It’s time to put fall to bed and prepare for winter. We’ve stored the lawn furniture and emptied the flower pots. The hoses are unhooked, the taps insulated. The garden is tidy, and the flower beds weeded. We’re ready to slow down, tuck in, and open ourselves to quieter, shorter days.
Sassafras
The leaves changed unevenly this year. Black walnut turned first, soft yellow sifting thinly to carpet the grass. The sugar maples added a brief, showy red, while silver maples clung to their green until the last moment. We spent the peak time for leaves in Brown County, Indiana, poking through shops and hiking at the state park. We came home to find a few scattered oranges among somber oaks.
Downtown from the Coffee Shop
After two decades in Colorado, enjoying fall Aspen, the color that startles me is the fluorescent peach of sassafras leaves. Even in the gloom of a winter afternoon, with the sun setting before 5 pm, the sassafras somehow gleam in the shadows. Above them, the setting sun casts pinks and lavenders against ragged clouds.
Acorn
Much more somber, the oak leaves are raining down even as they persist in the canopy. As kids, we raked those heavy leaves every fall, making giant piles for jumping into or piling over each other. The scratchy bits, and a few insects, would find their way down the backs of shirts and pants. Looking up through a blanket of brown leaves, I would watch the contrails of airplanes spreading out, white against blue. Those memories are carried back to me on the scent of warm leaves and acorns crunching underfoot.
There’s a wonderful space available in the weeks before Thanksgiving. In that space we can take a breath, take a walk, and watch the scattering leaves fall like snow.
Today I’m posting a short video for my colored pencil class. We’ve been having fun with small botanicals and geeking out over pencil sharpeners. I love to see people in the zone with their artwork, so rather than interrupt them with a two-hour demo, I compressed the process into a three-minute time-lapse. Whew!
For my grapes, I chose seven colors that often show up in 12-pencil sets: white, yellow, purple, brown, red, light blue, and light green. (For my fellow pencil geeks, I’m using Faber Castell Polychromos White 101, Cad Yellow 107, Magenta 133, Walnut Brown 177, Light Cad Red 115, Light Ultramarine 140, and Light Green 171.)
Grapes are easy to draw and fun to paint. This is your invitation to head over to the fruit bowl, bring some grapes to your sketchbook, and paint along. Oh – and sharpen those pencils to a long point!
The sound seems to drift down from the heights of the tall trees. It’s a dreamy, lazy buzzing, rising and falling in volume, and tapering off to be picked up again in a slightly different place. Growing up in Indiana, it was the background sound to the “dog days” of summer. I can’t separate my memories of freezer pops and visits to the Lake from the thrumming sound of the annual cicadas.
Our yard (3 acres of weedy grass, silver maple and black walnut) is revealing its wealth of insects this year (and other critters). Along the tree lines, I’m delighted by flying bugs, bees, spiders, and dragonflies. I discovered a tree frog sheltering from the sun, and rescued a handful of hungry monarch caterpillars that would have starved where they hatched. I moved them to bigger fare.
Gratitude seems like a small word to exchange for this bounty of wonders. I get to play out of doors as part of my job, and then generate something lovely from that play. The hours I spend outside observing, recording, watching, and listening are as important as the hours I spend in the studio creating, drawing, composing and rendering.
A new project is emerging from my summer’s work, as I process a deep dive into nature and local history. It combines my fine art paintings with genealogy and environmental education. You can follow along as I develop the project in upcoming posts.
In the mean time, the first two pieces are almost complete. The first is called “Place of Beginning,” and reflects our move back to Indiana. The text is a partial legal description from our mortgage documents. This bird is emerging from chaos (have you ever moved across country?). It’s song is a clear bell coming from the storm of activity brought on by change.
Each piece in this new project will incorporate historic documents about a geographic location, feature, or region (such as the Kankakee River or the Indiana Dunes). The documents record changes in Northwest Indiana between the years of settlement (roughly 1830) to the first successes of the conservation movement in the early twentieth century (roughly 1925). I’m eagerly searching out diary entries, land survey notes, stories, poems and articles.
