A grey Saturday morning, not all that cold but enough so to crystallize water droplets into a light intermittent sleet. Uninviting enough looking out the windows as I pour a cup of hot coffee to make me grumble to myself that I don't really want to layer on outerwear and lace up my boots to trudge down to the woods. And because the pencils I'm in the habit of using in my sketchbook are water soluble, if I try to draw, it's going to be messy, colors melting and pencil points sliding on dots of melting sleet on the paper. Lots of excuses. Since I'm good at motivating myself with guilt, I got dressed and went out anyway, grumpy as hell.
But as was the case all those frigid mornings last winter when I trudged down the alley and over the railroad berm into the woods, I'm glad I did it. Life is so short, and opportunities for quiet and solitude are finite. I think about the Canadian "Group of Seven" painters, out in truly nasty weather a hundred years ago, sketching in the northern wilds, reveling in the harsh beauty of their environs. There is something to appreciate even in this mundane scene along the Susquehanna in Marietta, Pennsylvania, on an unlovely morning standing in unremarkably unpleasant weather, trying to work fast while the sleet turns my sketchbook page into a mudslick. And unlike those hardy artists, I have a warm house closeby to which to retreat.
saturday morning across the tracks, 11-1/4 x 7-3/4, Derwent Inktense pencils