Rocks and Trees

Joshua Tree National Park always makes me think of Dr. Seuss. When I was young, I thought the alien looking trees in some of his books were imaginary. Until I moved out to California and saw Joshua Trees.

03/09/2020 A big Joshua tree in the middle of a Joshua tree forest.

I planned to camp there this week, then this atmospheric river showed up. A desert full of rocks and washes is no place to tent camp in heavy rain! My friend, Jeannine, and I decided even two days would be better than rescheduling and having something else interfere.

Sunday, March 08, 2020. Sun and rocks behind a dead Juniper tree.

The weather Sunday and Monday was just about perfect: sunny, calm, with temperatures in the 60s during the day and 40s at night. The clouds were thickening all day Monday and by 4 pm it looked like a was storm moving in. I got back to Poway about 8 pm Monday night and by 9 pm it was raining. Great timing!

April 2015
Chynna (my Aussie dog) in Joshua Tree National Park.

Joshua Tree NP is a land of rocks and "trees". Joshua trees are actually arboreal (tree-like) yucca plants. I first went there in 1997 with my sister. Since then, apparently, it has become a hipster destination. The last time I camped there in 2015, I drove up in the middle of the week expecting to be able to get a first-come campsite early in the day. I drove to each campground, but there was not one open site. I ended up finding a site after dark in the Indian Cove campground outside the park boundaries.

Indian Cove campground.
Our campsite next to the rocks.
White-throated swifts were flying arond the rocks behind us.

This time, I decided to reserve a site several weeks ahead. The only campground with sites available during the week that had 3 days open was again, Indian Cove. But it is a beautiful campground with sites surrounded by the same rocks that Joshua Tree is known for.

Some animals we saw on the trails or in the campsite.
Clockwise, Antelope squirrel, common raven,
Sonoran gopher snake, Western Side-blotched lizard,
Pinacate beetle, Desert Cottontail.

The campground is actually within the park boundaries, but doesn't connect directly by road with the rest of the park. So we had a 15 minute drive each day to get back inside the park. It was worth it. The campground was very quiet and serene. Sunday night was the night of a super moon, so there was no Milky Way to be seen, but the brightness of the moon made up for it. I longed to be able to take the time to sketch, but being there such a short time I only did a quick sketch of the campsite and filled in a few of the animals we saw after I got home.

3/09/20 Wall Street Mill Trailhead. 

Most of what we saw at JTNP consisted of rocks and trees, but very impressive looking rocks and trees! We did go on one hike to see some historical landmarks. It was only about 1.2 miles from where we parked to the gold mill, but that apparently was enough to discourage most of the tourists. All the parking lots were full and I had to time it right to get a space as someone drove away, but we hiked back to the mill pretty much by ourselves.

We saw some old cars that I remember from 1997, but I seem to remember them having hoods and roofs back then. However, I haven't found my photos from that era to confirm my memories.

Wall Street Mill was active during the 1930s and 40s. It was used to crush and mill ore to extract the gold. There are several brief, but interesting, stories explained about the history of the site at plaques in the area.

View looking up hill from the end of the Wall Street Mill.
Gold was extracted from rock ore at this site.

It was a great, although short, trip. I arrived home tired and sleep deprived but itching to get back to the desert for another camping trip soon. Next time, probably Anza-Borrego desert.

Pre-Apple

Interrupting the stream of apple sketches (there are several more pencil reviews in queue), here is a sketch of a wild apple blossom. As I passed over the foot bridge on my way to the library last week, I was startled to see unexpected blooms below me. Proof that spring is here, a young seedling apple is blooming creek-side below the bridge.

02/26/2020 Blooming apple seedling under the Poway Creek footbridge.

This is the first volunteer fruit tree I have seen in the creek bed. It is growing amidst a riot of other plants, most notably some kind of honeysuckle. I don't know which variety of honeysuckle this is, but (along with fennel) it seems to be taking over the creek area.

Apple blossom with CdA SupracolorI pencils.
Pigments were waterbrush activated.
Background was added with a waterbrush
 and Monteverde Malachite Green ink.

I did this sketch from a photo, using the Caran D'Ache SupracolorI set that I reviewed in the last post.
I wanted to see if these hard pencils would put down enough pigment to make a good sketch on their own. I wasn't impressed.

Apple blossom sketch with F-C Albrecht Durer
and Kimberly watercolor pencils on top.
Water activated with a waterbrush.

Then I went over the sketch with other pencils, mostly F-C Albrecht Durer, but the brightest pink I found was from my General's Kimberly watercolor pencil set. In comparison, does it look better with the more pigmented pencils added on top?


I added a close-up of a couple of leaf bundles, just emerging. The shape and serrated edges is what makes me identify this as an apple, although the flowers are impressively large for an apple seedling. I am curious, if it produces fruit this summer, as to what the fruit will look like.

Photo close-up of blossoms. Used for the apple blossom sketches.

