Winter Reprieve

Today was a little taste of spring. Everyone was outside, with dogs and kids in tow. Even the ground squirrels emerged from their burrows to check things out. We walked around without our coats on, dodging puddles made by the rapidly melting snow. Around here, you soak up a day like today as much as you can to get you through another 3 months of possible winter.

A well-camouflaged and slightly sleepy ground squirrel.

Ice free water is a wonderful thing.

We took a friend on her first birdwatching outing and were rewarded with tundra and trumpeter swans, Barrow's and common goldeneye, cinnamon teal, pintail, and bufflehead. The ducks were too skittish to get out of the car so I couldn't sketch or take pictures, but sometimes it is nice just to bird.

Painting 23 - Bison

My in-laws were in town over the weekend, so between the pre-visit mass cleaning and the post-visit recovery, I haven't been able to put paint to paper in a while. I've missed it. Really missed it. When I picked up the paintbrush last night and made that first brush stroke and saw the colors spreading on the paper, it just felt so good. I thought I'd challenge myself with another mammal painting and another dreaded shadow. This shadow didn't end up with the mass and volume that the onion shadow had, so definitely an improvement there.

Happy Birthday to me! For the first time in our entire relationship, Paul won't be able to be home for my birthday this year. So instead of sulking, I'm going to go hike up a local mountain that I haven't hiked yet and have ice cream with friends to celebrate instead.

Daily Sketch - Li'l Wabbit

I haven't posted one of my daily sketches in quite a while, so I thought I'd share one again. This l'il wabbit - or bunneh for LOLCats fans - lived in our yard in Pennsylvania. He (I'm assuming it was a boy rabbit, as we never had baby bunnies about) was a well-behaved neighbor who resisted feasting on my garden plants, which I very much appreciated. He would just sit, serenely nibbling on a blade of grass.

After the painting of the deer, I realized I needed to work on my understanding of mammal eye placement. I ran across a picture of this guy when I was cleaning out my studio area a few weeks ago and thought it would be an excellent reference shot for a sketch; possibly even for a nice pen & ink of him, so stay tuned...