Quercus obtusa, but I believe it is now classified as Q. laurifolia.


And then I will move on to the silver maple keys.


It is so peaceful to draw at my table as the snow falls outside. I hope this day finds you happy and warm.

Herbarium sheet maintenance

In college as an undergrad I took two classes in the Forestry department to study Dendrology, or the study of woody plants. We prepared a collection of herbarium specimens for one of the classes. These were two of my favorite classes in my entire college career.

My herbarium collection has been in a couple of shirt boxes under the bed for many years. I realized last summer that I was going to lose this collection if I did not take care of it. I bought archival boxes to store the sheets. Amazingly, most of the plant material was still in decent condition.



There was an additional step to take that I thought could wait until winter. I found a great resource from the National Park Service on maintaining herbarium sheets here.



Like most people with a small collection, I do not have enough freezer space to put the boxes into storage for a week to kill any pests. But I do live in a cold climate during the winter, and we are in the middle of a real cold snap. So, I am putting the boxes into a garbage bag, and the garbage bag into a big storage tote, and it is going in my garage, where the temperature should be close to freezing (will verify with a thermometer!). First, though, I am letting the tote acclimate to the cold to try to cut down on any condensation forming and dripping onto the boxes.

I love looking back through these. How in the world did I misspell paniculata? I lost two points for that. :)


Some trees in this collection were young when we took the samples. A few years ago, I went back to one of the parks where we had collected them, and I didn't recognize any of the trees there. They had grown. A lot... as trees do. And I would not be surprised if some of these trees are long gone. I have a new appreciation for a collection like this, a window on a particular place at a particular time. Forests (even urban ones) are not stagnant. They are ever-changing, and the species makeup and the number of trees can be very different in a matter of decades.


Anyhow, this is a nice way to spend a very cold winter day. I will try to update with how this experiment goes.

Pretend it's fall.

It's been a very busy summer. I hope to be able to give updates on everything soon!


In the meantime, I just had to share this lovely view from a walk at Fontenelle Forest yesterday. The morning temperature was in the 50s. I know that won't last, but it was a reminder that there is an end in sight to the heat. Fall is on its way!

Enjoy the beauty of the day, wherever you happen to be.

Lauritzen Gardens Exhibit

Exciting news! I belong to the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators, and our Great Plains Chapter is having an exhibit of natural science illustration at Lauritzen Gardens in Omaha in November. I am so thrilled to be a part of this group of wonderful illustrators. If you would like to see beautiful illustrations of the natural world, be sure to check out our exhibit! More details will follow.


As you can imagine, I am hard at work getting artwork ready for the show. I will be sharing some of my book art and calligraphy from my exhibit in Louisiana over the next few months. I had meant to share more over time, but didn't get around to it. While I am working on other things, this would be a great time to do it!

Watercolor Reference Wheels

We are finally getting some much needed rain. I watched our backyard turfgrass seemingly grow an inch yesterday afternoon after the rains came through.


This is giving me the chance to go through some photos I took last week. This one was very interesting to me while I was out in the forest.




watercolor sample wheel and Claytonia wildflower

A few weeks back, when we were still getting snow, I made these small wheels with my watercolor paints around the edges. I like this arrangement because it allows me to carry a reference of colors directly into the field without a lot of bulk. I made the wheels based on color groups. Although I (almost) never use watercolors straight from the tube, it makes it a lot easier to see which base to start from, and make some notes right there in front of the flower. Each wheel has space on the front and back.


The green paint that is right next to the Claytonia virginica, or Spring Beauty wildflower, is Daniel Smith's Green Apatite Genuine. I bought it on a whim a few weeks ago because I liked the color on the display. When I tried it out at home, I found that it has a very different look in pale washes and in heavier mass tones.


As you can see, the mass tone was very similar to the leaf color in this lighting.


The color also has an intriguing, sedimentary look on the paper.


So, will this mean I can take a shortcut and use this green? It would save me time in the field not to have to mix a color. I am not sure, yet- I need to become more familiar with it. I use (and like) many different brands of paint, and there are other ways to mix this green, using other paints on my palette. But this one intrigued me, because I had not purchased it with wildflower painting in mind.


This also reinforced how much I like using these wheels. You do have to be familiar with how the paints mix, though.


How do you carry your color references into the field for field sketching?

Wildflower Watch!

This has been such a long winter. I've been feeling so weary of winter's landscapes. It has been interesting to look back at my photos from last year at this time, and see how green it was.


But, there is hope. Yesterday, it snowed, but the day before, I found this at Fontenelle Forest:

Dutchmen's Breeches. Spring wildflowers!!!


