Sunday, March 4, 2012

Revisiting The Okefenokee Swamp

Canal Diggers Trail, watercolor, 10" x 14."
On our recent Florida vacation I just had to visit the Okefenokee Swamp again. Our friends told us there had been extensive fires last summer and thousands of acres in the refuge had burned. I wanted to see the extent of the damage.

Fire in the wilderness is a natural phenomena, and as our guide sagely remarked, if it weren't for periodic  fires, the area would become so overgrown it would be known as the Okefenokee Forest, rather than Swamp. In fact, the peat floor was still smoldering in parts of the northwestern section of the refuge.

However, the lovely boardwalk trail that took visitors through the swamp out to an observation tower was gone, so the best way to see the swamp was to get out on the water, on one of the small boats, or stick to a few trails still open near the Visitor's Center such as the Long-leaf Pine and Canal Diggers Trail. We explored this short trail while waiting our turn for the boat ride, and found a narrow bridge crossing a small creek. There was no time to paint it then, but I hoped we could return later for a sketch.

Entering the Okefenokee Swamp

Our tour guide with Okefenokee Adventures, Joey was a seventh-generation Okefenokeer (married to an eighth generation Okefenokeer) and a colorful character. He worked us tourists on the boat with a well-worn routine full of jokes and set pieces while regaling us with interesting facts and bits of swamp lore. I saw an unusual water plant with odd-looking flowers and asked about it. Joey said it was called Golden Club. Later on he picked one flower and chomped the yellow part, saying this was one way to survive in the swamp. The yellow part of the blossom was edible, and he picked more flowers so we could each taste one. It was mildly pungent, like a radish--one would sure have to eat an awful lot of it to get enough nourishment!

Golden Club

The ride was about an hour and a half and took us through so many channels that looked much the same; I wondered how long it would take to learn their intricacies. We were back at the dock before I realized we'd circled back to our starting point. The swamp is beautiful, even the burned-out parts with its charred trunks, though I much prefer to see the cypress alive and dripping with Spanish moss.

Once back, we rushed back to the bridge at Canal Diggers Trail so I could work on a watercolor--we had less than two hours before the park closed, so my sketch is very loose and unfinished. By this time the sun had come out from behind the low clouds and was illuminating the fields of saw palmetto underneath the pines. The best view was from the middle of the bridge, naturally, so I had to stand. As you can see, I propped my sketchbook on the railing of the bridge and hooked the brush holder, expecting the breeze to try to snatch it away.


See more photos of the Okefenokee Swamp on my Flickr Album.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Rosemary Scrub at Jacksonville Arboretum

Rosemary Scrub at Jacksonville Arboretum, watercolor, 5" x 10."
For the past week we have been visiting friends on Amelia Island while enjoying northern Florida's lovely winter weather. During the week Herb and I had a chance to explore the surrounding areas. On our first excursion we took the scenic route along the length of Amelia island, over bridges connecting the barrier islands, down to Jacksonville to check out the Jacksonville Arboretum. The Arboretum has hiking trails through several distinct ecosystems displaying a variety of northern Florida plant communities. Among them is an endangered habitat known as rosemary scrub.

The day was heavily overcast (in fact I thought we might get rained on at some point), but a few drops was all we got. I had never seen a Florida rosemary plant, a relative of our culinary rosemary, which grows on poor, sandy soil, along with deer moss, a low-growing pale grey-green globe.

Florida rosemary

Deer Moss

Herb and I had taken camping stools with us so I could sit along the trail to sketch and he could keep me company while I painted. It took about forty-five minutes to do this small watercolor sketch; the soft grey-greens were hard to render accurately.

After a very late lunch we headed downtown to check out the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens. We got there at a quarter to five, but as luck would have it, that was their weekly free-admission day as well as when they stay open until 9:00 PM. We saw a wonderful exhibit of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings from the High Museum of Art collection. Unfortunately, we weren't able to see the gardens, which closed at five. Instead, I watched a short video about their historic garden on the St. John River waterfront. Afterwards I asked a young docent if an artist would be allowed to paint in the garden. Carlos agreed to Email me after he checked if that was all right. Next day he Emailed that it would be fine to paint there, so we decided to return in a few days.

