In Search of Images

I spent the afternoon and evening chasing down good images with Jacob, he with his camera and me with my notebook and pen.  On the left, though, is a study of the fine dumpster that I was parked behind while I waited for J to finish his jazz ensemble class.  I compared this giant metal bin with the woven plastic cloth dumpster-units that we saw in Barcelona.  I've heard that these cloth dumpsters are being used in the US now, too.  It was completely amazing to see cement blocks and other construction debris contained in fragile-looking bags;  I can't wait till these make it to the Asheville area.

It was after 7:30 when J and I made our way down to the River Trail to find twilight and sunset images.  The sky had been overcast all afternoon, but by this time there were periods of bright sunlight.  One of our first stops was to look across some newly-planted fields at a sunny strip of hillside with a few trees.  While I drew this, J took photos of a barn and fields.  You can see his images on his blog at Jacob Diehn Photographer.

As always I like to draw J doing whatever he's doing, so these next two drawings show him wading out into the icy river to take some pictures of the water in a riffle area.  The river was running high and fast after recent rain.  On the left is a start-up sketch that I didn't have time to finish.  It shows J trying to gain a foothold on a sunken log in order to photograph the water running over some rocks.  On the right he's photographing the water and rocks.

I counted all these gesture drawings as one since the whole series took about three minutes and J was constantly moving as he crouched down on a flat rock trying to get really close to the water.

As it grew darker and darker we hurried back through the woods to get to the open fields where we thought we might get a shot at whatever sunset we could actually see.  The clouds were heavier than before, but there were some pinkish spots in the west.  In the east there were pretty pink-topped clouds in a clear aquamarine sky.

As we drove home we spotted the field behind my house filled with cows!  We pulled over and parked.  J got out while I drew from the car.  The cows gathered close to him- dark, slowly moving shapes with a few babies galloping in the background, muttering and groaning and chewing the long grass.  J took several amazing shots of the cows in the near-dark.  I can't wait to see what he does with them.  Be sure to check out his blog tomorrow!