THE BLOG
If you sit there long enough, something will happen.
That was the advice we received from the man at the front desk. We were camped in between Yellowstone National Park and Teton National Park. He said just head up the road. The campgrounds are closed because of the sequester but you can park at the end of the campground and walk up to the river. He said he saw river otters at campground 1.
So we did. We parked at campground 1 and took a mountain bike ride up the road. When we came back we hung around. I sat and sketched and painted. The sun was hanging low towards the west. Dave said, “Should we go?” We started packing up our things. A couple came hiking up to the river. They said we saw river otters at campground 2 and they are making their way up the river. So we waited and watched the river. There was a bit of small talk but no sight of the otters. “Well they must have a den between here and there.” “Maybe they turned and went downstream.” “Maybe they got out of the river.” The couple started to leave. There was one more question and then “There they are.”
Four river otters glided through the river, diving deep and coming up chomping on fish.
They stretched their necks and looked at us. We got out the binoculars and looked at them. We heard chirp, chirp, chirping. One otter had been separated from the other three.
They popped their heads out of the water and listened and searched down river. They immediately headed towards the chirping. The chirper had dived into the river and when he popped up, there was a great otter celebration. They climbed out of the river and their movement was fluid as if they were still in the water. Four river otters undulating across land. It was worth the wait.
Quotes from the Trail
“Andrew, she needs to tie her shoe.”
“Save your energy for the way out.”
“I have to hang up the phone, Mom. I’m on the side of a cliff.”
Mike from New York, “My momma taught me, you only need to know two words in this life. Yes and No.”
A woman hiking alone. “Have you seen my whistle? I’ve dropped my whistle.”
The sound of bear bells jingling on packs: “You know what bears call those? Dinner bells.”
Waking up in a Fog
Some mornings you wake up and the clouds have pressed down close to the earth. It appears that you are going to be wandering around all day in a fog. You want to go on a hike? How can you go on a hike in this kind of weather. Some days you just have to get ready and head out anyway. It appears that we were camping in a depression where it rained everyday, the trailer started leaking and almost every morning we woke up in foggy weather.
Some times you just have to make your plans and go ahead with them even though it’s foggy. We grabbed our back packs and put out a bucket in the trailer to catch the leak. Who knew that just one mile out of camp there would be sunshine. The road rose to meet the sunshine and it turned out to be a great day for hiking. We hiked in Teton National Park by Jenny Lake. There were bears all over. They were on these signs that warned about bears and how to hike in bear country. One man on the trail asked if we had seen any wildlife and I said, “Yes. They had back packs on their backs and bear bells.”
We did come upon a deer and her fawn eating right by the trail. The mother saw no danger with us being so close. The fawn was a bit more nervous and they wandered into the woods. So when your day seems foggy with no hope for sunshine, grab your sketch book and paints and head out for the day. Who know what and who you will meet.
An Advantage of the Visual
In conversation with my family, I said, “I am never bored.” My son couldn’t believe it. No! That can’t be true. But I think it is true. There is always something to be creating, or another idea to be working on. I have trouble with not enough hours in the day.
Another advantage, I had a good friend get in a bad motorcycle accident. Now there’s a section for Fathers, Mothers, graduation, birthdays but there isn’t a section on the card aisle that says “Motorcycle Accidents”. You can custom fit a card for all sorts of circumstances. This idea seemed to fit the story of their wreck. That’s the exciting part, to take that idea that pops into your brain and try to get it down on paper and then to see it touch a cord in the mind of the viewer.
Art is a gift that just keeps giving. It makes my life exciting and hopefully I can share some of that excitement which I see in life, with others.
Field Watercolor
Here is my Strathmore Field Watercolor Sketch book. As you can see by the cover, it has traveled a bit with me. Here are a few of the watercolors inside. It’s nice to take a few minutes at different places and paint a bit of a watercolor sketch. There is a piece of regular paper between each sheet which is nice for taking notes or doing a black and white sketch. For the Lake Powell watercolor I wrote, “Motor boats in the distance. Slight breeze. Heat of the sun beating on left ear.” In Logan I wrote, “Sitting by an irrigation ditch, listening to the water gurgle by. Slight waterfall to right, cool breeze blowing, dragon flies over head.”
The combination of watercolor and words brings the places to life in my memory. I might of forgot the heat in the desert of Lake Powell if I hadn’t written of the heat on my left ear. When you are traveling with others, there is always moments of quiet when others are getting ready or not quite up or taking naps where you can grab your paints and sketch book and make a memory of the spot you’re at. I have one more page to fill and then I’ll take the Field book out of my back pack and put it on the shelf. Then it will be time to get a new one to travel with me.
- Sunset Beach Oregon
Iteration
Iteration
“a procedure in which repetition of a sequence of operations yields results successively closer to a desired result.” Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary
If I would have known about iteration when I was struggling over story problems in elementary school, I might have enjoyed working with numbers. I listened to Tyler Jarvis on a BYU devotional talk about iteration in math. You think of an approximate answer and then work to prove it. You then use that answer to work on another better answer and so on moving towards a more better answer such as my use of more better English.
Thats how I work with art and illustration: the idea pops into my head and I try to get it down on paper. I then use that rough sketch to improve upon the first idea and do this over and over again until I arrive at a solution to my problem. It takes some observation, thinking and revising to arrive at that answer. At this point it is nice to run it past others who can look at the art with a fresh eye. They may see some things that you haven’t noticed.
Life is a bit like that. We struggle through doing the best we can with an approximate answer to what we need to do and be and then we observe, and think and revise and try to do better. Iteration.
Come to think of it, iteration got me into trouble with grade school math. My answers were always my best guess.