Sweet Gums One More Time

 

11/18/22 Green Lake

My favorite sweet gums at Green Lake are past their prime, but I hadn’t yet sketched them up close (here they are from across the lake, and here from a view that shows only the tallest purplish one). One reason I hadn’t sketched them from the best spot is that the parks department is building a new community boat house nearby, and the construction mess is noisy. The construction trailer was right behind me as I sketched, and the (thankfully temporary) utility poles stand right in the way. Some sketchers would find the ugly poles objectionable and simply leave them out of their sketches. I draws ‘em like I sees ‘em: The poles document the ongoing project.

In any case, this didn’t turn out to be my best sketch of the sweet gums. I had difficulty reserving the white for the poles as I colored and then spritzed the trees. Trying to wipe some errant color from a pole, I inadvertently dragged the tissue through the tree, turning the bright colors into mud. And my scene seems to be lit by more than one sun, based on all the different directions of shadows! HA! Oh, well, we win some, we lose some. Regardless, it was one of the last spectacularly sunny (though cold) days before the more typical rain settled in, and I was happy to stand in the warm sunlight.