Today: The Mountain!

Testing the wild clay.
It passed!

I woke with an unending desire to walk in the woods. It's been months since I've gone for a nice long walk up the mountain and today there was nothing else I could think of doing. I couldn't seem to justify just dropping all my work to play about on the trails though, but the more I thought about it the more I longed to field sketch. I wanted to take my paper and water colors and just study various interesting items in the field.

I figured if I opened up my Beatrix Potter book Id look at the plates on her field study, do a few copies and then be done, but it didn't work. I wanted to find my own sticks, bugs and fungus to draw so I packed my backpack and was off.

Before I even stepped onto the trail at the bottom of the hill that leads to the very top of the mountain I noticed that the huge puddle/pond that had always been around the one bend was now just a bunch of wet clay. Yeah, I stood there mouth agape just taking that beautiful sight in.

Clay.
Wild clay.

I conducted a test and the moment I put it to my hands I could tell it would pass the test. It passed. I came ill prepared to harvest pioneering clay but will be back before the rains this coming weekend. My mind is off wondering how it will react as-is on my wheel or if it will be better suited for hand building esp building some jewelry. Is it low fire or high fire? And I wonder, what color will it fire too? Perhaps its a terra cotta like the other samples I found in the gully? Finding clay like this is like instant Christmas!!!

Of course the mountain revealed more presents of color, shape and oddity that pleased every sense. I took a ton of photos but these are the images that really stand out in my mind as having been wonderful finds. Oh, and there were so many hearts to see along the way and of course, I always love to share those too.

A fantastic morning recharging creative batteries.
Here are some of the images I loved from the morning.

Loved the contrast between the
tree and the fungus growing on it.

Loved the shape and color of this fungus too

The swamp on top of the mountain
offers hours of interesting things to look at!

Paws

Hearts were everywhere today.
This one right at my feet.

This heart right at the root!

Set up in the field



Best sketches in the field from this morning:

T-shaped branch with fungus.

A beautiful mushroom from
the floor of the woods.

Flowers are just starting
to bloom.

Another flower study.

Branch study.
I LOVED the color and the wrinkles it had.