Field Sketching Adventures

This past week I spent several days in a beautiful aspen grove. On about the third day I decided to do a study of an individual aspen tree. I noticed what I thought was an odd growth tucked between two branches. I got out my binoculars and discovered it was a broadtail hummingbird sitting on her nest! I  spent a delightful couple of hours watching her as I worked on the drawing.

On my last day I spent a few hours doing a study of the trunk and branching of a ponderosa pine.

it's been a wonderful trip. I am headed back to Texas, but will return to Colorado in just a few weeks to teach a workshop in Telluride.

Gone

Sunset Sentinels
20 x 16

The hummingbirds left yesterday...well, most of them. The chubby little rufus who guards two of the feeders is still here and a few of his buddies. And we've had the most spectacular few days of sunsets-each day a new and different color harmony, as if summer is putting on a final show with a few extra curtain calls.

On the Cusp

Late Afternoon at the Pond
8 x 8
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This summer my husband became slightly obsessed with hummingbirds. We have always had a feeder or two, but this year he bought several more, then another and another. He was filling the feeders three to four times a day, and right before Ike blew through, it seemed like we had hundreds of birds. A few days after the storm the overnight temperatures dipped into the fifties, and the next morning they were gone! The next day I noticed how much earlier dusk came and that the sunset had moved to the south along our west facing property line. In just a matter of days, summer was over.

I know all this seems trivial in light of the momentous events of the last few weeks. But in a strange way, its the same: in a matter of days, things changed. Its just that hummingbirds and the coolness of the morning air seem much more real to me than hedge funds and securitized debt instruments.