Elena on the Rosemary Ridge Trail at Jacksonville Arboretum

For more photos of the Jacksonville Arboretum, check out my album on Flickr here.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Pink Tulips


This is another one of my class exercises: to do twelve tiny watercolor paintings of the same view of a flower using only one color, to practice shading. The idea is to practice giving a sense of the three-dimensional shape of the flower using variations in the amount of pigment in the wash. I learned several new techniques for moving small amounts of pigment over wet areas with greater control.

First we sketched the flowers in class (in this case a tulip) and traced it on tracing paper, to transfer it onto the watercolor paper. We did a value study on the tracing paper sketch to decide which areas should be dark, which parts light, and where to put the mid-tones to create the illusion of three dimensions. Using this sketch as a guide, we worked one tiny painting, then went on to the next, and so forth.

Repetition being the key to mastery, this was a very good exercise. The results are pleasing, and the red-pink tones most suitable for a Valentine's Day emblem.

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Graphite Drawings


These are practice sketches for my botanical class: the African violet is my first sketch for the certificate project for this class. We are to do several value studies of the plant until we find the one that seems most suitable for a finished illustration. We will then use the same plant for a watercolor painting. My violet has two small flower buds now--it would be nice to have a few more blossoms to paint before the project is complete.


 Above is another study of  the same orchid I did last week with the budding stem. This week one blossom has opened and it is a very unusual one. Here's a photo of it. I'll probably do a watercolor of it just for my own practice, as well as documenting the plant. I'm trying to figure out what sort of hybrid my Florida roadside purchase is. It resembles some Miltassia hybrids I've seen on-line in photos (hybrids of Miltonia and Brassia genus), but it could be a three-way hybrid with something else. I'm not an orchid expert. The flower has a light scent, not quite a sweet perfume, but something more astringent like night-blooming Jasmine.


Sunday, January 22, 2012

Reception at Ranazul

Elena with Terri and Rob Day at Ranazul
An opportunity suddenly came my way last December to show my work at a local upscale restaurant: Ranazul Bistro in nearby Fulton. Ranazul has a beautiful room, the Galeria, for displaying art.

They asked me if I could show my art for the month of January. Luckily, I had a good amount of framed work  from the Brookside show on hand, as well as other paintings from last year's plein air activities, so the show was hung on Jan. 8, and the following Sunday, Ranazul hosted a reception with tapas and champagne for my guests.

I was not expecting much of a turn-out considering the month--at this time of the year most folks are jaded from the Christmas holidays and ready to hibernate. I was surprised that a few friends we hadn't seen in a while turned up--Terri and Rob Day brought a lovely bouquet of flowers for me (Thank you, my dears!), and a number of other friends and family members too, eager to buy their favorite pieces. Herb came along and officiated as photographer. It was a very successful afternoon in all respects.

* * *

Orchid study in graphite
Twigs N Leaves (revised), watercolor

Here are some more botanicals. The Dimensional Study 204 class started last Saturday, and I've been practicing my sketching with an orchid that is about to bloom. I also added a few new elements to my Twigs N Leaves piece for the Painting 103 Class before submitting it for evaluation--I think the composition works better now.


Friday, January 6, 2012

Twigs N Leaves

Twigs N Leaves, watercolor, 10" x 8."
Here's my latest assignment for the Botanical Illustration certificate program. We were charged with composing a "scatter" design with leaves using tertiary colors (ocher, russet and olive green). These colors are the natural colors of the fallen leaves I usually collect on my walks, so it seemed logical to use some of them in my piece.

These particular leaves, with the exception of the glossy Camellia leaf at the top, were gathered on a walk in Rock Creek Park that Herb and I took on a warm November day. The foliage colors were lovely, especially the beeches with their golden brown glow, the maples in reds and yellows coming in a close second. Herb collected the nut--a pignut--which was just cracking open and opened further after a few days indoors. Drawing the nut from a frontal view to reveal the sections of the outer shell with the nut inside was a real challenge, and I had to try several times to get it right.

The Euonymus alatus (lower right, small reddish leaves) is an invasive non-native species, but its tiny red berry with the winged pod adds an interesting detail. There is an American species which is a far more desirable plant and native to our area, Euonymus americanus, also known as Strawberry Bush or Bursting Heart for its unusual seed pods.

