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!


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.

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.

Rough Sketches of Bird Behavior

I will get back to the Prairie Journal later. I wanted to show how rough some of my observational sketches are, day-to-day.

Why show the scribbles? These are *not* Art. But they are examples of how keeping a regular sketchbook or journal can prompt scientific questions. It can also help you work through some of those questions, and is an important record of what you are seeing.

If I draw something, I remember what I see much more clearly. The artistic and the logical, scientific side of the brain are working together. The scientist wins most of the battle in pages like this, though. I need to get the information down, fast. It is too easy to forget details.

Here is one of my field journal pages as an example. I was looking out of the back window, and I saw four woodpeckers (Northern Flickers) in the yard. That is unusual: I usually see only one at a time.

Sorry about the red glare!

Two of them put their beaks into the air and began to bob their heads and move them side to side. It looked like a dance. I grabbed the sketchbook, scribbled down their positions in the grass, and made some notes. I always include a date, and usually include a bit about the weather. I didn't try to get a realistic Yellow-shafted Northern Flicker drawing down. Just the rough shapes, and a record of the motion.

The next step was to comb my books. What were they doing? They flew off in separate directions after doing this dance, so maybe it wasn't a courtship dance. I found nothing in the first three books I checked, and then found in the Birder's Handbook that it probably was a courtship dance. I noted that, and the reference.

This then prompted further questions. Why now? Shouldn't I have seen this in the spring? It seems strange for the end of summer. Maybe there is time to raise another brood of Flickers. How long does it take to incubate the eggs, and fledge the young? Where are they nesting? These are questions I still need to research, and in the case of the nest, observe to try to find out.

Because I have this rough scribble, I can use this as a jumping-off point to learn more about the Flickers. Maybe someone else has observed this in my part of Nebraska in August. And, if not, here is a record! I sometimes look back through my field journals, and can see trends over time.

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Birds and other animals can be tough to sketch, especially when they are moving. The end result is worth it, even if you think it is too rough. You can always go back later and do a detailed drawing based on what you have learned. Think of this as information-gathering, and keep it in a separate field book, not where you keep your artistic drawings. That helps to separate the two.

Poetry notebook visitors

This is one of the hazards of keeping a poetry notebook in an artist's sketchbook, I suppose.

I think I just can't resist picking up a paintbrush. Even when I am writing, I still see things in a concrete way. The wooly bear caterpillar I saw the other day inspired this flight of fancy.

I won't show the whole page because the poem is not going well. This is the only pretty thing on the page, flying and crawling under a pile of scratchouts.

Maybe that's really why it's there.

Wanderings...

I suppose I am a wanderer at heart. My parents used to take us on long car trips through the western U.S. when I was young, and I used to wonder what it would be like to live in some of the little western towns, surrounded by cattle and sagebrush. I would look at the houses, at the curtained windows, and wonder what their day was like: what experiences would be normal and routine for them, but foreign to me. Now I can say that I have lived in a small western town, surrounded by cattle and sagebrush. What a grace to experience other worlds, other vistas in this vast, beautiful country we live in.

For now, I am back home. Here we will probably stay, though I still dream of visiting a little cabin in the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho, or the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. A change of location brings many other changes: ways of working change; goals change. This move has been no different.

There are so many stories to be told here in Louisiana. I think for a while here I will be focusing on nature sketches and writing, telling some of these stories in words and pictures. It will be interesting to compare my sketches from years ago to the same areas today.

My aunt once told me that my grandmother loved the sight of the cypress trees and Spanish moss coming back into view after being away. I love that sight, too. I know some of my readers are visiting this blog from other places, and do not know this scenery. Stay tuned, and I will be delighted to share some of it with you.

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This is my well-worn painting bag, collecting patches and pins from National Parks and Monuments. I like it because it is waterproof and has little pockets for all sorts of supplies. Inside, I can also fit a few sketchbooks. It was not designed to be an artist's bag, but it is just right for the things I need to carry!

Well Loved Books

My last post reminded me of a couple of other well-loved books from my younger years. In the photo above, you can see the Eliot Porter book I mentioned, Hal Borland and Les Line's A Countryman's Flowers, a book of Robert Frost's poems, and a National Geographic book titled Exploring America's Backcountry. Interestingly, this last book features chapters about both the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho and the Atchafalaya swamp here in Louisiana. I could not have imagined in my wildest dreams when I was young that I would know both places. I am truly blessed.

There was another National Geographic book that I loved as a kid, Our Fifty States. I had that book almost memorized. Back then, I wanted to see them all. Today, I can say that I have indeed been fortunate enough to see quite a few, but there are still some tantalizing states left for me to see. I still want to visit Alaska and Hawaii, and Maine.

My parents were good to me. They gave me books to love.