works of wanderlust

Tag: autumn vibes

  • head over feets, ten

    Autumn is probably my favourite season. The colours. The full nights sleep thanks to the sun setting at a normal time and the temperatures being cooler. The abundance of excuses to settle into a cozy quiet evening without feeling excessively guilty about squandering the summer.

    My running streak is over, which is a shame only because some people had just found out I was doing one and were congrats me on the effort… which I had to explain I had finished it and was happy with the foundation it gave me to ramp up towards my race and thanks anyways.

    But since I’m not running every day anymore, I had to focus on the quality of runs and not just the quantity, huh? That means starting the short but important build up to a confident ten miler distance.

    This last couple weeks I…

    Wednesday was just on the verge of too warm, but there was enough of a breeze that joining up with the Run Club for about six klicks in the evening was definitely a win. We ran a big suburban lap, complete with some unexpected elevation change in the neighbourhood. It had only been a couple days of rest, but it was my first post-streak run.

    I was having a bit of a recovery week so I didn’t get back out on the trails again until Sunday. It was our long run day, of course, and now that we’re officially “training” we cranked up our distance incrementally over the last weeks. I led the group on a 12km route into the autumn-toned creek valley and we tackled a few hills in the process.

    With Autumn arriving and the Kid’s birthday eating up a couple days worth of free time, I didn’t manage much for a couple days. But after some blood work on Wednesday morning I threw caution to the wind (rest your needle arm for two hours, they said) and drove to yet another new pool. I swam five hundred and some meters in Confederation pool, and tried out my new headphones underwater too.

    Our first run of Autumn happened a few hours later. I have other commitments (read: Japanese class) on Wednesday nights upcoming somy participation in future Run Club runs is up for debate. But I took advantage of this night off to join a trail-ish sunset run for nearly seven klicks in the chilly September air.

    Thursday, meeting again locally for a run from the local pub (for drinks after) we had to search out an alternative route to avoid following the same path we’d now taken two runs in a row previous. A bit of improvisation resulted in nearly seven klicks of suburban adventure… and then a beer and cheesecake. Running is so unhealthy these days. *sigh

    Sunday was another long run. The race is only about a month away at this point which means that I’ve been ramping up my distance for a couple weeks. The plan was to do fourteen klicks, but the plan was off a bit so we did an unplanned fifteen klicks. That’s alright, tho. Knowing we can do the distance is often as valuable as actually just doing it. And fourteen is better than fifteen.

  • of birches in autumn.

    Summer has flitted by in a whirlwind of action, but not without a lot of paint staining the various papers and notebooks in my house. That’s to say, while I don’t really have an excuse for not posting for two months, it has not been because I have abandoned my art efforts, nor fallen to idleness.

    Autumn has left me inspired, however, and I’ve been out in the trails taking photos, sketching, and generally enjoying the orange-hued palette that nature has provided.

    I will reserve the specifics for future articles here, but I have found a few vibes sitting in the grass on multiple occasions, sketchbook in hand or watercolour paints at the ready, and enjoying some cool-air, low-bug plein air art time.

    I took a long walk through the local dog park and then sat on the ground to paint a low-sun scene of the turning trees.

    I pen-sketched some detailed work of various close-up fall foliage.

    I used tall grasses as a mask to try out a watercolour technique for painting birch trees.

    People always come by. People always look at what some guy is doing sitting on the ground with a notebook. People sometimes ask, sometimes sneak a peek, sometimes are obviously not sure.

    It’s been a blast.

    technique reps

    In my minds-eye I have a picture of bold and tall birch trees with their pale hued bark with scratches of deep brown and black making distinctive styles set against a pattern of fall foliage. My idea was to mask off the trees, paint the foliage, unmask and then paint the tree detail. Simple, right? On my sixth iteration I got closest to that minds-eye picture, but in each of the six repetitions of basically the same painting I did a little something right and a little something not-quite-right. If I was being methodical about my art study I'd do this more often: paint something. Then paint it again. And again. And as many times as it took to get what I thought it should be.  Because I've done some pretty respectable work this week and it's largely down to persistence and reps.

    Over the past weekend I got hung up on the idea of birch trees in the autumn. If I was attempting realism then the complexity of stark white trees set against a spectrum of fall foliage would be a considerable challenge. But there is a bit of the scene of birch trees, bare as they are in their mid-sections, where they stand out stark and crisp against a backdrop of colours, and after six repetitions of the same subject I’d started to get a feel for what the colours, layers and shadows should look like.

    So after a summer of painting and practice, it all came down to birch trees.

    Over and over and over again.

    Winter is coming and idleness will fill the cold spaces and I’ll be looking back to my summer of painting adventures with envy at the opportunities I had and a little bitterness at the opportunities I missed.

    But I am sure glad it’s still autumn for a few more days.