Every year since our children were small we have been blessed to spend the last week of each summer at Sandy Island, a YMCA Family Camp which occupies an entire small island in the middle of Lake Winnipesaukee, N.H. The same people return the same week each year, and there are lots of wonderful activities in a beautiful natural setting. We love it, and this week has been great. Here is my painting of the dining hall, where meals are served family style.
A quick sketch, floating along and dipping my brush in the Charles River beside my boat.
Continuing with my exploration of acrylics, and here’s a zinnia close-up and off-center, which is an interesting perspective.
We are lucky enough to spend time each summer beside lakes in Vermont and New Hampshire. Here’s a sketch (pencil, then watercolor in sketchbook) of my view of Caspian Lake, VT this weekend.
Channeling my Mom (may she rest in peace) who loved nothing more in life than a summer tomato sandwich with mayonnaise, salt and pepper. I had to paint this one before I allowed myself to eat it.
I took an acrylics workshop this weekend from Lisa Daria Kennedy, an excellent teacher. It was frustrating and fun. Here’s the one painting of this beautiful bouquet that I felt reasonably satisfied with.
The animal most tourists want to see in national parks is the grizzly bear, and we were lucky enough to see them twice in our July trip. The first time was in Grand Teton, where a herd of elk were grazing in a meadow a half mile from our lodge. One evening, two grizzlies came out of the woods and began chasing the elk. The chase went back and forth across the meadow for nearly an hour before the grizzlies, winded, gave up.
The second glimpse was in Yellowstone and is captured in this brief video (click here) of a mother and two cubs in the woods, causing a line of cars to stop. If you watch it carefully, you will see the motionless mother, the cub on the left, and at the last second, another cub moving in from the right. At that point, I stopped filming because a tourist (in search of the perfect photo) moved down the embankment toward the bears, and the mother got nervous and began moving toward the tourists. Luckily, at that moment, the park rangers, lights flashing, pulled up to save the tourists from themselves, no doubt for the umpteenth time.
This is my last sketch from this trip, I hope you have enjoyed them.
Yellowstone’s Old Faithful geyser is so named because it can be counted on to erupt every 90 minutes or so. We were lucky enough to see two such eruptions. On the July day when we were there, a crowd of perhaps 1,000 people watched from the nearby boardwalk. Below is my sketch, and click here to see my 30 second video of the second eruption we saw. The park ranger said it was an unusually dramatic one.
This little guy, found throughout Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, is misleadingly named a “ground squirrel,” when he’s actually not a squirrel at all, but rather a smaller relation of a prairie dog. He has to keep on his toes (literally), as he’s the number one prey of the rough-legged hawks who soar above the sagebrush where he builds his (or her) extensive burrows.
