Beautiful Bergamot

July 27th, 2010
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bergamot

Beautiful Bergamot in Conte Pastel Pencil by Kimberly

I was just spending some time outside, sketching the flowers and herbs in my garden…including these beautiful Bergamot flowers.

Lovely Lavender

July 24th, 2010
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lavendar

Lovely Lavender in Conte Pastel Pencil by Kimberly

Sketching at the Zoo: Timberwolf

July 23rd, 2010
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timberwolf

Timberwolf in Pencil by Kimberly

The Zoo can be a great place to practice sketching animals, because there are so many of them! I sketched this wolf quickly with a pencil during our recent outing to the zoo, using a quick gesture drawing.

The Grasshopper

July 22nd, 2010
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grasshopper
Grasshopper in Conte Pastel Pencil by Kimberly

This is a sketch of that same Grasshopper we photographed using Super Macro.

Happy June

June 11th, 2010
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Happy June!

nearly ripened strawberries in june

Taking Time to Watch the Geese…and Draw Them!

June 11th, 2010
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Goose and Goslings by Kimberly Eddy

Sometimes I wonder what someone from the 19th century (or earlier) would think of our modern day claims of ” too busy” or “not enough time”. I am guilty of it too. I never seem to have enough time, despite having so many time saving conveniences available to me today.

One cure for feeling overly busy is to just take the time to stop, smell the roses, look at the geese…and then draw them.

The other day, we were super busy with a few errands, but my daughter was lamenting that we hadn’t been to a certain park in a while, where wild roses grow, and where beautiful geese are everywhere. I realized that part of why I have no time is because I need to make the time for some things, like going to the park. We got out of the car, a light rain was just starting (not enough to get us soaked, but enough to be refreshing on a hot day). The geese were out and walking around.

“Why are the geese out even when it’s raining?” my daughter asked.

“Hmmm. Why do you think? What are they doing?” I answered with a question. I wanted to see if she could figure it out.

“They’re eating. Oh! I know! The worms come out when it’s raining like this!”

“Right! Exactly.”

We watched them for a while, enjoying all of it. Then we went in the car once the rain picked up, and sketched them for a little bit.

Time well spent!

The Bird’s Nest

April 22nd, 2010
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The other day, my 11 year old daughter came to me, very excited. She said there was a bird’s nest right outside the window. My first thought was that this was not a good thing, because of our cats. Why would a bird build a nest on our porch near a window when we have cats that sit in the window and on the porch all the time? Then I looked where she pointed and discovered that the nest was actually sitting on top of a flower pot I have hanging on the wall. For this sketch I drew the flower pot sitting on the deck, because otherwise it looked like it was floating in the air, and looked a little odd! :-)

The nest was so high up, we couldn’t see into it, so I took a picture with a digital video camera, to see what was going on. Inside I could see one light blue speckled egg. Later, the momma bird came back.

After a little bit of investigation, we discovered our little friends are a family of House Sparrows. You can find out more about House Sparrows here.

Stay Tuned for updates as “our” egg hatches. We’re looking forward to it.

Bird Nest

Bird Nest sketched with Conte Pencils

Tadpoles

April 21st, 2010
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A friend has a pond behind her house, and her children had some tadpoles in a large canning jar, to watch them turn into frogs. These tadpoles were already starting to get their legs.

Tadpoles with pen and ink, and colored pencil

To learn more about the life cycle of frogs and tadpoles with your children, here’s a neat website I found, called Frog Life Cycle

Tulips

April 20th, 2010
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Tulips with Colored Pencil

This is a drawing of tulips in colored pencils.

Spring Splash

March 26th, 2010
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A friend’s daughter was enjoying the puddles created as winter melts away into spring up here in Michigan, and I just so happened to be showing her mom how to do gesture drawings at the time while she played….and so I did a quick gesture drawing of her splish-splashing in the puddles.