Firstly, I apologise for the misleading nature of the title of the post! If you are following along with Exploring Nature With Children, you will know that this week is field trip week. We are quite limited at the moment with how far we can travel from home, as I need to be on hand for my dear Mother In Law, who is really quite poorly.
Our nature study this week has been varied, with no specific focus. We enjoyed a lovely nature walk to the park. Look at those beautiful, bright blue skies! The pigeons were extremely entertaining, the males all puffed up, doing their courting dances, looking for a mate.
We observed the beautiful patterns and textures that the frost made.
Rose thought that the frost made the grass appear like the needles of a fir tree.
We didn’t see many pigeons, but the various fowl were rather hungry!
Our sketchbooks were varied this week, too. Rose sketched a wee bone that she found in the pond, and recorded her thoughts and questions about it, whilst I painted one of the frogs that Rose found in our garden pond.
Please do share what you have been up to this week, either in the comments, or in the FaceBook group. Did you have an interesting field trip this week? Or did you choose to stay with your regular nature walk?
I also would like to give you a quick reminder of todays live Periscope event; Nature Study part 1 with Leah Boden.
Happy exploring!
Hi Lynn
We have been for a walk today, but not the one I had planned that is happening this weekend. We have been exploring footpaths round our village we haven’t been on in a while. At the weekend we are going out with a friend who has lived in the village since she was a little girl and we will be going up towards the heath ( sadly not heathland any longer) on a path we have not travelled before. We saw a singing skylark in a field we haven’t seen them in before and many birds looking resplendent in breeding plumage. Like your pigeons there was lots of showing off and a general feeling of activity. Your pigeons look very photogenic and are showing their colours well. Are your geese nesting yet?
Any luck identifying your bone?
I think I quite like the gouache, it is more opaque than watercolour, doesn’t spread so much allowing me to be more precise with detail. The best thing for me is that I can put lighter colours on top of darker ones, I am not very good at keeping light areas free of colour. It also covers pencil lines nicely. If you water it down well you can do the wet on wet but I don’t think it works quite as well as watercolours. It is a different way of working, so far I have tried working from a mid tone then adding light and dark on top, according to my Google search there are other techniques. I also like that gouache is more soluable in water so you can go back in with a wet brush and blend effectively when dry. I suppose it is like everything it depends on what you want to achieve as to which tool you choose. I doubt gouache would be as portable as watercolour, so watercolours will stay in my nature kit. A tube of white gouache in a water colour kit might well be a very useful addition. I bought my set of paints from the works quite cheaply.
I am looking forward to my periscope viewing tomorrow night.
Best wishes
Jenny
That sounds like a smashing walk, I do hope you get the weather for it 🙂
No nesting Geese yet (that we are able to see) no identification on the bone.
I think you have nailed the main characteristics of gouache; really glad to hear you are enjoying it. You really could take it out in the field though! I made my own watercolour kit; I bought empty pans & tube watercolours. I squeezed the watercolour into the empty pans & left them for about 3 days to dry out, then popped them into the empty palette. I also have a pan of gouache in white that I did this with too. Perfect for adding tiny highlights (to an eye for example.)