“Enter a Wet Prairie” explores the historic loss of habitat for grassland birds like the Dickcissel. The background photo is the restored prairie at Reynolds Creek Game Bird Area, and the historical document is the land survey note matching that location. Restoration efforts in Porter County are reclaiming land for tallgrass prairie, and there is hope that we can continue to enjoy grassland plants and animals into the future.
Memories surface like waves. The roar of the water on a windy day. The cool air juxtaposed against the heat of the sun on my skin. Sand pouring into the back of my shoes as I slide down a steep dune. I’ve been playing at the beaches along Lake Michigan’s shores since before I could walk. Many decades later, my joints are a bit stiff, and my skin is a little loose, but when I’m perched on a dune looking at the water, I feel young.
Brisk waves batter the shore. I can’t hear anything over the wind.
“Find a comfortable seat” is a basic guideline of nature journaling. This includes finding a comfortable place to sit or stand for the duration of sketching, and also taking good care of myself outdoors. No matter how long I plan to be out, I assume I’m doing a pack in/pack out day camp, complete with water, snacks, safety, and other comfort items. Sunscreen, bug spray, and for me, poison ivy wipes, are essential.
Getting comfortable in the sand. Too windy for my big-brimmed hat!
After that, I let the rules drop away and enjoy myself. I have no idea what I’ll find to look at, and that’s part of the fun. Sometimes nothing grabs my interest, and I stare over the top of my sketchbook. It’s okay to be in the moment.
Recording what I observe cements the experience in my memory. It’ll be fun to revisit this page during the dark days of winter.
I’ve taken the advice of a number of journal enthusiasts to start my page with a location map or landscape. On this trip, I loved the way the dune bluffs scalloped away from the water into the distance. I didn’t quite capture it, so I’m looking forward to going back. The nice thing about a landscape is that you can usually return more than once.
A Dune Tiger Beetle, genus Cicindela, on the hunt.
Another technique I’ve learned is to let my attention be drawn back from a distance to my immediate surroundings. That’s how I noticed one beetle chasing a much smaller beetle across the sand. Lunch!
George Fred Keck’s House of Tomorrow, moved to Beverly Shores from the Chicago World’s Fair. There are five Century of Progress homes. The other four have been leased to tenants who have restored their interiors. This home is currently being remodeled.
Dunbar Beach in Beverly Shores is now part of the Indiana Dunes National Park. But when I was growing up, the Century of Progress homes, the narrow sunlit beach, and the bend in the road at Kemil Beach were the nameless landmarks of our endless childhood summers. I love being back.
For me, March is the opening of the creative season. As the studio fills with new ideas, the world pivots from darkness to light, from the quiet waiting of Winter to full-throated Spring. It’s a good time for reflection. My artwork continues to evolve, but with familiar components—a love of beauty, a prayer for conservation, a hope of connection.
Eastern Bluebirds in progress, on a cake plate with peach and lottery ticket. Colored pencil on drafting film.
My recent colored pencil paintings capture imaginary wildlife encounters in human spaces, blending storytelling with natural science illustration. They place birds in human-made settings, echoing the role we play in shaping and controlling wildlife habitat. I’m never sure where the whimsy comes from, but I need that playfulness to round out my compositions.
I created “Folly” in response to seeing nesting Cerulean Warblers at a birding festival. Through the scope, we watched the male and female tending their nest, tucked in the crook of a branch about 20 feet directly above a busy trail. It reminded me that birds have a precarious life, often struggling to succeed in challenging conditions.
“Folly.” Colored pencil on drafting film. Selected for the Hoosier Women Artists Exhibition 2023, it’s on display for a year at the Indiana State House.
