Tag Archives: colored pencil sketches

Sheep Smiles

Posted on by
sketches of sheep

"Sheep Smiles", colored pencil by Kerry McFall

The OSU Sheep Barns are literally a five minute drive up the hill from downtown Corvallis, so I’m not sure why it’s been at least 10 years since we ventured up there.  But the spirit moved us this weekend, so we treated ourselves to watching the wonders and terrors of nature at work.

The layout is a little different than it was years back – fences keep you way back, and there are lots of signs about germ transmission, and hand-washing stations… but the smell of sheep poop still pervades the cold damp air, and there’s plenty of bleating and baaing.  The lambing season is upon us, so it’s a popular outing for families with small children.  I’m convinced that lambs receive random signals from outer space which send them leaping and jumping for no apparent reason, surprising even themselves from the look of it.  “Gamboling” is just the perfect word for that.  The mother sheep look a bit dazed, but the shape of their mouths makes it look like they are smiling!

The pregnant ewes, some of them literally wider than they are high, even seem to smile… maybe they spike their hay up there, because it sure looks miserable to me.  Ah, sweet mystery of life – what a convoluted process, this birthing and dying!

A Question of Purple

Posted on by
Purple Finch on bird feeder

"Purple Finch", mixed media by Kerry McFall

Many thanks to Schmidt’s Garden Center for granting me permission to work from their photographs!  This little seed-cruncher was featured in their most recent online newsletter, and I fell in love with the patterns in his feathers.  Their newsletter always has bright photos and interesting discussion, a pleasant break from a world full of less uplifting news.

I’ve always wondered about who decided to call this bird a Purple Finch.  In my opinion, it’s not purple at all.  It’s pink.  There might be a few purple shadows, but this guy is definitely pink – and yes, I did get carried away just a little with the color intensity, but I’m not striving for reality, just that zing I always get when a flash of color flies past.  The Cornell Lab of Ornithology web site says, “The Purple Finch is the bird that Roger Tory Peterson famously described as a “sparrow dipped in raspberry juice.” “  Right on!

Searching for Spring

Posted on by
sketch of helleborus

"Helleborus Orientalis", mixed media by Kerry McFall

My up-the-street neighbor’s sidewalk border is a gorgeous mish-mash of last autumn’s brown leaves, a stump covered with fungus, and deep purply-red helleborus orientalis.  At least I think that’s what it is – unlike the few crocus in my own border, it is not shyly peeking out with the baby slugs.  It’s just Out There, waving in the wind, defying the spring snows, clearly saying, “Here I am if you’re looking for spring!”  Thank goodness, we’re all ready for some color!

I’ve been heads down busy with a school artist in residence quilt project, finishing the last of my Call and Response pieces for the “unveiling” coming up on Sunday, trying to keep up with the Art Journal class I was taking from Lauren Ohlgren, and of course, work.  So it was nice for a few hours this afternoon to put it all aside and simply sit at the dining table and sketch and paint.  I didn’t even notice that Sparky had jumped on the table and was lapping up the lavender-tinted water where I cleaned my brushes… goofy cat.  I guess she’s ready for some color, too!

Leaning more…?

Posted on by

"Redwood Components", by Kerry McFall, mixed media - digital image

One of the big trees in the park across the street seems a bit out of kilter lately – the left side branches droop while the right side reaches skyward, and although I think it has always listed a bit to the south, it seems more pronounced.  I wandered over there a few days ago and picked up bits and pieces of bark, scaly needles, and cones while I talked to my neighbor about my suspicions that it wasn’t as healthy as it could be…

But leaning or not, the cones are beautiful.  They look like rosettes if you regard them point blank.  The old ones – last year’s? – are swollen to twice the size of the newer cones, black with moisture, rich with moss.  My sketch is an exercise in turning the shapes into graphic representations – the motion of drawing the needles became like a decorative embroidery stitch, which I really like.  The little border cones would make nice decoration for… well, who knows?  So I fiddled with it a bit in Photoshop, added some triangles, used the Texturize tool to add more of a fabric look… and voila, fodder for a fabric design perhaps?

February “Bouquet Garni”

Posted on by

"Gerbera Daisies in Under 40 Minutes", digitial image by Kerry McFall

Bouquet Garni is usually a bundle of herbs used to flavor a soup or stew, I know.  But on Friday I needed something to fill out a bunch of leggy Gerbera Daisies that I picked up at the grocery store (funny how you get them home and there don’t seem to be nearly as many blossoms once you take that wrapper off), so I ventured out into the bog in my backyard in search of greenery.  I found several stems of slug-chewed mint, one twig of rosemary long enough to hold its own, and some glorious purple-veined Swiss chard… not too bad for the gloomy depths of February.