Last year, I saw these flowering about three weeks earlier. I am so glad to see them again. I was also looking for Bloodroot and Spring Beauty, but didn't see them on the trails I checked.


We also saw Ruby-Crowned Kinglets flitting through some bare branches, and saw a duel between a Red Admiral and a Comma butterfly. They flew at each other and tumbled about.


I've always had a special love for wildflowers. My parents have a photo of me from when I was five years old, sitting in a fig tree, holding a handful of Oxalis violacea. Not much has changed, except that I now take photos or paint the flowers instead of picking them.


Do you have a favorite spring wildflower where you live?

Butterflies!

Weather in Nebraska is always interesting. Last weekend, we had record cold temperatures. Midweek, they are predicting almost 80 degrees. And next weekend, snow is predicted again.


But it is trying to be spring! And on my hike yesterday at Fontenelle Forest, I saw leaves of Dutchmen's Breeches wildflowers coming up. I was searching for Bloodroot, but they were not up yet in my usual spot.


But we saw three butterflies! I think they were commas, because I have seen them in this area of the forest before. The adults can overwinter. I wonder if these are overwintering ones? We had such a harsh winter, it would be absolutely incredible if that is the case. But nature always fills me with wonder.

The butterfly is almost in the center of this photo, basking in the sun in the middle of the fallen leaves. I took the picture with a cell phone, because I did not have a better camera with me, so I apologize that the picture is terrible. I was not expecting to see butterflies this early.


Whether they were overwintering ones, or not, they definitely brought a sign of hope for the spring.

A New Look

Hello, everyone, I'm back! Thank you for sticking around and reading the blog. Other formats for sharing are fun, but honestly, this is the only one that allows me to go into detail, so I am recommitting to the blog. I'll be making some changes over the next few weeks to update the look and focus. And I hope to share some exciting news, soon. (I love it when people share exciting news! It's so interesting to see what makes people excited or happy!).


You might have noticed that I added a subtitle below the name of the blog. I'll be sharing a lot more about geometry and nature here in the future. Geometry gets shortchanged so often in school, and I believe that is a great loss. It acts as a language that underlies seemingly disparate fields, from space science to fine art.




Great Dodecahedron

There is great beauty in Geometry.





Inside of Great Dodecahedron Model

I made this model following instructions in Magnus Wenninger's book, Polyhedron Models. I got the idea for photographing the inside, though, from Alan Holden's Shapes, Space, and Symmetry, which is still in print.


The inside looks like a flower. Such is the beauty of geometry, and it is a very good example of how geometry underlies much of the natural world.


Thanks again for visiting!


Sunshine, at last!

Greetings from frozen Nebraska! I can't believe it has been so long since I have updated the blog. I seem to be using other media to share photos and sketches these days. If you are still reading here, thank you! I do hope to get back to posting regularly.


The sun is out, the snow and ice on the ground is melting, and I hope to have some photos and sketches to post, soon. Stay warm!

Flight

I had every intention of going out and sketching today.


It turned into a photography day.


This is why:

Red-Tailed Hawks in Flight. Photo © C. Werther, 2017

Today, Raptor Recovery at Fontenelle Forest here in Nebraska released four Red-Tailed hawks. Two are in the photo above. They did not fly very high at first- note the tiny bit of the red-orange glove of the volunteer in the very bottom of the photo! But what a beautiful sight it was as they took off.


An awful lot of work goes on behind the scenes to make moments like this happen. There are a bunch of dedicated people who work very hard to get as many of these birds back into the wild as possible. I waded in a couple of months ago, and am volunteering, so I can now see just how much work is involved. Everyone's contribution is important, and the whole system, from the volunteer network of transporters, to the people who clean the cages, to those provide veterinary care, to those who try to teach others about the birds, leaves me in awe of what a group of people can do when they work together.


A bit later, clouds moved in, and photography was a bit easier. This beautiful hawk has found a branch with a view of the field below.

Red-Tailed Hawk. Photo © Camille Werther 2017.

I like a happy ending. In rescue work, this ending is not a guarantee. But it is very sweet when it does happen.

Moth sketches

I have been watering a bunch of seemingly dead iris, hoping they will come back. They were caught in a late freeze, and are mostly a bunch of dead leaves. The other day, though, I saw a few green shoots. They may not make it, but there is always hope if you are a gardener.


Anyhow, I startled this moth with the water from my hose. It flew into my nearby hosta plants and stayed put for a while, which allowed me to take a few pictures and sketch it. I am finding that photography is a very useful addition to my sketching method- it allows me to magnify some details of insects. In this case, I magnified the moth's head to add to my sketch.