I illustrated the nest as a glass cup filled with the news of the day, a fragile and potentially disastrous choice. I surrounded them with Poison Ivy, which has a dual nature. It’s terrible for us, but beneficial for birds. I titled this piece “Folly” because foolishness is a good place to begin any journey. In foolishness we find the confidence to trust we’ll find what we need along the way.
I don’t know where my muse is taking me this year, but if it’s a Fool’s Journey, it’s bound to be interesting.
At 3 a.m. we awoke with a start to the sound of mayhem coming from the kitchen. My husband arrived first on the scene, and was just in time to see our otherwise lazy cat flying along the counter-top in hot pursuit of a mouse.
Listening for mice in the walls, or maybe just thinking about shadow puppets.
The plural noun for a group of mice is a “mischief.” How appropriate for the mice that share our home. They’ve eaten my favorite rubber spoons, left trails of droppings behind the stove, and shredded a pair of oven mitts for nesting material (eek!). But at least the cat finally got some exercise.
By the time I got to the kitchen the excitement was over. We set some live traps, did our best to decontaminate the scene, and eventually flopped back into bed. I don’t think we slept much. I kept listening for the trap in the kitchen to spring, too far away to hear except in my imagination.
The experience rattled around in my brain for a few months before a Spoonflower neutral pillow contest brought it to the surface. We caught two mice in our live traps, and I released them among the leaves and grasses. Now they’re hanging around in this repeating pattern, no doubt hoping to find my new oven mitts or a tasty spoon.
Would you like to explore with the mice? You can purchase this design on Spoonflower soon, or sign up for my e-newsletter for special info and a free coloring page.
It’s late afternoon in the studio. Soft light sifts through the branches of the maple tree, and I’m longing to explore the spring plants emerging along the hedgerow. After two decades as happy Coloradans, we’ve returned to the Midwest to be Hoosiers. We’ve got a little more breathing room, a lot more yard, and a new home for ChubbellArt.
In February, my husband and I loaded our cats into their fancy carrier for the cross-country trek from Colorado to Indiana. It’s been almost two decades since we drove west with a different pair of cats to new jobs and new adventures on mountain trails. Now we were returning to our roots and to family, following the Platte River east as flocks of sandhill cranes descended on the Nebraska corn fields.
Exploring the Air BnB
If the cats noticed the cranes, they kept it to themselves. It was bitterly cold, in the single digits with plenty of sunshine. After a few hours of restless complaining, they settled into a routine of occasional medicated mewling. We reached Lincoln after dark, grateful for GPS navigation and a warm Air BnB. We let go of the chaotic violence of loading day, the memories already softening into story.
Moving-in Day
When the moving van arrived at the end of our driveway, a flock of Sandhill Cranes flew over the house. I took it as a benediction. Soon, the moving-in crew was hustling every box, tote, and stick of furniture inside. There was chaos, lots of cleaning up, and exhaustion on all sides. I’m grateful for the few days we had between moving out and moving in—days to quietly observe nuthatches cascading down the trunks of the maple trees, and to listen to the small flock of redwing blackbirds singing in the cattails across the road.
A resident Red-bellied Woodpecker
Two months after unpacking the last box, my husband and I are slowly settling into new rhythms. And though it still feels like we’re between leaving and arriving, I take joy in the birds vying for the suet feeders. We stroll on the beach, visit family, and make home repair appointments. Meawhile the cats patrol endlessly round and round the rooms, remarking the furniture. Sometimes they circle back to us in recognition that our little family is all that really matters. But mostly they complain about the increase of clouds and the lack of window ledges.
Lake Michigan at Indiana Dunes State Park
Soon enough, this unsettled feeling will be replaced with the more grounded sense of being at home, so I want to slow down and savor the strangeness, too. We’re constantly delighted by some new surprise. Hiding among the non-native trees and shrubs we’re finding walnut, oak, black cherry, and raspberry. Woodpeckers, migrating warblers and grosbeaks are flitting through, providing lots of challenging inspiration for art. This leg of our life’s adventure is as open to possibility as the previous twenty years, and I can’t wait to see what comes next.