Here's a photo taken during our walk.


Saturday, December 31, 2011

End of the Year Musings

Our family at Christmas--we managed to fit twenty-four of us at our house. My sisters Bea (in red dress right behind me) and Silvia (also in red behind one of her granddaughters) with their husbands and children. A few kids who don't live in the area are missing.

It's that time of the year again, where did it all go? When comparing 2010's count of 62 postings on this blog, this year's 51 (and many of those without paintings) seemed a paltry showing, so I thought to add one more and make it 52. One posting per week average sounds much better, especially if you take into account how tough times are. Survival seems to have taken up a lot more energy and time, consequently it's been harder to focus on art and the pure joy of painting... but we stumble on at whatever pace possible.

Dragon Display at Brookside Gardens' "Garden of Lights."

Here's hoping that 2012, another Chinese Year of the Dragon--a Water Dragon no less!--will shape up into being a whole lot better.

Happy New Year!

Monday, December 26, 2011

A Solstice Walk at Chapman's

Circling a champion Tulip Poplar at Chapman's Forest--there is a third person behind the tree, but the circumference was so large, he couldn't join hands with the young lady on the left.
Last Sunday before Christmas the Maryland Native Plant Society (MNPS) did its annual Winter Solstice Walk at Chapman's Forest. I stayed at my friend Patrise's house for the weekend so I could be close-by, and Linda and I joined the group. Only about  six or seven of us had registered on-line, so I was shocked to see that more than 50 of us showed up!

Turns out that this is a very popular event and many of the local folk who worked for a long time to obtain the historic landmark preservation status for Chapman's have been doing this solstice walk for years. One lady told me this year was the best weather they've had so far, so that may account for the number of folk there. The day started out overcast, with temperatures in the upper forties, but after about an hour, a wan winter sun broke out and it began to warm up.

Our leader, Rod Simmons, talked knowledgeably about the different  types of forest and plant communities as he led us through the upper forests of shell marl, and told about the many species of oaks found in this tract, their distinguishing characteristics, etc. The leaves are the best indicators as to the species, though general shape, the terrain and the acorns also hold clues. I had no idea there were so many different types of oaks: southern red oak, chinquapin, post, pagoda, and chestnut oak, in addition to the better-known white oak, scarlet oak, pin, and black oak. Some of these are unusual in our area, and found mostly in old-growth forest such as Chapman's.


After a couple of hours of hiking around, we took break for lunch. Rod had announced we would toast the solstice toast during our break, and I thought he was joking, that it would be a symbolic toast with the water we had each brought along--wrong! A couple of the men in the group had brought bottles of Glenlivet single-malt scotch and some wine for the occasion, along with tiny one-shot plastic cups that they passed around for the toast.


After our repast, we continued on down a steep ravine. Sadly, a champion-sized Tulip Poplar that had stood there for centuries had been brought down by this past September's storms and thirteen inches of rain. There were still plenty of other champion-size trees to see.

Rod seemed to be able to navigate by these trees, which were probably like old friends to him. He allowed that he and several other men in the group had been hiking this tract since the early nineties. We stopped by a huge pagoda oak before turning towards the Potomac River, where a high bluff offered spectacular views of Mason's Neck in Virginia on the opposite shore.






We continued along the river, down another steep ravine to an area with a couple of old abandoned houses. We were told these cabins were an old duck-hunting camp that President Hoover used to frequent in his day. There was an Osage orange tree growing near the shore, and the largest sassafras tree I'd ever seen--the bark exhibits unusual ridges when the trees get to a certain age. If one flakes off chunks of the bark, one can smell the spicy scent of sassafras.


Eventually we worked our way up another hillside where I recognized the old brick chimney near the place where Virginia bluebells bloom in the spring, and realized were were now very close to Mont Aventine and our starting point. The sun was low on the horizon--we had been hiking for over six hours and who knows how many miles over some fascinating terrain. A few folks had dropped by the wayside due to other commitments, but I was surprised by how many of the group finished the course, including several elderly among us. I was bone-tired, so I can imagine how they felt, yet it was such an enjoyable experience!

I hope to explore more of Chapman's next the spring, and definitely repeat the solstice walk next year. For more photos of the Winter Solstice Walk at Chapmans, click on the link to my Flickr album.