Trail Sketching at Sough Slough

Oregon Coast:  July 29, 2016

I've been soooo busy, deliciously busy, happily busy.  It is my good fortune that Dale and I spend a lot of long days out in nature.  When we stay home, there is plenty to do there too -- keep the blackberries under control, the cobwebs under control, the dust under control.  Not nearly as much fun, but a necessary part of life.  The bottom line is I have good intentions of blogging about every ten days, but obviously the stretches in between are often a lot longer. 

This blog is a nice follow-up to the Nature Journaling Workshop I taught at South Slough National Estuarine Reserve last month.  I had a wonderful group of enthusiastic artists ... and not nearly as much time to spend with them as any of us would have liked. 

During the workshop it would have been fun to spend a couple of hours wandering any of the Reserve's trails, sketchbooks in hand.  I did just that with Dale on July 29.  I actually left my camera at home -- on purpose, not by accident.  One of my shoulders had had a little too much of going up and down a ladder.  Time for a rest.  Fortunately sketching felt fine.  While Dale photographed, I got all these sketches started.  He often spends several minutes in one spot .... so I'd start another sketch.  Many were inked on location, but none of the hiking trail sketches were painted during during the hike,  but most of that painting got done later in the day. 

Another sketch of salal, this time a fly sits on a leaf.

I noticed a small cascara sapling was full of holes and even had fresh poop on it.  
And then I found the culprit -- a small land snail.  

I heard soft mumbling in the bushes.
I looked carefully and found two wrentits peering at me.

Crane flies come in different sizes.  This one was small and ever so delicate.  

Inland Oregon was snotty hot that day.  We were in no hurry to head home.  After our hike we spent about three hours on the jetty at Charleston Harbor. 

I sketched the guillemot while chilling myself to the bone and sitting on a jetty boulder.  Finally I worried my hands were too cold to safely hold my pen.  I retreated to the car and started painting -- got most of the painting done while the ideas were fresh in my head.