Nature's Paintbrush

We toured the Botanical Garden here on Kauai yesterday and one of the first trees I saw, one who's name I don't remember - just that it was a mid sized palm-ish sort of tree - had some unusual fruit that looks like cotton candy, 3" long cotton candy. When it dries it resembles a handleless paintbrush. It works, too, though it adds dirt and fibers to the paint and won't last long.
I'm taking lots of photos but not doing as much art as I'd hoped, just using bits and pieces of time to work in my journal. My 4 grandkids have been delightful. I was snorkeling with Amy and we both popped up our artistic heads, saying did you see THAT fish? We're both making an effort to remember colors and patterns and then make color notes about them when we get back to the house.

Red Clover Landscape Sketches

About this time every spring many of the fields in the valley west of town turn bright red with the blossoms of red clover which is grown for seed. Most of the fields are pure clover with few weeds, just acres and acres of red blossoms with bright green clover leaves hidden underneath. I spent part of Memorial Day alone at the edge of one such field, taking photos and making some color sketches in my journal, doing enough of the work of looking closely so that some day soon the clover will appear in a painting or two.

The sketch on the left is a color field study, supposedly showing the bands of color as I saw them but I didn't nail the values. In landscape painting the sky is the lightest color... #1, the ground is the second lightest...#2 because it reflects the light from the sky. Hills are darker, being on a slant and relecting some light but not as much as the ground, and the trees are the darkest dark...#4, because they don't reflect light except where the sun hits one side in early morning and late afternoon. Can you see that I got it right in the landscape sketch but not in the color field study? Now I'm on a mission to do my best to paint landscapes in only 4 values until I can do it in my sleep.

This last drawing is full of nostalgia. On the way home I drove out Kaiser Road and stopped at the cemetary that's at the corner of the acreage where we used to live. My children waited for the school bus near these 4 big old trees that stand guard over the cemetary where there's a headstone that states that Charles and Catherine Reimer rest here. Now they are no kin of ours, even though we share the same last name, but when we bought the property we sort of adopted this couple even though he died in 1917, the year my father entered the navy in WWI, and she died in 1944 while we were fighting WWII.

And finally, let me introduce you to "Wilson", a brush that John Lovett gave me. It's an ordinary cheapo throwaway brush from the hardware store, an Australian one (though you can find a similar one in your local hardware store for 79 cents). Wilson is great for lots of things, including fields of red clover, grass, and tree leaves.