Last Sunday we went for a walk in the Tegeler Forst, near Tegel Lake in the north-west of Berlin. The weather was a bit cold and damp, but the walk was very pleasant. We met several other hikers, including a man walking his two cats 🙂
We didn’t see many animals, except birds; but we saw many footprints in the soft mud of the trail:
Cat?
Roe deer?
Deer?
Raccoon?
Dog
Fox?
The first paw print is very likely from one of the cats we saw – a wild cat is much less likely. The two following hoof prints are from deer, either young red deer or roe deer. The fourth paw print could be from a raccoon, that has been introduced in Germany a century ago and that I already observed in the city last year. The last two paw prints are likely from a dog and a fox. I think that the last one is a fox, because there is free space between the palmar pad and the toe pads.
Any experienced eye can say more? Let me/us know in the comments 🙂
Today I watched John Muir Law’s workshop on colour and value, taken from his blog post of the same name – it’s a long video, but I found it really worth watching:
I was intially surprised when he said that getting value right is far more important than picking the right colours. He showed the effect of colour filters over a picture, and one participant added a comment about black/white filters, which ultimately remove all colours and leave only values in form of greys. I looked again at the blue foal I painted last week and found that many areas of the painting were either too dark or too light. I am not so good at painting, so what happened most of the time was that I painted a stroke with the brush, to discover only afterwards if it was of the right value – and I was not very lucky 🙂 So today I tried again, with a HB pencil.
This time I got closer to the appearance of the legs. I left less white, less light tones, and tried to get the strong shades around bones and tendons, especially in the hind leg. The head was not so much in my focus, so I think that for example the ears could have been darker, and some details are missing; but overall I find this attempt more 3D than the blue one.
What do you think? Is there anything big that I miss, or some advice I could make good use of? Thanks in advance for your comments 🙂
Last Friday I started learning the trombone! My teacher is a musician from my orchestra, with whom I talked about learning a brass instrument at the beginning of last year; as my Montessori diploma course is now over, I have all my Fridays free again and I have again time and energy to dedicate to something new and challenging.
Why the trombone? Well, around ten years ago I started learning the baritone horn, but had to set it aside after a few months to focus on my high school studies. It was a cumbersome and quite heavy instrument, but with a mellow tone, and with the satisfying quality of making my own breath loud and musical. With the other instruments I play, the connection with the breathing is only indirect, so this is the first reason I have started to practice a wind instrument. Another important reason for me is that the position of the notes is not on a line, like on the piano – you go left, they become lower, you go right, they become higher, and each note is only in one place – but they are grouped differently, they repeat themselves along the instrument:
Recalling a bit of the technique I learned with the euphonium, I was able to play most notes right away. The challenges ahead include developing lip muscles, produce a consistent airflow for at least a full piece, develop speed and precision in finding the notes on the slide. I like how all these goals sound achievable. I’m aware that I won’t become a professional trombonist overnight, but I know I can trace my progress and I can ask my teacher if I feel I am getting stuck.
And besides, the trombone is especially good at being funny:
With a short break during the Christmas holidays, my baking streak continues, with mostly positive results 🙂
#41, Weizenmischbrot
#42, Weizenmischbrot
#43, Weizenmischbrot with more whole grain flour
#44, Weizenmischbrot, with Dinkel flour
#45, Dinkelmischbrot
#46, Weizenkastenbrot (only wheat flour)
#47, Weizenmischbrot (burnt crust)
#48, Dinkelmischbrot
#49, Weizenmischbrot
I’m learning a lot by baking regularly, and more importantly, by taking notes about how the different steps went (how long the dough was left leavening, how hot was the water, if I used a different flour, how was the texture of the dough after mixing, how did the baking phase go…). It helps me noticing what went well and bring it to attention for the next bread. I have my favourite recipe, the one I’m now sure of the result, but I like to pick up recipes with different flours, that require specific preparation steps (cooking part of the dough in a pot, make two or three pre-leavened doughs, adding lemon to enable the binding of gluten…) just to add interest to the process. One thing I have learned, thanks to a few burnt crusts, is that I can’t leave the loaf in the oven completely alone and keep track of the smell, because it will come too late for me to fix anything. So it’s better for me to stay near the oven for the first 10-15 minutes, when the crust becomes golden-brown, then lower the oven temperature and leave the bread complete the following 20-30 minutes baking phase on its own.
I’m considering to make it a small side job, but I’m unsure if making bread on a larger scale could be too time-consuming, or also difficult. Any ideas or tips about that? Thanks in advance!
Today I wanted to make a painting out of yesterday’s study of a foal. At first I thought of watercolour, but as I tidied up my pencils, pens, paints and paper in the past few days, I thought I could give acrylic paint a go. I have little idea of the proper techniques so I just tried painting with blue. Here is the result:
I especially like the neck, with its soft shadows. I painted several layers over the legs, but I’m not as happy with them as with the neck and head. Any tips from more experienced artists? Just type a comment below! I’d be very grateful for your feedback.
Today I dedicated some time to drawing, after a pretty long break. I was in my local library, reading a horse magazine, and found the picture of a foal particularly sweet, so I decided to copy it. Its pose was quite challenging:
I first measured the total height and width of the foal with my pencil, and found out they were the same, so I transferred the measurements on the sketchbook and drew a large square. Then I measured with the pencil some intermediate points, like where the ears met the square, where the elbow was, how high was the hip from the bottom of the square. I didn’t make much measures and started outlining the shapes right away. Therefore, when later I looked at the picture and the drawing side to side, I had to make a few adjustments in the proportions.
I then used a pink pencil to draw some schematic lines, like the midline of the head, and the circle where the neck meets the body. It was not easy at all, with the foal lying on the grass all bended in many directions. I chose a red pencil to draw over the outlines, so that the pink lines represented only imaginary boundaries. I finally drew light blue lines that connected the eyes, the shoulders and the hips (well, for the hips I was only able to guess). After double-checking with the picture, I made some corrections with a green pencil:
I’m going to continue another day, by using a new sheet of paper and copying only the outlines, and then proceed to draw the shading. I will maybe do another sketch with watercolour, to quickly test the main shaded areas, and to resume with that technique too. I’ll keep you posted!
With this post I wish you all the best for the year that just started! I’d like to quote averagefairy, whose wishes resonated in me:
2018 is about little victories. we’re not putting pressure on ourselves to become everything we’ve always wanted to be because nobody can do that in a year. instead we’re focusing on making forward strides and we’re celebrating every single win no matter how small. — source: Tumblr
Speaking of little wins in my radar, I decided to practice drums, yoga, blogging and drawing on a more regular basis. I tested various apps and off-line tools, and I finally chose an app for activity tracking, Loop Habit Tracker. I can set how often I plan to practice a given activity and it produces nice statistics and graphs. I’ll let you know how it works in a future post!
aghisla draws 