I had a very unique experience today – my son who has his pilot’s license took me up flying for the first time! He’s studying Aviation Technology at Purdue University and home for December break, and we had a lovely day to see the sights around the suburbs just west of Hanscom Air Force Base. We headed west to the Wachusett Reservoir in a Cessna 172, and I have to say he is a very confident and smooth pilot! I’m posting some photographs I took of the ground and a vista of Boston. It was lots of fun. Maybe next time I’ll let him show me how one “stalls” the plane, but for this trip, a tight circular curve, and an “S” curve over Route 495 were just fine for me!
I actually had a great day working in my studio today, which was completely unexpected. Everyone had somewhere to go, and I was home alone! Good thing too, as tomorrow a new wave of family comes visiting from Virginia for a couple of days!
I was cleaning out my basement freezer and found items such as old hamburger rolls, pita bread, etc. which get tossed outside for the crows and squirrels. I snapped this photograph last week during the big snowstorm on Friday and Saturday.
It’s been a tough time of year to get much studio time, but I have managed to log some hours working on this drawing, and wanted to post an update. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday and spends lots of time with the people that matter the most to you!
Best wishes, Debbi
It was a week of light work, both hour-wise and pencil pressure-wise. I decided to move ahead by lightly layering in most of the hawk, so that I can see where this drawing is going. I think there’s something about working on the blue background that makes it a little more challenging to develop, so I thought that this might help me out. So, here is my drawing after a “light” week. I’m finding the holidays very intrusive on my studio time, and hope to have more time this weekend and next week to concentrate on drawing.
This is slow going right now, but I thought I’d post another photo of the progress on my new drawing – if only because the last photo showed so little! The breast feathers are particularly difficult to capture. There are lots of streaked feathers that are under some white feathers, so they show up as “echoes” of the visible chest streaks. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but it’s difficult to capture, so I keep bouncing around from the bird to the leaf to the shadows underneath.