When the weather was too poor this winter for outdoor sketching, I set up my drawing supplies on the porch, plugged in the space heater, and worked on sketching birds from life. I found the chickadees and finches very challenging. Why couldn’t I observe some sleeping ducks on a pond instead? But the most convenient, numerous collection of live birds was right there on the other side of my window.
February feeder birds sketches, mostly Juncos and House Finches.
So I worked, and struggled, and wondered how anyone completes an actual sketch of a bird in the field. I started with basic gestures, borrowing ideas from books, blogs, and videos. I knew I could draw from photos, but I wanted to be able to complete a finished-looking sketch during my sketching session. Then I found a bit of helpful advice: build your memory.
Always on the lookout, and constantly on the move: House Finch in the Ponderosa Pine. You only get a moment to capture something about a live bird.
Hmmm, I thought. I guess I should memorize the shape of that finch bill. But no, it’s not like school. I couldn’t memorize a set of visual facts. Putting the right information into memory requires repeated drawing from life, which enhances both my observation and drawing skills.
The more we look, the better we understand. A second observation of a House Finch bill at bottom right.
When I realized that the practice itself would build my memory and make sketching faster, I stopped struggling. Drawing from life is recommended by successful bird artists like John Busby and William T. Cooper. Busby was a British wildlife artist, educator, author, and a founding member of the Society of Wildlife Artists. He described bird sketching as a long-term practice:
Encounters with wild birds are usually measured in split-seconds, and one is rarely given another chance to react…It does take time to learn to draw quickly and a good memory and a high-speed response is something to cultivate…there is much that can be done to sharpen observation and fix events in your memory.
John Busby, Drawing Birds Timber Press, Second Ed 2006
William T. Cooper was a prolific Australian bird illustrator who worked from life. Here he explains the experience of developing a working memory of your subject:
Drawing from life is very important: it allows much more information to penetrate the mind than when copying from a photograph. This information enters the subconscious and will be drawn upon when required some time in the future.
William T. Cooper, Capturing the Essence, Techniques for Bird Artists Yale University Press 2011
He makes it sound almost magical. And I’m discovering an ease to developing these skills when I stop struggling and let the process unfold. I’m working on more responsive gestures while I let bird behavior and proportions seep into my brain. As I work more quickly, that thinking, left brain settles down, and I also feel more present.
Migratory birds add color and excitement to the feeding stations.
It’s May now, and migration season in Colorado is in high gear. Western Tanager, Bullock’s Oriole, and Black-headed Grosbeak are competing with a small, noisy flock of Pine Siskin for seeds and oranges. What a delight to sit here for an hour working with the birds, gently encoding all that behavior, noise, and color into memory.
I love to use mixed media in my nature journal. That means making tough choices about how many pencils and pens to bring along, and what types of color media to include. This post explores ways to mix up your color tools without breaking the bank, and without loading down your sketching kit.
Nature sketching with color can be quick and light
A basic kit might contain nothing more complicated than a sketchbook and a pencil. Add a bottle of water (and any necessary comfort items), and you’re ready to go. This is a light option, not just in terms of ounces, but in terms of attention. You won’t be distracted by extra supplies – Did I lose my eraser? Where is that darned sepia Inktense???
My basic nature sketching kit
So when I want to bring color along, I try to keep it simple and go for tools that are lightweight and offer little distraction. I have a small watercolor palette, which requires a brush and a bottle of water. This is my “fussy” choice. Or, I might bring water color pencils (a few, not the whole set!) and a water pen (a nylon brush with its own water reservoir). Occasionally, I’ll trim my kit down to just three colored pencils: red, blue (or black) and yellow. I mean, you can make any color of the rainbow with those, right?
Everything fits inside this zip bag, then tucks into a backpack.
