28 September 07
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Well, they’re back too. There were at least twelve flitting around outside my office this morning, sharing the tree and the pole with two phoebes, two Nuttall’s woodpeckers, and two bluebirds. Several of them would drop to the ground right outside my window, giving me great looks at bill structure and the funny eye ring. There were at least two myrtles among the throng of Audubon’s yellowrumps…
At lunch I scanned one of my sketches and used it as a basis for this drawing, left. It’s the first time I’ve used the Ampersand Pastelbord that arrived from Blick (I used colored pencils, Derwent Colourfasts, the ones I keep at work) and I’m completely sold on this ground. Powdered marble is part of the surface along with gesso and clay. I’ll be experimenting a lot more with it; like Katherine Tyrrell and others have said, you can layer and layer and layer and it holds everything. It’s like magic.
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