Mid-winter mini-posting!

My eye searches out color in mid-winter. I’m sending this mini-posting to all mid-winter people, especially those about to get another huge snow storm. The ground is white here in New Hampshire, but we have escaped blizzards, knock on wood.

A wonderful, sweet smelling, spring smelling, and extremely long lived bouquet of hyacinth blooms, bought in the grocery store, grown in greenhouses in Canada. Thank you, Canada. Again I draw my pitcher, with the hand painted scenes of Tallinn, Estonia.

An assortment of objects on the dining room/painting room table. These include the pitcher and a holiday card from my friend Mary Jo Tydlacka. The setting for her painting (simplified here) is of the Patapsco Female Institute Historic Park in Ellicott City, Maryland. (This is the ruins of a 19th century boarding school for girls. Real studies too, not just ‘finishing.’ I used to work here as a docent.) The play is Cyrano, performed by the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company.

Today I found color in my art supplies. Koh-I-Noor Colored pencils and Pigma Micron pens from Japan. Included is the drawing just described above. Similar to a play within a play.

The view of our ridge from the living room. I tried to draw ‘alpenglow.’ This is when the setting sun in the west shines on a ridge in the east providing a kind of reflected sunset. This golden/pink/green effect only lasts a few minutes and was gone before I finished drawing. The red in the front is our sofa. Its color pleases me too. With a house with so many large windows, some furniture must back up against the glass.

December in Edmonton

We live on the east coast of the United States. Our younger daughter, son-in-law, and three grandchildren live in western Canada in the city of Edmonton, Alberta. We visit as often as we can.

Our grandson is almost two years old. Since we hadn't seen each other for 3 months, he warmed up to me by the age-old game of peek-a-boo. I played back, with the vase of flowers between us.

Edmonton, a large city, is a four hour drive east of the Rocky Mountains. In other words, it is in the prairies, and flat almost everywhere. This is the view out of the kitchen window towards the downtown of the city. It takes about 45 minutes to drive there.

The view up the street on a very cold night. The snow is fresh, and as yet unsanded. The lights turned it pink and purple.

Our grandson, in a spontaneous nap, before the fireplace. Peanut, the cat, watches over him.

The view from the front window. The long cold winters in Edmonton do not delay house construction, or any other activities either. The frame is wood, with a finish probably in stucco.

The view through the case at the Second Cup coffee shop on Twenty Third avenue, within walking distance. Yeah! In front Nanaimo bars, in behind are butter tarts, and a lone sausage roll. Nanaimo bars are no-bake bars and the yellow layer is a mixture of sugar, butter, and powdered custard mix. Nanaimo is a town on Vancouver Island. The web has plenty of recipes to choose from. Their coffee is excellent here too.

Barney, a very old Jack Russell dog, who was visiting with his family from Montana, for the holidays.

All the house guests and host family went sledding, twice. It was the first time for the two toddlers, who joined in the merriment.

Walking home after sledding. Even though we are looking north, the sunset colors were beautiful, all pink and orange. Some windows on the tall buildings looked ablaze.

Peanut, the cat, asleep by the fire. He is a feisty old thing, but he has learned to be patient with children. Up to a point.

A cooking lesson. Our two granddaughters making pizza with their other grandmother. It was a pretty full house, and lots of fun.

Our younger granddaughter with her favorite dollies. She asked to pose for me, on the last morning of my extended winter visit. I was happy to draw her and plan to do many more. She will be five soon.

Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts

Hello. I usually post this blog once a month. With an enormous amount of dedicated help from my husband. This one is a bit early, and January’s will be slightly delayed. It will happen when I return from snowy Canada, with lots of new drawings I’m sure!

Ogunquit, Maine. Late Autumn colors along the Marginal Way, a gorgeous mile-long walk along the cliffs. Perkins Cove and the breaking waves are in the background. I used to come here for a painting class when at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. The plants are juniper with their beautiful blue berries, beach roses, bittersweet vine on the far right and sumac in the middle. So much loveliness in one place.

A November view of Mount Kearsarge, New London. The trees are odd shapes from old ice storm damage. The high hay meadow is on protected farmland.

The reading room at Tracy Memorial Library, New London. The piles of magazines are actually neat. Somehow they look untidy in my drawing. I love the portraits looking down on us. On the left Josiah Brown, first librarian, 1801, and on the right Micajeh Morgan, former owner of the private home that became this library. There is very little need in New Hampshire for a change of decor.

The small carpet is a hooked rug made by my mother. On this, a wool afghan designed and made by my grandmother. In the plant pot is a paper flower made by our granddaughter. Including me drawing all this, that puts the work of four generations of art loving females in the picture. And more to come I’m sure.

Supermarket flowers. Grown, packaged, shipped, repackaged, by hands unknown.

I love this pitcher, initialed ‘K.N.’ on the bottom. I bought in Maryland and it makes me want to travel to Estonia where it was painted. The turkey feathers were found in our woods. There is at least one wild flock around here. I have never seen a male. Just the ladies and lots of children, looking like a day care center field trip.

A little wooden shelf, from the 1940’s. Our younger daughter, the one who loves folk art, painted these bright colors when she was a college student. The shot glass has a Vancouver Olympics logo. The mugs are from Bennington Pottery in Vermont.

Our window seat overlooks the tool shed and our woods in the back. I sometimes paint here in the sunshine.

On the left is a child’s Adirondack packbasket, labeled ’46 and Bruce. On the right, jumping ahead one generation, is the straw boater worn by our children (they shared it) 1980-83 in England. It was part of the summer term uniform at Berkhampstead School.

