New Hampshire, Vermont, & Massachusetts

This summer I’ve been teaching a class in on-location drawing as part of the Adventures In Learning program at Colby-Sawyer College here in New London, NH.  For the final class, I decided to take my students to an experimental garden on the college campus.  The assignment was to make a composition which included plants and trees, rocks, structures and people.  And it only seemed fair to try it myself too. I moved Mount Kearsarge just a little to fit into the picture.  (One of the messages of my class was that it’s OK to do things like that.  You’re not taking a photograph; you’re recording an impression.)

The apple in the tree is on a stamp which arrived in the mail today.  We did a warmup drawing of apples and pears indoors before we walked outside to the garden.  I thought it would be fun to add a small element of collage.

Here’s a link to a page that describes the class in greater detail, along with a few pictures of the class in action.  It was a fun experience for all, me included.

 

It’s another event on the town green. The New London Garden Club hosts an annual Antique Show as a fund raiser.  Forty vendors come to sell their wares under the tents.  They were packing up as I stood on the lawn sketching the array of objects.

 On this occasion each year, the band stand in the center becomes an antique stall.   

The day after the Antique Show, where I worked all day, we headed over to Windsor, Vermont to the Harpoon Brewery Beer and BBQ Festival.  

I had my sketchbook in my lap so no one saw me drawing.  Everyone was listening to the music anyway.

 

Each year I enjoy picking blueberries.  The red bucket is lined with a plastic bag for easy weighing and transporting home. I sat down in the blueberry patch to draw this.

 

Radishes are fun to draw as well as delicious. 

We were in the Boston (Massachusetts) Public Garden last month.  In the center of my drawing is one of the famed Swan Boats. 

 The boat driver sitting behind the swan is pedaling the craft through the water.

 I suspect that many people riding on the swan boat remember doing the same as children. And perhaps they have brought their own children, or grandchildren,  on this day.

The double pontooned swan boats are a Boston tradition since 1877.  A very clever Roger Paget, a boat rental owner,  invented them by combining the public’s keen interest in bicycles with his own fascination with the opera Lohengrin.  In the opera, a knight rescues a young woman by riding a swan.

 

I add three drawings now that give a nod to the waning of summer, the start of autumn and the new school year.

Clarksville, New Hampshire is way up north, near Pittsburg.  This private home is a former school.  It still looks just like as a school.

 

Gilford, New Hampshire is a small town tucked away off the highway.   When I drew this, it was right after school had resumed for the autumn.

 As I drew I could not help but hear the conversations between the children as they walked home from school.  They were laughing and teasing one another and catching up on their summer time away from each other.  It was pleasant to listen to their chatter as I drew. 

 They didn’t see me as I was off to the side and up a little slope.  I drew them as sort of ghost like figures because they had all passed before I could draw them and I drew them from memory.

 

The view of this lake struck me.  Such pretty little islands.  And all those small rocks in the water making a parade. 

This is Middleton, NH.  I drew this in autumn 2012, and the leaves were starting to turn.

 

These bonnets were all lined up at the New London Historical Society.  Theme and variation intrigues me.