I have not identified this to genera or species. The family, I think, is Noctuidae. Some of these are plant pests. Although I took entomology courses in college, I am not a moth expert. Butterflies and moths are becoming my new mind-stretching field of exploration, though. More on that in a future post! (If you are an expert, and know a definite id on this one, please let me know!).


This is a typical sketch page for me. I went back to my half-completed field sketchbook, rather than the mixed media paper one I used in the previous post. Some watercolor from a previous page is ghosting through on the left side, but this is more of a problem in the scan than in my book. I tend to work with a small book (5.5"x8.5"), and prefer the hardbound field books. I take a lot of notes with subjects like this. It can be very important to note where you find an insect, and what it is doing. If I am not using color, the color notes become very important. And with this moth, I noted the lighter underwings when it flew to the hosta.


The moth was gone this morning. I had a yard full of robins yesterday (I counted at least 8 at one point, fighting over the birdbath!), and they hopped right by it, so I suspect it flew away after dark.


I'll be announcing a new sketch series next week, so stay tuned!

Milkweed Progress

Yesterday, I decided to stop in and check on my favorite milkweed patch at a local park. There were a few flower buds trying to open, but for the most part, the buds were still tightly shut.

Next to a patch of crown vetch, I saw an Eastern Tailed-Blue butterfly, and got a picture. They are so small (almost as small as my thumbnail!), but I love the muted color of the upper wings and the bluer underside of the wings.

I am also trying out a new sketchbook. I thought I'd like the mixed media paper, but I'm finding it's not ideal for my pencil work. I think we artists hope we can ask one paper to do everything, but in reality, that is an impossible request! It is a very nice paper, but not ideal for what I am asking it to do. My Pilot Kakuno fountain pen is fine when writing on the paper, but I generally use that to take notes on the opposing page. I'm still a pencil gal. After trying to fiddle with the resolution and contrast of my scan, I can see why a lot of sketchbook artists have gone to ink with watercolor wash- it is harder to share pencil drawings.

But I sketch primarily for myself. I have always used my sketchbooks to inform my formal paintings. And I love pencil. I was the first thing I picked up almost 30 years ago, and I still love the way graphite glides on paper, and the feel of the wooden casing. This sketch was done with a 2B, which is a bit of a concession for me to share online. In the past, my primary pencil was HB, because I love the silvery tones.

Here is the page. The watercolors did not want to scan well, either. I didn't scan the opposing page with all my notes. There I recorded things like color notes, absence of milkweed bugs (at least that I could see!), and the smell of yellow clover nearby.

Road Trip

We are back from a very short road trip down to Louisiana. We had planned a different route this time that took us through northeastern Texas, along some state and U.S. highways.

What a wonderful plan that turned out to be.

The wildflowers in that part of Texas were in full bloom. When I lived in Texas years ago, I fell in love with the fields of bluebonnets and paintbrush. These roadsides, however, were covered with Queen Anne's lace, Gaillardia (blanket flower), Coreopsis, and coneflowers. Every time we rounded a curve, I found myself saying out loud, "This is so beautiful!"

The only problem? There was no safe place to pull over and take pictures!

The back roads were busy. It might have been because there was a LOT of road construction on the interstates- all the way through Kansas and Oklahoma, we had periodic one-lane stretches of highway. I suspect many travelers decided to take the back roads instead. Anyhow, that made it impossible to stop. I was so disappointed... but this is where being an artist is an advantage. Those roadsides are now etched into my brain. I can see the ranch fences, the fields of longhorn cattle, the ditches covered in flowers. I know the flowers, because I have sketchbooks full of them.

I also know that I will have to paint them. Soon, before the memory fades.

It was also a spectacular drive for birding. We saw bluebirds flying over Kansas wheat fields. We saw a rice field near Crowley, LA, with a bunch of egrets- and a Roseate Spoonbill mixed in. And we saw a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher streak across a Texas state highway.

So, if you have to travel this summer across this great country of ours, I urge you to slow down. Take the back roads. Enjoy the view. Savor the things that make each state unique and beautiful. And cherish the memories.

Coming soon- some of the visual memories, I am sure. The Polyphemus moth painting is being varnished in my studio. On to the wildflowers!

Studio work

Lots going on in the studio. I am working on my portfolio of natural science illustration. Pulling together years of work into a cohesive portfolio has been fun. Each drawing and painting brings back a host of memories. It's wonderful how much comes back... the smells of a place, the temperature, the sounds. When you draw and sketch outdoors, it cements all these things in your memory, whether you are aware of it or not.

