Showing Promise

 

9/28/23 Green Lake

Although some trees this year have had disappointing color, others are showing promise. On a cloudy morning at Green Lake last week, I thought it was time to see how the sweet gums were doing (above). When I sketched them about a month ago, the color was just beginning. Now they are all moving toward the warmer hues; they’ll peak in a few more weeks. (By the way, I had to rush through this sketch when it started drizzling an hour earlier than my weather app said it would: Murphy’s Laws of Urban Sketching No. 2.)

9/30/23 Maple Leaf neighborhood

A couple of days later, the weather was the lovely kind that I always hope we’ll have in September but rarely do: cool, crisp and sunny. Taking my walk in the afternoon when it was warmer, I spotted these traffic circle maples with touches of color. The best view was from the middle of the street (Law No. 1), so I walked a block south and stood on another traffic circle to sketch them.

I was quite pleased at the restraint I showed in capturing the degree of color I actually saw; as we all know, it’s easy to get carried away with bright orange and red.

Incidentally, I’d like to point out the sky: That’s the kind of part blue, part cloudy watercolor pencil (“licked” method) sky I have tried to achieve for years, but it rarely came out the way I thought it should. Why is it so easy now? The paper! All the years I used it, I thought Stillman & Birn Beta was “good enough” for watercolor pencil because I wasn’t making big, wet washes or charging in color wet-in-wet the way watercolor painters like to do. But the longer I use this Hahnemühle sketchbook, the more I realize how much I’d been missing. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Paper matters.