The corner of Newbury and Clarendon Streets, Boston, Massachusetts. This section of the city is called Back Bay, as it was once water. A fun place to stroll on a warm November Saturday. All this urban activity is about 90 minutes from our woods in New London.

Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts. We lived only a couple of miles from Harvard Square when I was 14 and 15. I took a bus here to buy foreign newspapers and magazines, mostly from France. This very news stand was my window on the world. Behind it are the buildings that form part of the famed Harvard Yard. Five years later I would be living in Dijon, the capital of Burgundy.

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Autumn in New Hampshire and Maryland

For any new viewers to my site...welcome! I draw on site, not from photographs. Either sitting or standing to sketch, I draw on small paper. Sometimes I start immediately with pen, other times for a more complex subject, I start the basic composition in pencil.

How do I choose my subjects? Each scene must challenge my head, and tug at my heart. After those two criteria are met and I start my work, it is all a kind of dance between my eye, brain, heart, hand, and drawing tool. Just the act of carrying pencil and paper with me improves my observational skills! I feel engaged with the world when I am looking for beauty.

A farmhouse in Bradford, New Hampshire. If you keep adding on to your house, you eventually get to the barn. Then you don’t have to go outside to feed the animals.

The apple pie baking contest at Spring Ledge Farm in New London. There were 33 pies submitted, and I chose three to draw. Number ten did tie for first place, so I guess it tasted as good as it looked.

The Fall selection at Spring Ledge Farm. I included the yellow house across the street, as it fit in so well with the color scheme. It is a New England style Greek Revival built around 1830.

October is a big month for yellow and orange. This is the Autumn view from our top story window-wall. On the Northeast end of the house our windows go floor to ceiling. It is like living in a tree house.

The same view, as seen from the deck about three weeks later. We live in a beech forest, and those leaves stay on in a russet color until Spring. The white bark of the birch trees is lovely all year. The ridge in the background disappears when the leaves return in springtime.

I drew this in 2008, a year ago. I called this tree the ‘show off’ tree, as it glowed long after the other leaves were gone.

The boats at rest on Pleasant Lake. Mount Kearsarge is in the background.

Main Street, Ellicott City, Maryland. I think that this old building near the rail road station was once a hotel. It is built into the granite hillside. Yes, that is a large teddy bear on the porch roof. It is now a toy store.

The Wilkins-Rogers flour mills, a block from the hotel in the last drawing. This company makes Washington brand cake and muffin mixes. The Ellicott brothers settled here in Maryland to grow wheat and mill it. So I feel this building is a direct link to the past.

The Thomas Isaac cabin, on upper Main Street. Another link to the town’s beginnings.

Again, Main Street. Actually, almost all the commercial buildings are on this one street. The yellow brick store is from the 1920’s. The other two far earlier. I never knew why the windows and door are off-center in the middle building. It is of locally quarried granite.

And here is a large chunk of that granite. In some parts of town the granite stone flows right down to the brick sidewalk. This is rush hour (probably rush 15 minutes). ‘Sweet’ is the name of a bakery new to me since my last visit.

A window in Baltimore. I found this scene so charming, with toddler toys stored so neatly on the window sill, and crayon scribble marks to complete the décor. This rowhouse is next door to our daughter and son-in-law’s house. The two year old boy has a new sister.

Canadian Rockies and Baltimore

The view of the Colin Range in Jasper Township, Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada.

This is our fourth trip to the beautiful town of Jasper.
This view is from my favorite restaurant, Earl’s.

Whistlers Mountain above the village of Jasper, with the tramway building at the near top. You can see six mountain ranges from the top. The elevation is 7,472 feet or 2,277 meters. We hiked from the building to the top of the mountain in 40 minutes of hard work, to see the 360 degree view. In the very foreground is the clear and aqua Lake Beauvert.

I often draw from wherever I find a comfy seat. This is the view of Jasper from inside the tramway restaurant. Jasper is a lovely, crescent shaped town that cannot grow larger because of the National Park rules. You see many lakes, Jasper Park Lodge on the far right, and the very busy train tracks. Two rivers meet here. The glacial one is aqua colored. They flow into the Arctic Sea.

A typical view in Jasper, from our Greek Restaurant, the Palisades. The grey rocks are limestone. The one with the brown stone top is called Old Man Mountain. Some say it looks like a sleeping Indian complete with feathers aside his face.

The view from the Alberta Rocky Mountain High B&B (great place!) in Canmore, a town just outside Banff National Park (about 200 miles south of Jasper via the gorgeous Icefields Parkway). The mountains are called the Three Sisters. Funny how the three peaked roof lines echo the mountain profiles. I didn't notice this until done drawing. The morning sun was just catching the mountaintops.

Canmore’s pictographs at Grassi Lakes. We hiked here.
It was steep, but less than an hour’s effort.
Experts say these drawings are 10,000 to 14,000 years old. What do you think they mean?

Back to the East Coast, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. This is Greektown as is plain to see. The buildings as I drew them all have an odd slant. Must have been holding my paper at an angle.

The view of Lakewood and Fairmount Avenues, Baltimore. From the rooftop of our daughter’s house. The big black object in the foreground is the tar-papered covered roof where I was standing. I was locked out on the roof at the time, so I had plenty of time to draw.

Snikle, the official cat of the Elkins Post Office, where we collect our mail.
A VERY friendly and soft cat.

The centerpiece of my birthday meal in Edmonton.
My sister and our granddaughters designed this unusual decoration for the table.