I only have a few things to share since last time, but wanted to keep in the habit of posting.
There’s not much else to report, either, but last Friday, Mom and Dad had another bonfire from a fallen pine tree. Everyone in our little branch of the family was able to come, which was nice. We roasted hot dogs and set off a few fireworks.
It was perfect weather for a fire—not too cold, but still cool enough to make a fire pleasant—and no pesky bugs, yet. During the days since, I’ve noticed a sharp up-tick in the number of insects out and about, including wasps. (They’re he-ere… ~ominous music~)
Name That (Bird)Song!
I’m still doing my daily walks, mostly outdoors now (while the decent temperatures last). I’ve been trying to remember more bird songs so I can identify birds by their sounds—something I’ve never been particularly good at doing.
The mourning dove is one I’ve been able to ID for a while (because it’s just so distinctive), but most are just difficult to recall, for some reason. I think I recognize the pine warbler, Carolina chickadee, blue jay, and woodpeckers now… And some of the songs of the northern cardinal and Carolina wren. When I hear something that I think might be a mockingbird, it usually turns out to be a brown thrasher—not too surprising, because they’re related. It’s slow progress, because I only really think about it when I’m outside hearing the birds, usually busy walking or doing something else. Still, I know more than I did a month ago.
If you’re interested in identifying birds in your own backyard, I recommend the Merlin Bird ID app. It’s not foolproof, but pretty effective (and free).
Oh, and this isn’t really about birdsong, but for years I wondered what was making these very odd, mournful and slightly eerie sounds in our woods. I assumed it was a bird, but probably within the last year or two I learned from Donald that it’s our grey squirrels. They make the most bizarre noises, nothing like how I’d expect a squirrel to sound!
I Don't Even Know...
I don’t even remember why I doodled this page of jack-o’-lanterns. I think I had some reason in my mind at the time, but what was it?
…I did recently get some a new stick of watercolor in pyrrol orange. That might have been the inspiration. I probably wanted to try that and just thought about pumpkins.
As you can see, I turned them into jack-o’-lanterns. They’re pretty much the same type of thing I’ve done many times before, but I always enjoy doodling them.
This was done in “Smoky Mauve” Diamine Forever Ink with a Sailor Fude de Mannen pen with a 55° nib.
Robot Doodles
I thought I’d try a different doodle subject—robots! This doesn’t come as naturally to me, and I think I prefer more organic shapes, but I guess the beauty of robots is that they can look however you want them to look. I suppose you could even make more organically shaped robots, but I don’t know how well that would work…
I doodled in “Hyper Green” ink, then went for a simple painting technique, just filling in each whole robot with one color.
These were an opportunity to try mixing some custom colors using potter’s pink watercolor as the mother color.
I think the green was mostly mixed with sap green… the purply blue was mostly cobalt teal blue… and the red/pink was mostly pyrrol orange—but I think I tweaked some or all with a little more of this or that to nudge the colors the way I wanted them.
I love the granulating effects you get with the potter’s pink. In this green mix, especially, I think it looks almost like rusty spots.
Strawberry Doodles Forever
I recently watched this short by RebelUnicornCrafts and thought it looked like fun, so I started doodling strawberries. But I wanted a lot of strawberries to fill up the whole page… And then there were so many of them that I decided not to try to make as many different variations as possible, but just use a handful of “styles”.
I like them, and I’m glad I made them this way—but maybe I should still try the other way sometime…
Bookish Doodles
I wanted to doodle something, but had no idea what. I just started, and it ended up being a page full of very roughly sketched, cartoony books—and I enjoyed it a lot.
The (non-fude nib) pen with the Noodler’s Lexington Gray ink had been neglected for a while, so I chose that one this time.
The watercolor is a mix of whatever was left on my ceramic palette (pink, green, blue-grey-purple, granulating black, brown) and the brown and golden earth tones in the Koh-I-Noor Hardmuth Brilliant Watercolour / Anilinky / color wheel stacked watercolors /whatever you want to call them. Most of those colors are extremely bright and vivid, but the earth tones are more muted (in a beautiful way). I particularly love that greeny brown color. I have the feeling most people might hate that color, but it makes me think of moss.
Well, that’s it for now!
