Martha Kelly Art

I actually took a little time off around the holiday from my regular work this year, but I spent a lot of Thanksgiving itself in the forest. We've had a lovely run of warm, sunny thanksgivings, and it's become a tradition for me. My usual family do isn't often on the day, due to scheduling conflicts for other folks, and this year, of course, it was a thoroughly quiet day with Mr. Darcy and me eating by the fire.

I've been doing book work and prints and having trouble getting myself into sketching lately, so I decided to mix things up and try some watercolor pencils. I always want to like them and then don't, but the Inktense (made near the Lake District in England, by Derwent) have a lovely strong color and depth. Local museums won't let me sketch with my water brush and colors the way I can in Europe, and I've been wanting a color medium I can use in museums too. These are fun. They mix line and wash, and I like the colors. I still like fountain pen and watercolor best, but it's good to play. The first one is two colors of green pencil plus water soluble graphite. Then I added pen to the last one of the four, just to see how that was too.

I've been loving the forest sketching lately with all the autumn colors and swirly vines, but it's a little socked in. Walking home from the forest the other day, I saw this sky and had to stop and paint a big wide open sweep. Such fun.

Bard Cole of WKNO, our local PBS station, has done a series of nature videos this summer and fall. We both walk daily in the same park and forest, and several of the shorts feature the Old Forest. I was thrilled he asked me to do one with him, and we took advantage of a lovely day on Monday to go walking, sketching, and talking. Bard has a beautiful way with a camera, and if I had worn a better shirt, it would have been a thoroughly beautiful occasion. Sadly I didn't really consider sitting hunched over to draw. It looked ok standing up, so I walked out wearing it, but that's pretty true to life. I don't often think too hard about what I'm wearing, and I certainly don't pay much attention to anything else when I'm painting. Berthe Morisot's mother worried about her not getting a husband because of the fierce face she made when she painted. It's hard to make art and look presentable at the same time.

The sketch itself isn't my best. Bard did a slow circular crawl around me as I worked, and I ended up overworking it a bit while we talked. It's hard not to be self conscious about sketching on camera. But I loved the conversation we had, and I'm so grateful to get the chance to talk about the place that continues to be the very heart of my work. Watch the rest of the shorts here. I love the one about the birder. Bard's camera work is exquisite.

It's been a kind of stressful week for the country, but the weather was flat out glorious yesterday, and I spent the whole day outside painting. It felt marvelous. I did two journal spreads for myself, one large and one small, and I did two commissions. My house portraits often get a little tight, but this was for a fellow artist, and I let myself play more than usual. I had been loosening up in the forest, and I intentionally went straight on over. Unusually for me, I did the paint first and added the lines after, something I'm trying more of lately to get more motion in my pieces. Houses are easy to get too tight and precise about. I was pleased with the results, and (beautifully) so was she. I love doing paintings for friends. I haven't got permission to share the other one yet (sometimes they're surprise gifts), but I'll post it when I can.

I got a precautionary covid test today before my upcoming camper adventure. I've got a fantastic house sitter booked, I'm trying to get the forest book done (at least the artwork) before leaving, and things are falling into place. It was an impressively organized experience. Fifteen minutes, start to finish, and you never leave your car. I did a couple of quick sketches in line, but then I was home again.

I also did a sketch this morning in the forest. I loved that arching grape vine across the path. It felt like a portal to somewhere magical.

I'm still carrying my sketchbook every day on my early dog walk. Mr. Darcy is feeling the heat, so sometimes I sketch to give him a breather, sometimes I see a bird I want to try to capture, sometimes something just catches my eye, like the first one above. I used up all my ink on that one, so now I need to refill my pens before tomorrow.

The book work has slowed down (and the journal work almost disappeared) as I've been trying to get the final layout/extra pages/last few letters done, and as I've started scanning in and cleaning up (mostly letters that got out of hand in thick fountain pen on bumpy watercolor paper). I'll have to do yet more digital work to put each on on exactly the right size file and make sure there's enough border and also make sure than ones like this with a little overlap will meet up in the right places. Definitely the less fun part to come. But I'm really excited and have drawn out all the pages now, with only three plus covers to color. It's coming. My printer is getting me proofs on the paper he intends to use, and then I'll just have to dive into the scanning more intensely.

About all that's going on over here right now is sketching in the forest on my morning walks and work on the forest ABC book from those sketches (and a bunch of old ones). I've also had a quieter weekend, visiting with my dad and a couple of friends from safe distances. I'm hoping to wind up the artwork for the book quite soon, and then I'll have to figure out all the digital stuff -- get the scans the right size, obtain an ISBN number, and all the less fun but still satisfying stuff.

Here's a shot of my back porch table (where I've been working except a handful of the hottest days, because the full summer heat makes me want to stop working and nap) with the line drawings for the book in the center surrounded by a host of older sketches I'm using for reference. I'm grateful for all the years of forest sketching I have in old books. It's proved more valuable than I dreamed.

And here's one more pair of recent morning sketches with my newish Sailor fude fountain pen that I'm still really enjoying. It's what I'm using for the book as well.

My Quarantine Journal is taking a serious back seat the last couple of weeks to this book project, but I figure it's always good to go with the thing that's strongly calling your name (unless you're on a different kind of deadline). It's good to be able to ride a bit of momentum on a project too. I'm having a lot of fun with this book and simultaneously trying to figure out how to push it on out into the world once I'm done. It's so local that I'll likely self publish, but I'm exploring a few options at the moment. It feels like a lot of years' worth of sketching in the forest have really come together all at once in my head. I'm grateful for the gift of that, unexpected and lovely.