Tag Archives: McFall

My New Favorite Color

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sketch of lichen

"Windfall Lichen", mixed media by Kerry McFall

The heavy snows last week brought a good-size limb hurtling into the back yard from the neighbor’s giant fir.  When I went to see the damage, I had to pull the sharp end out of the mushy ground, where it looked like it had been driven in by a pile driver… yikes.  The moral: don’t stand under trees during heavy snowfall.

I counted at least five different types of lichen, and one type of moss, growing on the limb.  Such gorgeous colors when you look closely!  And serendipity had a hand in the palette because I had just found my new favorite color among the colored pencils in the OSU Bookstore art department on the same day: Pale Sage by Prismacolor.  Perfect!

Interested in a print, or an embellished fabric print?  Buy Now!

We Thought Winter Was Over…

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March Snow, mixed media sketch by Kerry McFall

Obviously, winter had one last blast to blow at us, which is very strange for March in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.  But Snow Days are always a good time to slow down, and this one gave me a chance to add a Buy Now page to my website – if you’d like a print of any sketches, you can pay with PayPal – check it out.  Coming soon – an Etsy site with my sketches on greeting cards, and mixed-media paintings for sale!

Sheep Smiles

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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

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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

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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!

Sushi

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sketch of sushi plate

"Sushi", mixed media sketch by Kerry McFall

I don’t really care for sushi, but I admire the way it is often presented: fresh bright colors, lots of salmon pinks, avocado greens, soft sticky rice.  And the shine of the sauces makes me want to stick my finger in the little puddles – raw fish leaves me cold, but I love those salty-sweet sauces!  Speaking of shine, I need to find a better solution than this for adding highlights “after the fact” – I’ve never had much luck with masking fluid, but maybe I need to go buy a new bottle.  That Chinese white watercolor that was handy just doesn’t make the highlight look as liquid and lovely as I had hoped.

Leaning more…?

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"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?

Got Clippers?

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"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!

 

A Rare Day at the Oregon Coast

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"Cape Arago", mixed media by Kerry McFall

Thanks to a tip from a co-worker who lives at the coast (Thanks, Ken!), our trip to Coos Bay turned out to be a sight-seeing Bonanza.  He suggested we drive past the Shore Acres State Park a ways and look for sea lions on the rocks.  It sounded like a good way to spend a few minutes, and Griff loves to try out new roads.  It was gorgeous, and we stayed for several hours, believe it or not, actually BASKING in the SUN!  Yes, Oregon in January – and the wind wasn’t blowing, and the sun was shining.  Hundreds of sea lions bobbed up and down in the surf , and as I sketched I was buzzed by a hummingbird several times!  At one point I saw a white plume that may or may not have been a whale blowing – people with binoculars thought it was, I wasn’t sure that my imagination hadn’t embellished it a bit.

After that sunny interlude, we drove back down to the botanical gardens at Shore Acres, where I was able to sketch the old gardener’s house, built in about 1914 by the very wealthy Simpson family.  They graciously donated their entire water’s edge mansion and grounds to the state in the 1930′s.  There wasn’t much in bloom this season, but lots of hopeful daffodil points were beginning to poke up, and a few industrious bees buzzed around the sun-warmed heather near the entrance.

"Shore Acres Botanical Gardens", mixed media by Kerry McFall

The weekend was over too soon.  Sunday the January weather returned and we drove home in the rain, stopping for lunch at the Gingerbread restaurant in Mapleton.  I remember stopping there with my Dad as a teen when he took me fishing with him on the Siuslaw River.  I sketched, he caught salmon – or not, but we both enjoyed just sitting on the river, watching the world slip past.  I was pleased to see that the same souvenir plates line the shelves above the windows, and the 1960′s decor is pretty much intact… what I didn’t expect were the cowboys at the next booth.  Cruel spurs, ten gallon hats, long knives on their belts, they were the Real Deal.  I wish our friends from Botswana could have been with us to see this little bit of Americana!

"Gingerbread Cowboy", pencil sketch by Kerry McFall

It’s not my best effort at perspective, etc., but frankly, I was afraid they might not take kindly to being sketched, so it was a rush job!

 

Botswana Hors d’Ouevres?

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"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?