No Decaf for YOU

Last week, starting saturday, Poway suffered under a boil-water advisory. The restaurants, coffee shops, and store deli were closed. Water was being distributed by the city at Lake Poway and city hall. I only drink decaf, so the coffee has to have a good flavor. Starbucks long ago drove out the small coffee shops, and I find their coffee to be bitter and burnt tasting. It's funny how I was craving just what I couldn't have.

Top: Bean coffee roastery truck serving
 coffee in front of the Starbucks.
Bottom: Water distribution at city hall
viewed through the legs of the statue titled-
"Seeing" by Johnny Bear Contreras

Monday, I drove around town trying to find a new coffee truck that appeared the previous week in the Von's parking lot, since the usual sources of decaf were closed. I did not find him. On Tuesday I enjoyed a walk around town sketching some of the scenes from the no water experience and came across him in front of, duh!, the closed Starbucks. Brian roasted me half a pound of decaf beans and made me an Americano. Yay!

As I was sketching the water distribution at city hall, a man walked out of the building carrying a clipboard. It was a cool day, but he had a large sweat stain down the back of his shirt. I couldn't help wondering if the stress of the "boil water" was getting to him. I really need practice on human figures, but the sweat stain was easy.

12/03/19 Brontosaurus, the cattail gobbling machine.

A couple times a year, some large and very loud machinery travels down the stream behind my house cutting and grinding up everything that grows in the stream bed (mostly cattails), presumably to ensure flood waters have room to travel through without backing up. It took me a few years to actually see the elusive machine. On my walk I found it parked next to the chewed up stream bed. There are chains revolving around in the arm that shred the plants. It was amusing to find out that the machine is named Brontosaurus.

Tea and Toasty

The weather has turned hot and toasty. The Santa Ana winds are a feature of fall and early winter in southern California. The temperatures this week have been in the 90s during the day and in the 50s at night. That means my house can be cooled down at night enough to stay in the 70s inside, if I shut it up in the morning. The thing that keeps us all on edge this week is the very low humidity, around 7% during the day, and the increasing winds. Until I moved here, I had not experienced the oddness of taking a glass jar of liquid out of the refrigerator and having such low humidity that no moisture condensed on the glass. The winds have been gusty today, but tonight the wind is rising and causing creaks and snaps in the house as things dry out. I was living in a canyon south of here in 2003 during the Cedar fire. I saw the fire tornadoes lick up over the hills south of us when Scripps Ranch was burning. We had no police or fire coverage in our neighborhood, even though the fire came to within a mile of my house in Beeler Creek Canyon. I am glad that lessons were learned during that tragic fire. But I am jittery when the weather turns toasty.

#Inktober2019 10/24/19
Yixing clay Conch teapot
Inks: Monteverde Joy Sepia, Noodler's Lexington Gray,
diluted India ink wash, Sakura Gelly Roll white
Strathmore Toned Tan sketch paper

I have a passion for tea. When it is hot and dry, I like to have a pot of jasmine green tea. So for today's #Inktober2019 sketch, I chose another one of my teapot collection. This teapot looks very much like a conch shell. It holds 1 cup of tea, which makes it just enough for one small cuppa. I haven't actually used it for tea yet. I either drink my tea Gong fu style, with my 120ml teapot or I drink a 2 cup teapot full of tea as I did today.

Two Yixing clay unglazed teapots.
120ml capacity in the smaller, right teapot.

Gong fu (or Kung fu) is a ceremonial process in which tea leaves are steeped for successive, very short periods of time in a small amount of hot water. I typically fill one of my 120ml teapots about one quarter full of leaves, add water just off the boil to the top, cover (and pour water over the teapot as well if I am using an unglazed Yixing clay pot) and steep 15 seconds for the first steep.














Then I pour the tea into my tiny teacup and continue the steeps with each one 5 seconds longer than the steep before. I can get 5 to 8 steeps before the tea becomes tasteless or bitter. The tiny cups of tea cool quickly. and each successive steep is piping hot. That is so much more satisfying than waiting and waiting for a mug of tea to cool enough to drink, then having the tea become tepid before I can finish the mug.

#Inktober2019 10/22/19

One of this weeks #Inktober sketches was of one of my tiny (30ml), unglazed clay teacups with a clay frog (made for me long ago by my friend Michael) and a tea coaster. The frog's right eye came out wonky, I'm not sure why. I seemed to be sketching it as I saw it, but I guess not.

Two minute pose sketches
www.lineofaction.com
Marco Rainbow pencil and 2B graphite pencil

I practiced a few 2 minute poses yesterday. Two minutes goes by shockingly fast! The book I read today, Draw People Every Day, recommends starting with 30 second poses. I found this book to be quite helpful. I think I could only sketch a couple of main lines in 30 seconds. In the book, his assertion is that doing hundreds of 2 to 3 minute studies will raise my skill level faster than a few dozen over-worked long poses. Short poses are fun to sketch, but they use up my sketchbook paper quickly, so I think I will switch to printer paper for a while. I started these poses with my Marco Rainbow pencil because the colors have such a cheery effect! Then I switched to a 2B graphite pencil because it was smoother and faster to sketch with. I have a journal in which I take notes as I read different drawing books. I intend to add some reviews of these books as I progress.