Hindsight

These are some of those sketches I promised from my Fabriano color sketchbook, from last year.

I believe I’ve mentioned how much I like drawing and painting in Mt. Auburn Cemetery. This week is peak foliage, so I’ve been shirking other tasks to go paint the glorious colors.

What a gorgeous day!

I’m loving the light and shadow.

I was in Boston last week for a couple of school appearances. It was a super-short visit but I had about 2 hours of free time one afternoon, so I went to one of my favorite places, Mt Auburn Cemetery, to do a little painting.

Pond sitters

Glorious maple near the offices

Click here for previous drawings/paintings from Mt Auburn.

I believe I’ve mentioned that Mount Auburn Cemetery is awesome, and that I love to draw there. And that there’s a great blue heron. Alison’s parents were in town last weekend, and we made a visit to Mt Auburn for some spring scenery.

So as I was sitting by the Halcion Pond, the heron showed up. He was walking slowly and methodically around the edge of the pond, occasionally darting his head down to catch a small fish — completely unconcerned by me sitting on the bank or the crowd of photographers with giant lenses who were following him around. He walked right in front of me, about 6-8 feet away.

Alison got this shot from the other side of the pond:

Had a very nice weekend. Saturday we went to Brookside Gardens, a lovely spot just outside the beltway. They have a water garden that reminds me of Mt. Auburn, right down to the great blue heron who was hunting there.

Sunday we went to the Takoma Park House and Garden Tour, and then raced over to Politics & Prose for their nonfiction children’s books panel. I think I managed to capture at least a halfway decent likeness of all eight panelists. Top row: Duncan Tonatiuh, Jen Bryant, R. Gregory Christie. Bottom row: Brian Floca, Richard Jackson, Susan Roth, and Leonard Marcus.

Today it was beautiful and warm enough to go walk around and paint in Mt. Auburn Cemetery! We got a late start, so I just did this one piece, in gouache and pastel pencil. I didn’t really capture the nature of the tree, but I did more or less get the color, which is what I was primarily after.

(You may see some similarity to this piece from January.)

My favorite again, Mt. Auburn Cemetery

I delivered my first round of layouts on Monday (yay! 240 pages!!). So yesterday I took the day off to relax. I got over to Mt. Auburn for a bit in the afternoon, and did these, plus another piece that needs more love before I post it.

Incidentally, these were done using a cool new toy I picked up called a Niji Waterbrush. It’s a nylon brush with a water reservoir in the handle, which means you can do watercolor without carrying a separate water container. It’s awesomely handy, though the drawback is that you don’t have as much control of the loading & flow as you would with a regular brush.