By packing thoughtfully, I can bring a small range of colors in multiple media. This lets me have fun with layering them in one sketch. For example, I might apply water color pencil, then reinforce it with regular colored pencil after the paper has dried.
Lay down water color pencil, then activate it. Once dry, top with regular colored pencil or graphite.
I also like to create my own coloring pages of birds and flowers from my nature journal. I start with a sketch, outline significant lines in permanent ink, and let the ink dry. Once I erase the pencil, I’ve got a lovely contour drawing, perfect for sharing. If I’m still out of doors, I snap a photo, color the original, and keep layering!
Make your own coloring page by inking in your lines and erasing the graphite.
I can also capture the tones of a subject with just ink or graphite, and leave color for later (or not at all). Colored pencil, water color, and marker can all be layered over the graphite, which will also help to seal the graphite in place (less smudging).
For darkest areas, try starting light, then crisping up edges and lines as you get darker.
For me, keeping a light kit makes a sketching session easy and unlabored. And the more I enjoy my nature sketching session, the more likely I am to grab my kit and head outdoors, which of course increases my enjoyment. So pack light, and get out there!
It’s late winter, just around the corner from Valentine’s Day. It’s the perfect time to reflect on the many loves in my life, including my passion for birds, art, and science.
These three loves coalesce in the practice of natural science illustration, often referred to as “art in the service of science.” But science can also serve beauty. Accurate, detailed drawings can capture our imaginations and hearts in a way that leads us to curiosity, delight, and a desire to protect.
In the end we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.
Baba Dioum
Maria Sibylla Merian 1705
In 1699, Maria Sibylla Merian left her home in Amsterdam and traveled with her daughter to Surinam where she continued her work as an entomologist and natural science illustrator. Sibylla Merian was an entomologist, illustrator, and publisher. Her work redefined what was known about metamorphosis. You can see in her engravings and paintings how lavishly she loved what she encountered.
Today we encounter natural science illustration almost everywhere we look. If you’re a birder, you probably have at least one field guide on your shelf. We rely on the adept illustrations of each species to help us identify birds (and other life) in the field. But we may not be aware of the thousands of hours of research, field observation, and craft needed to produce these complex works. That’s what natural science illustrators excel at: simplifying complex scientific ideas with rigorous accuracy. This is a job for people with passion.
At the Denver Botanic Gardens School of Botanical Art and Illustration, I learned how to be rigorous in researching and understanding the plant species I illustrated. When I decided to concentrate on illustrating birds, I wanted to apply that same rigor, but with a shift in focus. I wanted to render birds as accurately as possible for the sheer joy of it. My hope is that the delight and joy of rendering the beauty of birds comes through in the lush details and colors, the soft textures, and even the scaly feet (always challenging for me to see properly, and endlessly fascinating). My bird studies are just beginning.
Pygmy Nuthatch / 2020 Copyright Christine Hubbell
Drawing and illustrating birds is a highly rewarding, challenging practice. You can start at any age, and with the basic skills of handwriting. A great place to start is in your nature journal. This is where you record what you see, hear, and experience. And you don’t need big outdoor spaces. A porch, patio, or back yard will do. Record your observations over time and you’ll also have a rich historical record of your experiences.
Some of my favorite nature journaling resources are by John Muir Laws. His books on journaling, drawing birds, and teaching are carefully written, easy to follow, and enormously helpful. David Allen Sibley has wonderful process and drawing videos available from his website as well.
For all things bird, explore the amazing artists and educators at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Bird Academy. They offer both real-time and recorded nature journaling workshops as part of their extensive series of classes and workshops.
Hermit Thrush / 2021 Copyright Christine Hubbell
There are so many reasons to love the artistry that allows us to understand birds, and so many reasons to love birds through making art. When we draw birds as a way of studying them, our minds shift to observing with intention. We learn to see aspects of birds that we would otherwise miss.
I’ve posted the following for anyone who’d like more time to draw along with the images in my Aiken Audubon nature art presentation.
Christine Hubbell 