I spent the next 40 minutes breathing in the herbs and splashing on a watercolor base, then filling in with colored pencil.  It was bright and colorful, and after an additional 10 minutes in Photoshop I pronounced it “done”.  Anybody need cheering up?  Here ya go!

Surprise!

Posted on by
orchid sketch

"February Surprise", mixed media by Kerry McFall

When this orchid showed up last summer, I would have given you good odds that it would be in the compost heap by Christmas if not before.  It didn’t even have a drainage hole in the bottom of the pot!  …So here it is February, and it’s not only alive and kicking, it’s blooming beautifully!  The inescapable conclusion is that orchids thrive on neglect.

The purple is almost effervescent, with just a touch of peach and lime.  A lovely surprise, and a simple subject for a quick sketch.  It’s fun to choose a couple of colors and begin sketches with a splash of watercolor before I make any other marks, then figure out how to either work around the splashes or work them in to the forms.  The watery “bleeds” of the green into the purples made the perfect segue into moss.

Got Clippers?

Posted on by

"February is for Pruning", mixed media by Kerry McFall

February is a good time for sleeping in, especially if you’re a groundhog, or a cat.  (I suppose that ”sleeping in” is kind of a misnomer for cats because it implies actually getting up at some point in 24 hours.)  If you have a garden, standard wisdom is that February is also when you need to get off your buns, grab your clippers and the bucket, and get out there and prune!

For our two baby fruit trees out front, it almost seems a shame to snip those plucky little branches, but I know from experience that they are way too skinny to manage the wieght of Asian pears, so snip I did.  Then I tackled the herb pots, and I even dead-headed the hydrangea.

I brought one of the pear branches in, and a lacy blossom to sketch.  The pear “stick” is full of color – wine-red buds, green-gold bark with ivory blisters.  But the blossom is a literal ghost of its once brilliant blue self, papery, stained with mold and mildew, translucent.  Even so, it’s lovely, and now I’ve accomplished two things today – pruning, and a sketch!  It feels good.  Who knows, maybe I will get the snow peas planted this year!

 

Lions of Another Sort

Posted on by

"Sea Lions", mixed media by Kerry McFall

With thanks to the Oregon Coast Aquarium photograph archives, here is a sketch of the sea lions that appeared as tiny dots in the ocean in my previous post.  Sea Lions are strange and fascinating creatures, perhaps the ultimate “walking fish”!

Botswana Hors d’Ouevres?

Posted on by

"Entourage", mixed media by Kerry McFall

We tumbled into the boat panting almost as soon as we arrived at Chobe Lodge, anxious not to miss the afternoon tour.  I looked skeptically at the large boat, the bartender, the people with camera lenses as long as my arm, and thought, “Well, it’s all part of the experience.  Any wild animals will be miles away.”  But my skepticism vanished almost immediately.  There across the river, in the lush spring marsh, was an IMMENSE elephant, munching away like one of Aunt Audrey’s milk cows, oblivious to our boat and several other smaller boats.

And that was just the beginning.  The lone bull elephant was our first sighting of what are known as The Big Five in Botswana, big five as in Really Big Animals Who Look Prehistoric.  Wow.  Even the loud/drunk South African pig farmer on our boat (reminded me of a Dutch rugby player I dated in college) couldn’t diminish the experience.  Magical.  Unforgettable.  So magical that I didn’t even try to sketch, I just took photos with my tiny camera, knowing that sooner or later I would be back here in Oregon watching the rain and loving the intensity of fond memories as I sketched.  So here he is, with his personal entourage, which at some point I will research to figure out what these birds are and why they were following him… elephant poop hors d’ouevres perhaps?

 

Daydreaming about May

Posted on by
Sketch of wild iris

"Daydreaming about May", mixed media by Kerry McFall

Going through photos from 2011 as part of my “get better organized” New Year’s resolution yielded a nice shot of wild iris at Finley Wildlife Refuge from last May.  It’s been so bleak and soggy here since we got home that I felt like a bit of Flower Therapy was in order for the sketch book, so I spent a couple of glorious hours Sunday afternoon daydreaming about May…  I put into action a suggestion from a wonderful  book about sketching that I’m reading (The Art of Travel with a Sketchbook by Mari Le Glatin Keis) – start with a watercolor wash on the page.  So simple, but so effective, and as I read I was delighted to recognize the names of several contributing Corvallis artists I know: Gale Everett and George Norek.  I wish I had read the book before I traveled, but then again, it felt like I had enough going on without more ideas to overwhelm me!

After enjoying the book so much, I was left with a sense of real loss when I googled her name and discovered that she died about this time last year from breast cancer.  She was about my age.  I wish I had known her.  The book seems like such a gift for those of us who couldn’t go with her on her sketching journeys.  And it is inspiration to keep looking and seeing and sketching – and daydreaming on paper.