Blue herons and sugarhouse blues
Another weekend of drunken debauchery is behind me...mmmhmmm.
Of course what really happened was that on Friday, after that sparklingly enthusiastic post about Chris Bohjalian, I took a little ill. My lifestyle caught up with me at last, and I spent about four hours in bed with a book and a dizzy spell. It seemed to be a combination of lack of sleep and low blood sugar. Just when I thought I was getting used to 6 and 7 hours of sleep a night, I guess I wasn't. Therefore, I was very careful to sleep this weekend, and have felt fine since, rather lucky, in fact that it wasn't the flu.
The rest of the weekend was mostly about making jewelry; the heron design did indeed work out as nicely as I'd hoped, but I haven't gotten very far on anything else. Taking it nice and slowly, letting the flow of each illustration come out of me. Working with animals is interesting because, unlike most plants, you can't just go into your garden on a given day and sketch your plant/flower. In my case, I've been drawing mostly from an amalgamation of photos and drawings. No matter what, I have questions. What does this wing look like folded? How big is the body in relation to the neck? Things that can't easily be answered even with different photos from different views. So, I do the best I can, and comfort myself with the thought that trying to find different animals in the wild at this time of year would yield inconsistent results at best. Nevermind getting close to some of them to actually draw them. And what about the ones you need to touch to get a real sense of what their anatomy is? For now, this will do!! The rest will have to come from my memory.
In other New England news, we tried to make our annual trip to Davenport's sugarhouse up on Patton Hill, and it was so incredibly packed that we didn't even stop, just turned around and went to Stillwater's and had eggs benedict instead. Suddenly, all the sugarhouses seem to have been "discovered" and the locals are out of luck. It's impossible to get in except on the weekdays, when only one or two are open. There were several years when sugaring wasn't that much of an attraction, but it seems that folk from Boston and Connecticut have decided that it's cool again. Odd tourist demographics. It's good that our farms are getting the money, though; and this year seems like it's going to be a good season. The weather's been right.
Of course what really happened was that on Friday, after that sparklingly enthusiastic post about Chris Bohjalian, I took a little ill. My lifestyle caught up with me at last, and I spent about four hours in bed with a book and a dizzy spell. It seemed to be a combination of lack of sleep and low blood sugar. Just when I thought I was getting used to 6 and 7 hours of sleep a night, I guess I wasn't. Therefore, I was very careful to sleep this weekend, and have felt fine since, rather lucky, in fact that it wasn't the flu.
The rest of the weekend was mostly about making jewelry; the heron design did indeed work out as nicely as I'd hoped, but I haven't gotten very far on anything else. Taking it nice and slowly, letting the flow of each illustration come out of me. Working with animals is interesting because, unlike most plants, you can't just go into your garden on a given day and sketch your plant/flower. In my case, I've been drawing mostly from an amalgamation of photos and drawings. No matter what, I have questions. What does this wing look like folded? How big is the body in relation to the neck? Things that can't easily be answered even with different photos from different views. So, I do the best I can, and comfort myself with the thought that trying to find different animals in the wild at this time of year would yield inconsistent results at best. Nevermind getting close to some of them to actually draw them. And what about the ones you need to touch to get a real sense of what their anatomy is? For now, this will do!! The rest will have to come from my memory.
In other New England news, we tried to make our annual trip to Davenport's sugarhouse up on Patton Hill, and it was so incredibly packed that we didn't even stop, just turned around and went to Stillwater's and had eggs benedict instead. Suddenly, all the sugarhouses seem to have been "discovered" and the locals are out of luck. It's impossible to get in except on the weekdays, when only one or two are open. There were several years when sugaring wasn't that much of an attraction, but it seems that folk from Boston and Connecticut have decided that it's cool again. Odd tourist demographics. It's good that our farms are getting the money, though; and this year seems like it's going to be a good season. The weather's been right.