In Praise of Idleness Drawings 85 and 86

Leaping ground squirrel

Squirrel

In Praise of Idleness Drawing 36

Squirrel

In Praise of Idleness Drawing 16

Squirrel

For the Love of Nature and Books

July display at the Greenwood Library

Libraries across the country are deep into their summer reading programs, and the Greenwood Library where I work is no exception.  (Although we call it “Summer of Learning” to encompass a broader range of exploration and discovery beyond “just” reading!)  The theme for this year’s program is nature, and I created this display featuring some of my favorite books celebrating the natural world.  I’ve mentioned several of them in my blog posts over the  years.

Here are a couple of closer views so you can read the titles:

And here are the inside book drops:

Squirrel Bridge

Squirrel Bridge in Longview, WA

The week before our weekend getaway to the ocean, I had read an article on the Atlas Obscura website about a squirrel bridge in Longview, Washington.  And because I have been painting squirrels lately, I wanted to plan our drive so that we could seek out this unusual animal crossing.  We did see this squirrel bridge across Louisiana Avenue in Longview, but it might not be the “Nutty Narrows” bridge mentioned in the article.  (It did not look like the bridge in the pictures.)  So maybe this is an idea whose time has come and is now being replicated!

Squirrel Bridge across Louisiana Avenue in Longview, WA

I did not see any squirrels actually crossing the bridge, but I did see two playing tag in a nearby tree.  Later, as we were leaving town, we saw a giant squirrel sculpture in a park.  It was dedicated to the man who designed and built the first squirrel bridge.

Giant squirrel in Longview, WA

You’ve gotta love a town that loves and looks after its squirrel population!

Watercolor sketch of squirrel

Another watercolor sketch of a squirrel

 

A Scurry of Squirrels

I love those collective nouns for groups of animals; some of them are particularly apt and evocative — a gaggle of geese, an ostentation of peacocks, a scourge of mosquitoes . . .  In this post, I am sharing some of  my recent sketches of squirrels, so I looked up what a bunch of squirrels is called.  And I found out it is called a “scurry” of squirrels.

What collective noun would you have come up with?  How about a busyness of squirrels?  An industriousness of squirrels?  A scampering of squirrels?

Here is my scurry of squirrels:

Watercolor sketch of squirrel

 

Painting as Research

“Paintings are but research and experiment.  I never do a painting as a work of art.  All of them are researches.  I search constantly and there is a logical sequence in all this research.”  — Pablo Picasso, from The Artist in His Studio by Alexander Liberman

Watercolor sketch of squirrel

Watercolor sketch of squirrel

Watercolor sketch of squirrel

I believe these are my sixth, seventh, and eighth watercolor paintings of a squirrel made in the last couple of weeks.  After making botanical-themed sketches for so long, I find myself drawn these days to animal portraits.  Can I learn to be more expressive in my work?  Will these latest experiments be a precursor to human portraits?  (Oh, how I would love to become good at painting people!  But at the moment I am intimidated by people portraits and landscapes.)

For now, I am not on any deliberate path of lessons and improvement.  I’m just following my urges.  And having fun.  I am pondering the advice of Julia Cameron, writer and artist coach, who says, “When we are fixated on getting better, we miss what it is we already are — and this is dangerous because we — as we are — are the origins of our art.  ‘We’ are what makes our art original.”  (from Walking in This World)

 

Squirrels in Words and Pictures

Puck, the squirrel

American red squirrel, Minnesota northwoods

I wonder if those of us who travel with a camera, making photographs of our encounters, don’t become a bit stunted in our vocabulary of descriptive words.  I was reminded of this recently when I reread John Muir’s travel journals from Alaska, and again when I read some of John Burrough’s nature writings.  They relied on words to express the wonders they were seeing around them, and what powerful magic they wielded in their writings, creating vibrant pictures in the mind through words alone.

I don’t think I’ve ever read such detailed descriptions of “squirrelly” squirrel behavior as those that flowed from John Burrough’s pen.  He captures the devil-may-care acrobatics of the red squirrel better than any photograph.  See if you agree:

“He is the most frisky, diverting, and altogether impish of all our wild creatures.  He is a veritable Puck. . . . What an actor he is!  What a furry embodiment of quick, nervous energy and impertinence.”

“By jerks and nervous, spasmodic spurts he rushes along from cover to cover like a soldier dodging the enemy’s bullets. . . . What a nervous, hustling, highstrung creature he is — a live wire at all times and places!  That pert curl of the end of his tail, as he sits chipping the apple or cutting through the shell of a nut, is expressive of his character.”

“The red squirrel is always actively saucy, aggressively impudent.”

“No other  of our wood-folk has such a facile, emotional tail as the red squirrel.  It seems as if an electric current were running through it most of the time; it vibrates, it ripples, it curls, it jerks, it arches, it flattens; now it is like a plume in his cap; now it is a cloak around his shoulders; then it is an instrument to point and empathize his states of emotional excitement; every movement of his body is seconded or reflected in his tail.”

(All quotes from “A Barn Door Outlook,” The Writings of John Burroughs, vol. 15, The Summit of the Years, 1913)

Now, wasn’t that delightful?

Watercolor sketch of squirrel

 

Squirrel: An Undulating Line of Gray

Speaking of the gray squirrel:

” . . . a long, undulating line of soft gray, silent as a spirit and graceful as a wave on a beach.”
— John Burroughs, “Barn Door Outlook,” from The Writings of John Burroughs, vol. 15, The Summit of the Years

Watercolor sketch of squirrel acrobat

 

Agile Squirrels

“Squirrels are North America’s answer to the monkey, I think.”
— Angela Pelster, Limber

Watercolor sketch of squirrel

Watercolor sketch of squirrel

The poet Donald Hall calls squirrels “tree rats with the agility of point guards.”  (Essays After Eighty)   How apt these definitions are!