Geese, Gosling, Sunlight

Just a quick post since it's been awhile. It was almost exactly a year ago that we saw two Canada Geese with their goslings lit by brilliant sunshine. It made the down of the goslings glow in such a way as to make them look as though they had halos.

I did a quick watercolor back then and this is based on that watercolor. I knew there would be one serious problem though. Light is best portrayed with areas of tone, as in watercolor. It doesn't work so well with lines. But linocut thrives on line, not tone. I know. But I finally decided to do it anyway. Sometimes you just have to take chances.

The two photos here are the exact same state of the lino. They're just printed in different colors. I had been using a burnt siena/yellow mix that gave me a bronzish color. I thought that would add to the sense of light. But on the last print I decided that maybe it wasn't working. So I printed the image again with some black added. So that's why there are two colors.

I"m going to let this sit overnight and probably will do some minor tweaks tomorrow. Then on to an edition.

First Warblers and Goslings - 2010

We spent about 3 hours at Morris Arboretum wetlands again today, hoping to see some migrants. Though it was supposed to only get to 59 at least it was supposed to be sunny. The sun should make it seem much warmer. Well it might have if the clouds hadn't been so thick. But as it was it stayed both cloudy and cool.

Many Canada Geese were on nest and then as we came on what must have been about the fifth couple they let out particularly loud squawks. Then I saw why. They had 6-7 goslings. What was most amazing is that they seemed to be tinged in a light lime green. I did a quick watercolor of them at top from some photos I took.





And finally we saw our first warblers, palms. The first was far way and not very satisfying but the second landed in front of us full of his golden wash. They are always such a pleasure to see in spring. In celebration of the first warbler of 2010 I did this quick watercolor and gouache based on an old photo. I'm not happy with it but I'm just showing it as an illustration not a work of art.

Too busy to write much else today. But I did want to post these two watercolors of birds that we saw.