In addition, I'm working on a large acrylic painting of a Polyphemus moth that I found at the base of a tree in my backyard. It's been challenging and fun. As you can see, I just have the basic outline blocked in. The body of the moth is almost done, but I have more shadows to put in. The abstract-looking background is a block-in to be developed later, but I kind of like it the way it is! The black gesso I used covered the canvas incredibly well. It is really making everything stand out.

This is a particular moth, not an illustration of a general one. The wing was torn, so I am leaving that the way it was. The moth was so beautiful. The spots on the wing were see-though silvery.

I've also been playing around with acrylic gouache. I've not tried this product before, and am enjoying it, but as you can see, there is a learning curve.

It's been a satisfying week. In addition, I've been doing some field sketching. Hope to post some of that soon. If it is spring where you live, go outside and draw! You will not regret it. :)

Astronomy Sketches

I've been planning to put some of these on the blog, but time has been getting away from me! This is a sketch of the penumbral eclipse in my astronomy journal. I learned quite a bit during this adventure, mainly that I should always sketch the moon's major maria and craters in before the event! It is too difficult to juggle a sketchbook and a pair of binoculars or a telescope, and draw in details. Lesson learned. Next time, I will plan (and draw!) ahead.

The second drawing shows the orange glow that appeared around the moon later that evening. I like the Ingres paper a lot for sketches like the first one (graphite), but less for ones like this (waxy colored pencil). The colored pencils I was using just did not want to cooperate on this paper.

I also have sketches from last week's lunar occultation. I hope to share more of my sketches in the future, and beg for your patience as I try to get them to show up better in the photos. I think scanning might be a better option.

Snow Crystals

When I was little, I dreamed of living in a cabin I had seen in a photo, surrounded by snow, fireplace smoke coming out of the chimney, and a peaceful landscape all around. In south Louisiana, snow was a rare event.

While I am not living in that cabin, I do get to see snow here in Nebraska. And when the weather conditions are just right, as they were this morning, the snow crystals are stunning.

The first photo is simply sunlight reflecting off the snow. Note the symmetry! I could not see this on the screen as I took the photo. All I could see was a glint. What a beautiful surprise!

sunlight reflecting on snow

The next photo shows a sectored plate. You can see most of it in the bottom center of the photo. The snow crystal's branches are fairly thick and pointed. This was revealed as I pushed back some snow that had accumulated on a wooden deck.

Here, a real beauty: a stellar dendrite. Note the side branches on each arm of the snow crystal.

Yet another lovely snow crystal. This one was melting as I took the picture.

All of these snow crystals form at a fairly narrow range of atmospheric conditions. Not every snowfall in Nebraska produces these. I am so happy I was able to grab a camera, kneel down in some snow, and share this beauty with you.

If you keep your eyes and heart open, the world is rich with beauty.

New Beginnings

2017 has begun! I have been away from the blog for a while, making lots of changes. I hope that you will enjoy them. First of all, as I hinted last fall, I am going to use this blog to focus on nature and art again. This is where I am happiest: the intersection of my professional life, and my heart.

I painted my studio the grey color I mentioned. Everything is off the walls, and I am enjoying the peaceful color. The next stage is to decide whether to add curtains that are patterned, or bamboo blinds. Pictures to follow.

Thank you for reading, and sticking around through the break. I hope you will enjoy the blog's new look!

Surprise Lilies

A previous owner of our home planted these beautiful Surprise Lilies. At least, I've always called them Surprise Lilies. I've also seen them called Resurrection Lilies, and Magic Lilies. Gardeners have always had regionally popular names for some flowers. This is why scientific names, in this case, Lycoris squamigera, are important. In any case, the foliage is long gone on these plants. For weeks now, I've had a withered brown mess of dead leaves. But I knew what was coming.

They smell lovely, and the colors are stunning! This morning, it was 69 degrees, so I was out taking pictures and enjoying the cool weather.

Close up...

These lovely flowers hail from Japan. They are in the amaryllis family, one of my long-time favorites.

Aren't they beautiful? And the young buds have a deeper color. The artist in me is mulling over what colors of paint would mix to produce this deep rosy-lavender. Quinacridone rose? Ultramarine violet? Permanent mauve?

More young flowers...

The only creature that didn't seem to appreciate the cooler temperatures was this bee on some goldenrod in the garden bed. It was moving very slowly.

I'm going to be doing some work on this blog over the next few weeks. I'm planning to highlight more plants and flowers, as I transition back to nature writing. I'll still be visiting art topics, and that will continue to have a botany and nature focus, as always. Thank you for visiting!